5 signs people are engaging with your competitions on social media
Likes, comments and shares are usually what springs to mind when talking about social media engagement. But these are high-level engagement actions. That means they don’t give you a complete picture for the effectiveness of your social media. For a better understanding of how social media supports your prize competition business, as well as which areas of your social media strategy you need to improve, you need to be aware of the metrics that show an engaged audience.
Here are 5 signs people are engaging with your competitions on social media…
Reach.
Reach is the total number of unique accounts who see your content. It applies to individual posts, as well as a page / profile and larger campaigns.
Increasing reach is important for brand awareness. You’ll want to focus on this metric for campaigns where you are marketing to a new audience, or for campaigns you feel aren’t reaching enough people in your target market.
Keep in mind that this metric is associated with cold leads. That means you’ll be dealing with people who either aren’t aware of or have very little knowledge of your brand. Trust and a good relationship is important for competition and raffled businesses. It’s likely that you’ll need to build trust through more interactions before they start entering your competitions.
For paid campaigns, increasing reach involves increasing the budget and broadening your targeting. For organic posts, increasing reach can be more challenging, but still possible. You’ll need to dedicate more time and thought into content creation, creating the kind of content your audience will want to interact with and share with their friends.
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Impressions.
An impression is every time a post appears in a user’s feed, no matter if it was clicked or not.
Want more impressions? This metric is more difficult to improve because you have little control over the factors which affect it. Generally, the things you do for increasing reach can also increase impressions.
Shares.
A share happens every time a user intentionally shares one of your posts with their audience. On Twitter, this action is called a Retweet.
To improve this metric, it’s important to create shareable content which supports your business objectives. There’s little point in building up a following and engagement on your social media accounts if it’s not profitable for your business. According to a study by Buzzsumo, a social media metric site, posts which attract a high number of shares have at least one of these characteristics:
- Long form content rather than short form
- Including at least one image
- Funny or amusing content
- Lists or infographics
- Content which looks trustworthy
- Shared by at least one influencer.
Likes / Reactions.
A simple, one-click engagement action, often signalling approval or interest.
Be aware that this action asks for very little effort from users. It’s an easy way to get engagement from your audience, but it won’t necessarily lead to people entering your competitions or even following your page. That’s why many competition businesses who choose to run giveaways on social media pair this action with a more valuable action, like tagging a friend and becoming a follower.
To improve this metric, you need to have a look at the content you and your competitors are attracting the most likes and reactions.
Comments / Replies.
A response to one of your posts, usually appearing under or with it. Some social networking sites allow users to respond with an image or video.
Posts which express an opinion, engage emotions and get people thinking are more likely to attract comments from your followers. Advice from AgoraPulse, a social media marketing tool, shares clever tactics to attract more comments on posts, including:
- Posting during peak times
- Replying to comments
- “This or That” styled questions
- Running a giveaway
- Pinning a post
