Today, I'm going to be talking about why engagement is more important than followers. So many times clients come to me and say my follower count is low, it doesn't look like anything is making an uptick here. What can we do to make that happen to make a change? What can we do to change that? It has taken quite some time for people to understand that it's not the follower count that matters.
What metric matters?
Social media engagement is more about quality over quantity. I want to talk to you about social media engagement because that is the real metric that you should be looking at. Your follower count is just a number of people who have clicked a like button or a follow button. It's not showing you the percentage of those followers that are actually engaging with your content.
The thing about follower count is that it is really upfront and in your face on almost every social platform that we use today. The engagement rate is usually tucked behind the analytics. If your client is trusting you to take care of all the backend stuff, they're not going to be able to see how many impressions a post gets or the engagement rate of how people are reacting and participating.
What makes engagement more important?
I want to go over five different points about why engagement is more important than followers.
I want to reiterate that follower count doesn't show all the people who are engaging with your content. That's number one.
Number two, engagement provides more information about the performance of your content. When you post a video, the analytics section can tally how many video views you receive from your audience. You could have 100 followers following your page but the only way that number matters is if you have a high percentage of those followers engaging with your content. How many of your followers are actually watching that video? How many of your followers are clicking on the link associated with the video? If your follower count is 100, and the engagement rate is 1%, that means that you need to change the way you look at how you are delivering your content and how it can be engaged with by your audience.
My third point focuses on making touch points with the people that do engage with your content. Say, for instance, someone comes to one of your posts and they leave a comment. You can like the comment, give it a heart, or you can engage with the content by responding to the comment and continuing the conversation. That's how you can create a longer lasting relationship. You don't have to chase non-engaged followers. There are ways that you can promote your brand and your message so that you can get people to engage with your content. You know how to structure your content appropriately, you know that there needs to be a visual to go along with it, you know that there needs to be a call to action. If you know that you need to start a post off with something eye-catching and engaging, then you will find the audience that you're looking for.
My fourth point is that engagement shows who's connecting with your brand, and how often. Your follower count shows who's connecting with your brand in the moment. Your engagement rate shows who is consistently connecting with your content; who is showing more interest in your content than others; who is finding value in your content. And it's also showing you what kind of content is resonating well with your audience.
My last point is that engagement goes both ways. One other aspect of marketing that I think of is influencer marketing, and you notice that it's someone that has a good following on their end. That is an opportunity for you to create a collaboration, a partnership, a bond with this so that you can come up with a way to reach their audience as well.
Final Thoughts
Engaging with viewers can not only increase your engagement rate, but it can also increase your followers. If you want that follower count to go higher, then you need to figure out how to structure your content and how to deliver your content for it to be engaged with by your audience.
If you're interested in learning more, you can visit boonelogic.com.
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