How to Increase Social Media Engagement Rate Now & Post-Pandemic

Social media can be a highly effective marketing tool. However, many small businesses don’t know how to increase social media engagement and end up with 0 impressions on their pages. The good news is, it just takes a bit of extra effort to get it right.

You may be posting at the wrong times, on the wrong days, or on the wrong platform. (Have you given TikTok a try yet?) It can be hard to figure out. Especially if your particular business doesn’t have many competitors to compare social media marketing strategies with.

The pandemic has certainly changed how people use and interact with your brand. If you haven’t already, it’s time to adjust your social media engagement strategy. We’re a digital marketing agency with over 10 years of experience implementing and optimizing social media marketing strategies… so we’ve gone ahead and provided some tips on:

• How to increase your social media engagement rate

• How to track your social media engagement strategy

But first, let’s talk about how the pandemic has changed engagement on social media.

How COVID Has Changed Social Media Engagement

Sprout Social regularly provides annual research findings on social media engagement and activity. The most recent research has found the pandemic has impacted how we should interact. Here is a summary of their key findings:

COVID Changed the Best Times to Post on Social Media

Timing your post is important. While there can be variances based on your own research, here is a general outline of the best times to post on social media based on Sprout Social data:

• Facebook: Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10–11 a.m.
• Instagram: Monday, Tuesday and Friday at 11 a.m. and Tuesday at 2 p.m. 
• Twitter: Friday 7–9 a.m.
• LinkedIn: Wednesday at 3 p.m., Thursday at 9–10 a.m., and Friday from 11 a.m.-noon

As the social media marketing consultant for our digital marketing agency, I have done some experimentation for our own clients as well. Here is when we get the best social media engagement rate:

• Monday: typically our worst-performing day, most people are preparing for the workweek

• Tuesday: Facebook at 12 p.m., LinkedIn at 3 p.m., Twitter at 5 p.m., and Instagram at 7 p.m.

• Wednesday: the hardest day to measure for us, posts either underperform or overperform

• Thursday: this is always my preferred day to post, follow Tuesday’s schedule

• Friday: post early because people like to check out on Friday evening, 10-11 a.m. on all platforms

If you follow the same social media marketing strategy as our marketing company, you don’t post on weekends (to give people a break). With that being said, Sunday traffic spikes are common for some of our clients. We recommend testing out a few posts on Saturday and Sunday before you decide if it’s worth it or not.

The Pandemic Changed How Often We Should Post

The pandemic has had a different impact on each industry (most notably the hospitality and tourism industry). Below is social traffic data for one of our B2B clients in the sales industry:

Notice how there was a large dip in traffic in April after the start of the pandemic last March followed by a huge bump after the first lockdowns were lifted. Only for the traffic to completely fall off a cliff afterward, resulting in the decision to reduce the frequency of social posts. We recently increased the number of posts, and as a result, that strategy is showing signs of success in 2021.

When you look at things from a platform perspective, you will see that, overall, the number of outgoing posts has decreased:

• Facebook: Outgoing posts decreased by an average of 1.8 posts/day
• Instagram: Outgoing posts decreased by 1.9 posts/day
• Twitter: Outgoing posts decreased by 2.3 posts/day

How Audiences Engage With Brands Has Changed

Interestingly, the number of engagements has risen for most companies. This is largely due to lockdowns forcing people and businesses online, and other factors such as the increased demand for content.

Making adjustments to when and how often you schedule your messaging can put you in a better position to engage your audience.

We experienced a large increase in social media engagement during the month of February across all clients. One of our social media engagement ideas was to time posts in correlation with lockdowns in Ontario. As a result, we ended up increasing our social media engagement rate by 132% in some cases likely due to the fact that everyone was now stuck inside. (Or it could also be due to the fact that we are a Toronto digital marketing agency with effective social media marketing strategies).

5 Tips to Increase Social Media Engagement

The day, time, and how often you post are important, but if you fail to offer value, share useful information, and give your customers a reason to visit your social media profiles, you’ll fail to engage them. Use these tips to increase social media engagement:

1. Be helpful: What can you do to help your customers? There are lots of ways you can use social media to do this. Answer common questions, provide them with product and service updates, keep them in the loop about what is happening with your company and how it’s impacted by the pandemic. 

2. Create content that is interesting: If you want people to like, share, and comment on your social channels, you need to post things that are intriguing. People who follow our social media pages don’t care that we’re a Toronto digital marketing agency, they want marketing tips and case studies.

3. Listen: Engagement is about having a conversation. You need to listen to what your customers are talking about. Social media is not a monologue, it’s a dialogue. Listen to what your target audience is saying and respond. Post content that provokes conversation.

4. Pay to play: Organic social media reach is not what it once was. If you want to get more eyes on your posts, you will need to boost posts and use social ads. Cost varies depending on what social media platform you choose to advertise on.

5. Try something new: TikTok is the latest social media platform to blow up. Have you tried it out? It’s used by millions of people, including your target audience. See if you can find a way to leverage the platform to create another channel to connect with your users. The same goes for any other social media platform you have yet to study.

How to Track Social Media Engagement

The only way to know for sure if your social media strategy is successful and how it has been impacted by the pandemic is to track your activities. We wouldn’t be much of a digital marketing agency if we didn’t track our performance. That means you should too. Think like a marketing company!

• Impressions: How many people are seeing your posts? Which type of posts are the most successful?
• Clicks: Which type of copy entices your target audience?
• Shares: Which type of content gets shared most by users?
• Referral traffic sources: Which platforms are sending the most traffic to your website?
• Comments/direct messages: Are you getting more or fewer messages?

You can increase social media engagement by determining what works well, and what doesn’t based on previous performance. Then all you have to do is shift your focus to the content that worked in the past. That doesn’t mean you have to stop coming up with new social media engagement ideas. Keep trying new things, but stick with what works to maintain traffic.

Digital marketing agency tip: create a custom URL for your posts that link to your website so you can see how well it performed on Google Analytics. (Campaign Source name is what it will show up as under Acquisition).

The Marketing Garage is an award-winning Toronto digital marketing agency. Our data-driven approach combines traditional proven ad development techniques with the test & learn capabilities of today’s online marketing.