Interactive Posts: 9 Proven Tactics to Get More Engagement on Social Media

More engagement on your posts means more followers for your brand.

And more followers for your brand means more customers.

That's exactly why interactive posts are one the best ways to level-up your social media game.

Driving your engagement rates through the roof is a surefire strategy to start raking in more revenue from social media.

But what is an interactive post, and how does it differ from any other kind of social media post?

In this article, you'll learn about social media engagement, and how you can create posts that drive massive growth for your brand.

So without further ado, let's get into it.

What are Interactive Posts?

Interactive posts are social media posts specifically designed to drive high engagement for brands and pages. Where regular posts might see comments and shares as a bonus, interactive posts see engagement as the goal.

The goal of an interactive post isn't necessarily to drive direct profit or even to get your page the most followers. It's to get customers to start an engagement and share that post around.

Why is Post Interaction Important?

Connecting your shopify store to Instagram or Facebook don't get more traction based on page followers alone.

In fact, one of the biggest factors behind how far a post reaches is engagement.

If a post gets lots of engagement within a short time span, it's likely to get a lot more traction since the algorithm will show it to more users.

On the other hand, a post that just gets 1 or 2 likes probably won't have great reach- Even if the page that posted it has 100K followers.

Not only that, but pages that frequently share high-engagement content are more likely to get farther reach on future posts.

So, to sum it up: Social media pages need high engagement to consistently create posts with a far reach. Without engagement, it's unlikely any brand will see much success.

What is a Good Engagement Rate for Social Media Posts?

The average engagement rate on TikTok is 18%, whereas non-video content on Facebook sits at around .18%. Which is to say, a good engagement rate will look different depending on which platform you're using and what kind of posts you're publishing.

Video content tends to have much higher engagement rates, with an average of 6% on Facebook, whereas text and photo-based posts often sit under 1%.

Instead of aiming for one golden number, it helps to compare your content to similar content from competitor brands.

If your posts consistently get less engagement than similar ones on the platform, it might be time to reevaluate your social media strategy.

What Causes Low Audience Engagement Rates on Social Media?

Low social media engagement can be caused by a multitude of reasons - from infrequent posting schedules to bad copywriting.

If you notice a lack of engagement on your brand's posts, there's probably a good reason behind it.

More often than not, that reason is simpler than you might think. Here are the top reasons you might be seeing low engagement rates on social media.

a) You're on the Wrong Social Media Platforms

Not every platform is built equally, at least, not for each niche.

While a B2B SaaS brand might do great on LinkedIn, it probably won't do so well on a platform like Pinterest or Instagram.

Likewise, a B2C brand like Walmart probably shouldn't focus on LinkedIn, a largely B2B platform.

If you're seeing a lack of engagement, analyze where your competitors are allocating their focus. If your brand isn't on the same platform as most of the competition, you might just be barking up the wrong tree.

b) You Aren't Using CTAs in Your Posts

A CTA , or Call-to-Action, is the baseline requirement to encourage consumers to take any action.

Whether it's purchasing, liking, or following - The best way to earn conversions is to include a CTA where you want those conversions to happen.

Even a simple "Leave a like if you agree!" can do wonders for your engagement rate. If you aren't using them consistently, now's the time to start.

c) You Post Too Often

Posting too often can have just as negative an effect as not posting often enough. In fact, the outcome can even be worse.

Posting and promoting low quality content often can lead to users ignoring your posts, whether purposefully or not.

That lack of attention towards your posts will only result in the algorithm showing them to fewer people.

This can lead to a downward spiral for your engagement rate and social growth.

d) You Don't Post at the Right Times

Every platform has a peak hour where the most users are actively using the site.

If you aren't posting within one of those peak times, you'll be missing out on tons of potential engagement.

Luckily, we'll talk about just the right times to post a bit further down in the post, so stay tuned.

e) Your Posts Aren't Adding Value

Ok, this seems like an obvious thing to say.

However, it's worth mentioning because many brands make the mistake of using social media like a direct sales channel.

Social media is a place where users go to be, well social.  It's not a place where people want offers repeatedly rammed down their throat.

People are much more likely to follow your brand and engage with your content when it adds value to their lives.

So, you want to think about what problems your audience faces, then provide solutions with your posts.

For example, suppose you sell camping equipment.  Instead of just posting product images, why not show your audience the best ways to start a fire in damp conditions? How about teaching them how to tie useful camping knots?

Value-packed content along these lines will get lots more likes, comments and shares than promotional posts.

So, zoom out. Think about your customers and ask "how can we help them reach their goals?".  When you do that, you'll start to generate engagement and follows like nobody's business.

9 Ideas for Interactive Posts to Boost Your Engagement

Now that we've covered just what interactive posts are, it's time to talk about how you can create them.

Here are 9 post ideas you can use to drive more engagement to your brand's page.

1. Use Memes & Comedy to Humanize Your Brand

In recent times, brands everywhere have started to take a more personable attitude towards customers. It's a great way to connect with your audience and build trust quick.

Another great way to amplify that is with humor. Brands like MoonPie are experts at showing their human side to customers. Here's a silly tweet on their Twitter feed that helps illustrate that.

The premise and tone helps to show that it isn't just a large grey company, there are people behind the brand that all have senses of humor too.

2. Host Giveaways for Quick Engagement Boosts

Giveaways are another excellent way to get large amounts of engagement quickly.

Usually, the main goal of a giveaway is to get followers to follow your page and like a post in exchange for a chance to win a prize.

The reason they work?

Well, everyone loves getting free things - and if the only cost is a follow, then it's a no-brainer. It's a win-win.

And for the brand hosting said giveaway, that engagement can help spread the post even further. Every user who joins the giveaway is another one that's subscribed to see your regularly posted content.

3. Ask Your Audience for Direct Feedback

Sometimes the best way to foster engagement on your social media posts is to simply ask for it.

Now, that doesn't mean to post a caption saying "Please engage with our post."

Rather, use your social media page as an opportunity to ask fans and followers for direct feedback on your brand.

The list of questions you can ask is virtually endless, from what customers are looking for in future product lines, to critiques on your current products- Asking for direct feedback is a great way to boost engagement and collect data on how you can improve your brand moving forward.

To boost the odds of getting feedback, you can offer an incentive to everyone who comments (such as 5% off via DM) or pick one winner who gets a bigger prize like $100 gift card to spend in your store.

4. Directly Engage with Your Followers

On a similar note, direct engagement with followers is another way to show that your brand is looking out for its customers.

The best ways to seek opportunities are to look for brand mentions and @s on platforms like Twitter or Facebook.

Brands like Charmin and JetBlue are experts at using Twitter to directly engage with their audience.

And because of that, plenty of customers ping them every day for support requests or messages. It's a great opportunity for them to publicly show their brand's customer-focused attitude.

In your own brand, search for users who've mentioned the company and try to respond to those mentions on a regular basis.

The goal of those responses can be customer care, exposure, or even just a simple short conversation with a customer. Responding to customer mentions humanizes your brand and spurs future engagement.

5. Host Contests as a Fun Way to Bring in New Followers

Contests are a lot like giveaways when it comes to interactive posts.

The premise is practically the same, tons of people enter for the chance of a prize, and a small portion of those participants win said prize.

The biggest difference, though, is that contests are a bit more interactive than giveaway posts.

Contest can often be more effective ways to foster engagement, and add a bit of excitement to your brand. here's how Myntra used a contest interactive post to earn just over 7,000 responses in 2 hours.

Here are they keys to a successful high-engagement contest post:

• Make the contest easy to enter:
  The higher your barrier to entry, the bigger of a prize you'll need to offer to generate any significant engagement. For posts like these, it's usually better to keep requirements small.
  
• Make commenting, sharing the post, & following your page a requirement for entry:
  Since the goal is more awareness and post impressions earning comments and shares are some of the best ways to boost those results.
  
• Use an eye-catching image to get initial interest:
  If your post doesn't catch the eyes of scrolling social media users, it won't spread very far in the first place.
  
• Offer a prize that makes the contest hard to resist:
  Your reward needs to make it worth each follower entering the contest. Some of the best ideas for contest rewards are huge discounts or free products.

6. Share Content Across Multiple Channels

The truth of social media marketing is that it isn't about "getting lucky."

Any brand can get one post accidentally go viral, but that's not a sustainable or profitable strategy, it's a one-off.

Successful social media marketing is about numbers. If you consistently publish high-quality posts on a regular schedule, you'll see growth in followers and engagement.

But there's a way to boost that approach to see even more results from your social media efforts.

Instead of using each post just once, repurpose each piece of content across multiple channels.

Odds are most posts you create are well suited for multiple platforms. Posts that work well on Twitter can often be great for Instagram, Facebook, and vice versa.

Each time you upload a post, be sure post it across every relevant channel you can.

That way, you can multiply your efforts. Each 1 piece of content can make for 2,3 or more separate posts.

And since it's a numbers game, that just means you're tilting the odds even moreso in your favor.

7. Craft Eye-Catching Infographics

Infographics help brands to pack tons of high-value info into easily digestible images.

They're great tools for increasing shares and getting more social signals from your posts.

Here's how a music equipment brand used an infographic to promote products and inform followers at the same time:

When posting your own infographics, remember that high-value information is the priority.

If your infographic is nothing but a pretty design, followers won't have much reason to share. The perfect infographic combines both eye-catching design elements and information that's relevant to the audience.

Combine those two things and you have a recipe for success.

8. Feature Your Customers in User-Generated Content Campaigns

User-generated content (UGC) presents one of the easiest win-win situations for brands on social media.

It allows brands to connect with their customers, get submissions, and then turn those submissions into a collaborative post by the community itself.

One great example of this is the "One Day Without Shoes" campaign by TOMS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=48&v=eXiQABwCD6k&feature=emb_logo

To help raise awareness for children who go without shoes every day, TOMS started the #withoutshoes hashtag and hosted an event. For every follower who took a barefoot picture and used the hashtag, they'd send out a pair of free shoes to a child in need.

The result?

Over 27,500 users used the hashtag, leading to tons of new shoes for kids in need, and tons of publicity for TOMS. It's one of the reasons they're so successful today.

In your own brand, hosting UGC events to spread awareness and get users to post is a super effective way to build social media momentum.

9. Use Fill-in-the-Blank Posts to Drive Engagement

Fill-in-the-blank posts are simple. You give a sentence with a blank to fill as a prompt, and followers comment their own answers.

It's not the deepest or as groundbreaking as some other tactics may seem, but it's an effective way to drive comment and engagement regardless.

On your own social media page, use fill-in-the-blank posts to get a quick boost to your comment section and add a bit of fun to your feed.

How to Create a High-Engagement Post

So, we've covered a few of the best examples of interactive posts out there- But what exactly makes those examples drive high engagement?

As the old adage goes, "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for life."

So rather than leaving it at 9 great examples, let's talk about how your brand can fish for engagement.

Here are our top tips on what makes a high-engagement post.

a) Understand Your Target Audience Deeper than Surface Level

One of the critical components to a successful business is how well you understand your audience.

Sure, if you sell sports clothing, you know that most of your customers live active lifestyles.

But to effectively market products and drive engagement on social media, you'll need to understand them on a deeper level than that.

One of the best ways to develop that understanding is by building buyer personas for your most common audience groups.

Not sure how to? Here's a great guide on how to build a target persona.

b) Use Each Social Media Platform to Its Strengths

Different platforms are great for different brands and audiences.

While a brand that relies on stunning, high-definition images might do well on Instagram, it might not see that same success on Facebook- Where video content tends to be best.

Before you decide to allocate resources to a platform, consider whether it fits your brand and target audience.

In general, Facebook is ideal for older audiences, with video content reigning supreme on the platform.

Twitter, on the other hand, does well with most age groups and audiences- Though video-based content doesn't tend to be as prevalent on the platform.

Instagram is perfect for brands who use lots of images and eye-catching colors to grab attention- It also tends to have a younger audience base than other platforms.

And TikTok is a newer platform with a mostly younger audience (anywhere between Gen Z to Millennials). It's great for generating extremely high engagement on video-based content. But text or image-based social media content doesn't fit on the platform.

c) Take Notes From High-Engagement Posts on Your Feed

To create high-engagement content, you'll want to analyze just what trends there are amongst already-successful posts.

Make sure to take notes from posts with lots of social media attention, whether they're your own or from competing pages. Is there anything in common among them?

• What format do they use? Video, Image, Text?
• How much copy does each post have?
• What's the CTA on each post?
• What hashtags are being used?

Discovering trends among the successful posts on a platform can help you create content that take advantage of those trends.

How to Create Interactive Facebook Posts

Here are our top 3 tips for increasing audience engagement for your brand on Facebook.

1. Live Video Content Has the Best Engagement on Facebook

Video content already has the best engagement on the platform, but the word from Facebook is that live video content earns an average of 6 times more engagement than non-live content.

But the problem is; most merchants find going live a little scary for the first few times. If you're not sure how to act on camera, Dan Snow, CEO of award winning marketing firm Snow Agency has this advice:

"Just try sharing a behind-the scenes look into your office culture or company events. Alternatively, use Facebook Live to interview subject matter experts in your industry or answer FAQs. Facebook Lives are a great way to offer how-to’s and tutorials demonstrating how to use your offerings to your audience in real-time. The key is to not over-think it!"

2. Don't Overload Your CTAs

Not only has Facebook spoken out on how they filter "engagement bait" posts, but there's another problem with overloading your posts' CTAs.

Asking followers to like, comment, and share a post can lead to less engagement. Why?

It's too many steps.

To get the most out of your post CTAs on Facebook, only include one action. Whether that's a like, a share, or a comment- But not all three.

3. Encourage Users to Directly Follow Your Page

In the previously linked study, Facebook also mentioned that brand page content is more rare on users' feeds now.

That's because Facebook wants to filter content to just what each user wants to see, as well as interactions amongst their friends on the platform.

Because of this, it's important to ask your audience not only to like your page, but to follow it too, so they see more of your content and can engage with it.

Interactive Post Ideas for Instagram

Using Instagram to boost your brand? Here are 4 tips to help get more engagement.

a) Use Hashtags to Their Full Potential

The Instagram algorithm uses hashtags to help show users relevant content on their feeds.

And because of this, each post can contain up to 30 different hashtags to help slot it into the relevant categories.

While you don't need to use every one of those 30 hashtag slots, it's a good idea to use a decent few of them. At least 10-20, though if you can find 30 relevant hashtags- Feel free to use them.

Instead of manually entering your hashtags after every post, save a list of the 30 best hashtags for your niche, and add it to the end of each post you publish.

You can find ideal hashtags by searching through competitor posts and your own feed, once you have a list built up, you'll only have to update it every so often to keep it fresh.

👉Pro Tip: Add 5 periods, each on a single line to the end of your post before entering the hashtags. This helps keep your post uncluttered by storing the hashtags within the "show more" section of the description.

b) Proactively Follow People in Your Niche

Instagram prioritizes showing posts to users who follow you.

One of the best ways for brand new pages to earn their first followers is by proactively following people who are interested in their niche.

One great way to do this is by finding a competitor page, filtering the followers, and following a set number of those users.

Doing this consistently can net you great results, since plenty of Instagram users are keen to follow pages back. Once your page has grown to a decent size, this tactic might start to become an inefficient use of your time though.

Be careful on how many users you follow each day, keep it to 100 or under; any more than that and Instagram may flag your account as spam.

c) Only Use High-Quality Images

In an age where brands and pages are using top-notch images in every post, low-quality or grainy images won't fly- Especially on a platform like Instagram.

Make sure to only publish pictures and posts that make use of high-definition images. They don't have to be 4K, but they should be crisp, clean, and clear.

d) Give Your Posts an Early Boost to Create "Snowball Posts"

If Instagram's algorithm notices a post that gains traction quickly after it's published, it's likely to show that content to even more users than usual.

The best way to take advantage of that is by using "snowball" tactics to give your posts a huge surge in engagement.

By this, we mean to give your own posts an early boost in engagement.

Use your team's personal Instagram accounts to like and comment as soon as each post goes live.

This initial engagement will help your post "snowball" and grow quickly, using that initial engagement to gather even more impressions, and so on.

Tips for Creating TikTok Interactive Content

TikTok is one of the most popular platforms out there, and it's only getting more popular. Here's how you can hop on the trend and create engaging content on it.

1) A Consistent Post Schedule is Essential for TikTok Growth

TikTok's algorithm values consistent posts as a huge factor. If your page is putting out high-quality videos on a regular basis, those videos are more likely to get shown to more of your followers.

If possible, stick to a daily schedule of posts to keep your momentum on the platform.

It helps to create batches of videos and content at a time, that way you can continue to post from your backlog instead of creating fresh content each day.

2) Use Strategic Stitches & Duets for Huge Engagement Boosts

Stitches and Duets allow you to "attach" your posts to already-existing posts.

Used correctly, these can be some of the best tools out there for page growth and engagement.

Find high-engagement, relevant posts on TikTok, and create Stitch or Duet content to share in the post's success.

Twitter Tips for High Engagement Interaction Posts

Twitter has sat at the top of the social media throne for quite some time now. Here's how your brand can get the most value from it.

a) Post During High-Traffic Timeslots

One important piece of the engagement puzzle is just when you're posting.

A study by Sproutsocial has shown that the best time to post on Twitter is around 9am.

b) Hop into High-Engagement Conversations

Just like Stitches and Duets help pages hop onto successful posts on TikTok, replies can help you share the success on Twitter.

One of the best ways to get quick boosts to your page on Twitter is to find high-engagement threads and hop into the conversation. (as long as your brand is relevant)

That's just what Uber did here to rake in some of the engagement from this thread:

c) Keep Posts Short & Sweet

Twitter isn't a platform for length or wordy posts. For the most part, keep content short-form and snappy.

If you want to share a longer resource or content piece, it's best to link out to an external page rather than posting it right to your Twitter feed. And when you link out, you can link out to interactive PDFs, they have the realistic page flip feeling, plus you can track your users' behavior!

The Wrap Up: Increasing Engagement with Interactive Posts

Interactive posts are excellent ways to drive brand engagement and boost your page on social media. Some key factors for successful interaction posts are the same for any post:

• Include clear, simple CTAs in your captions
• Use high-definition images
• Keep to consistent post schedules
• Reuse content across channels

But that's not all. Taking advantage of already-successful threads and posts can help to boost your page early on in its life.

Remember, social media marketing isn't luck- It's a numbers game. Stay consistent and keep to the best practices, and you'll see stable growth over time.

If you found this guide helpful, feel free to read more of the content from our blog.