When we hear people talk about ways to increase engagement I often hear things like create more valuable content. This is very true, however if nobody sees that valuable content then so what?
Knowing how to promote your content is as important as creating content; therefore having a promotion strategy is key to most successful digital campaigns today.
I will show you 3 important areas that you need to be aware of when promoting content to help with engagement, reach and ultimately conversions.
What Kind of Engagement Matters?
Engagement online generally can be defined either as a like, comment, share or a reaction. By getting higher levels of engagement, it tells the algorithms that your content is relevant and it then increases your reach or lets more people see your content.
Content is subjective and the algorithm machines wouldn’t know if something is good or bad without us giving it some sort of signals. The signals are when we engage with a piece of content. If they notice that a piece of content around a particular subject has a couple of engagement points and another similar piece of content has hundreds then they will priorities the most popular one. They do this because the news feed only has a limited amount of space.
It is rumoured that each type of engagement is not treated equally. A reaction is not the same as a like. Imagine a points system:
A like might be worth 1 point
A comment might be worth 3 points
A share might be worth 7 points
A reaction or emoji might be worth 9 points
So a piece of content that gets 10 likes might have less points than a piece of content that got 2 reactions therefore the reactions piece of content will get priority.
Choosing the Right Type of Content
Another area that helps with engagement and reach is the type of content. Platforms like YouTube only focuses on one type of content but most have variable types mainly videos, images, audio and text.
Have you been on Facebook for more than 5 years? If so, you may remember getting sent events and replying (Yes! No! Maybe!) to most of them or receiving requests to join Farmville or mafia wars. How often do you get these today? Hardly ever! However I am sure you see a lot of videos in your feed. This is because the algorithms priorities certain types of content. Videos and images do well right now because:
They naturally create a lot of engagement
The platforms can serve ads against them so they will priorities these.
So if you had a video with a lot of engagement, especially reactions and shares, then you are on to a winner.
Make Sure Your Content is Relevant
Another area that helps with engagement and reach is relevancy. All platforms focus on this as the more relevant content they can serve you, the higher the likelihood you will stay on their platform and not go anywhere else. Attention is a huge currency for these sites.
Just like with likes, the platforms needs indications from you to know if the content is relevant. These data points could be what content you engage with, types of people/brands you are connected to, hashtags you use, your profile, your recent engagement history and a lot more.
They are building a profile about you and your customers to work out what content is relevant. The more relevant the content (including the other areas mentioned earlier) = the higher the likelihood of engagement = the higher the reach = the better chance of conversion. However the opposite is true as well.
Having a promotion strategy is important; especially as content on most platforms have a very short lifespan. If your goal is to make social media part of your business, then knowing what to do once you click publish is a must to create success on these platform in 2019 and beyond.
Guest Blogger: ANDREW DAVIS, SOCIAL MEDIA & CONTENT MARKETING TRAINER, Thinking Outside The Blog
As one of the UK’s most prolific and sought-after digital/social media trainers, keynote speakers and consultants, Andrew’s has applied his unique approach to clients in multiple sectors, with clients such as KPMG, Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi, Tescos, o2, MTV, Accenture and The Royal Mail.
Want to hear more from Andrew Davis?
Andrew ran a workshop at EventLAB 2018 to discuss how to ‘Build an Advanced Social Media Strategy to Boost Engagement and Motivate Action’. Check out the full video here.