Has your social media engagement gone a little stale lately?

I have heard social media consultants say that’s normal and not to worry because organic social media is dead anyway. To be honest, that’s a little shocking, and it sounds more like a good excuse for sloppy work.

If you think that you need to buy all of your reach and engagement, the chances are good that you won’t do the work to earn any true engagement. And money can’t make up for that kind of laziness. Money will only show it to a larger audience.

So if you’re ready to make a change and connect with your audience more, let’s look at some simple ways to increase your engagement.

Look at past analytics

Probably your easiest step is to look at your analytics to see what has been successful in the past. Take notes as to why those particular posts had been successful and then try them again, maybe with a change or two.

Keeping your most successful posts in regular rotation is a great way to quickly boost your engagement. You know those posts work, so they are easy to rely on. A great time to pull one of these out is after a post unexpectedly bombs. That can help you course correct quickly and get the algorithm working with you instead of against you. But if your company isn’t nimble enough to work that quickly, just having them appear every so often is more than enough.

Keep an eye on these posts, however. Audience tastes change and you need to be responsive to that. A post that did amazing last year may actually bomb this year. So be sure to cycle out engagement posts that no longer serve you or your audience anymore, while constantly looking for those solid, dependable engagement posts.

Gather what people are searching

I know I constantly talk about Answer the Public, but there is a reason. It gives you a good list of everything people are asking search engines. So you automatically have an idea of what should be on your website and social media accounts.

Do you know what happens when you consistently post answers to questions people are asking? They engage with you. And they start thinking of you as a trusted source, so they come back to you the next time they have a question.

Should you throw these kinds of posts at fans right away? Absolutely not. These are the kinds of posts you sprinkle in from time to time.You don’t want to overwhelm fans with constantly posting information rich posts. That will be enough to get them tired and moving onto something fun. But posting information rich content from time to time will keep them engaged.

Ask questions

You can take this one of two ways. The first is to ask get-to-know-you type questions in order to get your fans talking, both to you and to each other. If your question really hits home with the community, it will inspire conversations within the comments that may help guide content later on.

The other way of doing this is to get questions from community members. Then let the community answer it from their perspective. This is something I never do enough of but it really can be amazing for a community. Offering real help to each other can bond them further. And more importantly, it can cause positive real life change.

I personally like to dot these questions in once a week on a Sunday night. Not many brands post on Sunday night which will always be crazy to me. Fans tend to want to talk more as they say goodbye to their weekend and transition their mindset into the new working week. They don’t want information rich posts. They just want to talk. So my clients tend to give them that opportunity, and it almost always works out well for us. And it sets us up for a great week of content.

Just post

Buffer just recently posted a study that said there is no better tactic for engagement than consistently posting. Yes, simply posting regularly is the best thing you can do. But there are caveats…

There is such a thing as too much posting. I personally feel like the max you can do is three posts on Facebook per day, once per day on Instagram, one to two on TikTok and much more on Threads and X. If you post anymore than that, then each post will not be given the chance to live and get its full level of engagement. And if your two posts show up on the timeline at the same time, fans are much less likely to engage with either post.

And this doesn’t mean you should just push information at your fans. You should still be posting content that gets them to talk to you and that they are interested in. It shouldn’t be all about you all the time or else they will go elsewhere where it is about them. Creating a nice balance will get you so much further, especially if you choose to do an aggressive social media cadence.

The bottom line is that this all takes a lot of work. And you’ll never know for sure without putting posts out to your community. Eventually, you will figure it out and get to know wonderful things about your community that will take you even further.

How are you getting your fans to engage with you?