How to create Social media engagement posts in 2022
Social media engagement posts can be difficult to create. So how can you get that engagement on your social media posts? In this article you will learn everything you need to know to succeed with your social media engagement posts. And boost both your following and your sales.
What should a social media engagement post say?
Social media engagement posts should include a connection to the target customer’s self-concept, needs or perceived risk. There are many ways to create engagement on social media.
But to understand how to create social media engagement posts…
You first need to understand the marketing psychology behind engagement.
This article will teach you to create social media engagement posts outlined in the following steps:
What is engagement?
Usually, in social media, engagement refers to how much the audience interacts with a piece of content. That means how many likes, shares, comments, saves or clicks a post gets. But engagement goes deeper than that. And it is important to understand what goes on in the audience mind, behind every like, share or click.
To do that you need to understand what engagement is in consumer behavior terms. Engagement is defined as the perceived relevance of an object based on a person’s needs, values and interests. Or in simpler terms – how much something means for someone.
In marketing this means how important or relevant your product or communication is to a potential customer. If you want engagement on your social media posts, they need to be relevant and important to your audience.
How is engagement created?
You need to create social media engagement posts with the causes of engagement in mind. We now know that engagement is based on a consumer’s needs, values and interests. But this is not all that influences engagement. There are three main sources of engagement:
- Connection to self
- Connection to needs
- Perceived risk
Connection to self
One of the sources of engagement is the connection the object has to the customer’s self-concept. As human beings we are in general very engaged in ourselves. There is nothing as important to us as our selves. This means that if the audience connects your social media post to themselves, they will inherently become more engaged.
Then how do you connect your communication to your audience? First of all, you need to know who your audience is. What interests & values do they have? If you do not know who your audience is, you need to perform a target market analysis. In this article about target market analysis for small businesses, you will find everything you need to get to know your customer.
Connection to needs
The second source that will help you create social media engagement posts is a connection to the audiences’ needs. If a person has a strong need for a product or service they will be more engaged. This differs from the connection to self. Because needs are temporary states that a consumer experiences.
A need is discovered when a consumer either wants to escape a current state or when they want to get to a desired state. The first state means that a consumer has discovered a problem they need to solve. The latter means the consumer discovers a new desire and aspires to transition to this desired state. These two needs make up the reasons to why a consumer later would buy a product.
How strong a consumer’s need is, connects to how relevant they find communication that can fulfill that need. If you want to engage your audience, you have to understand what their needs are. And what type of information they are looking for during their buying process. To get a better understanding of your audience’s needs read this article about the consumer decision making process.
Perceived risk
How risky a consumer considers a purchase will affect how engaged they are in the purchase. If the consumer considers a purchase high risk. They will spend more time and effort researching that purchase before they make a decision. Most of the time risk is only connected to financial risk but there are plenty of other types of risk.
The types of risks that influences engagement are:
- Performance risk; is about how the product or service will perform. Will the offering perform according to the consumer’s need?
- Financial risk; how much a purchase can influence the consumer’s financial situation. It also involves value for money, if the consumer gets their money’s worth from the product.
- Physical risk; regards the safety concerns a consumer has over a purchase.
- Social risk; the risk associated with what other people will think of a purchase.
- Psychological risk; regards how a purchase affects how the consumer views themselves. How does the purchase fit with the consumer’s self-image and values?
- Time risk; refers to the amount of time a consumer must invest in a purchase. For example a subscription to a service that entails a certain period of commitment.
All risk can impact a consumer’s engagement level in a purchase. If a purchase has high risk then the consumer will be more involved and engaged in the purchase. Different people have different perception of risk depending on their personality, financial situation etc. That is why it is important that you understand who your target audience is.
Effects of engagement
Why do you want engagement on your social media posts? What does all those likes, comments and clicks mean?
You need to understand the full concept of engagement and what the effects of your audience’s engagement is. Before we get into how to increase the engagement on your social media posts. Let’s take a look at what engagement is good for.
An engaged consumer seeks more information
When a consumer is engaged they search for more information about the object they are engaged in. If a consumer seeks more information about a product or service, they are more likely to come across your offer.
An engaged consumer compares more alternatives
When a consumer is engaged they spend time and effort looking into different alternatives of a product that can help fulfill their need. They are going to compare the alternative products extensively. Before they choose the alternative they are going to buy. Which is good news for you. That means they are going to spend more time researching your offer. And you have more time to convince them that they should buy your product.
An engaged consumer recognizes the difference between alternatives
If a consumer is not engaged in a purchase, they will not research or understand the differences between to similar products. They will most likely go with the product that is most convenient to them. And without luck that will not be yours. An engaged consumer cares about the feature, element and value differences between your product and other similar products. Again, a change for you to convince the consumer your offer is the best.
An engaged consumer has preferences for alternatives
When a consumer is engaged they understand the differences between alternative offers. And they will develop a preference for a specific offer; product, service or brand. If you manage to engage your audience through social media. They will be more inclined to prefer your offer over other similar offers.
How does this apply to social media engagement posts?
The core purpose of receiving more engagement on your social media posts is not to get a specific number of likes, shares or comments. And if it is, you are doing it wrong. You can have different goals with the use of social media in your business. Such as brand building, awareness or conversions. But ultimately you are looking to sell a product or service.
Social media gives you the opportunity to create an engaged audience. And that engaged audience will be more likely to later buy your product or service. When the consumer is seeking more information of how to fulfill a need that they have. Social media can be the place where you provide that information. And convince them about the benefits of your products. When they are interested to learn more you will provide that information. The consumer will be more likely to consume it willingly and engage with your post. And later on with your offer.
Implications for your business
We have already covered some of the implications social media engagement has for your business. But how you should engage your audience depends on what type of product or service you sell. And how interested and engaged your consumer is in that area.
For example, if you sell milk your customers are most likely not very engaged in their purchase. It is a product with low risk in all aspects. It costs next to nothing, takes no time buying it and no one cares what milk you get. That means you have a low engagement customer base.
Strategies you can use when your customer has low engagement
- Show your brand clearly on your products and in all communications
- Accentuate visual aspects. The consumer is going to buy what draws their eye first.
- Focus on few features. The consumer is not looking for information and don’t want to spend time reading about all the features.
- High repetition in communication. Expose the consumer to your offer with the same message as often as possible.
If your target audience have high engagement there are other strategies you should use to make them engage with your offer. High engagement customers mean that they think your offer is important, relevant and that their choice matter.
Strategies when your customers have high engagement
- Provide the customers with much information
- Make comparisons between different alternatives easier
- Highlight the benefits of your offer to make the difference clearer to the customer.
What if your product is low engagement but you want your audience to become more engaged? Engagement is not a static condition and can be changed. We will dive deeper into how to change the engagement level of your audience in the next section.
How to create social media engagement posts
To create social media engagement posts you need to understand what changes a consumer’s level of engagement. In the following section you will learn strategies to use to create engagement through social media posts.
The customer’s self-concept
As we have discussed previously, people are interested in themselves. And a connection to the customer’s self-concept will make them more engaged. To create engagement on social media create posts where the customer feels like the post is directed to them.
This includes connecting your post to the target audience’s interests. Making them feel like you understand them. It could mean asking open ended questions for the audience to answer. It can be something funny that the audience relates to. Or asking the audience to tag a friend who can relate to the post.
The customer’s need
A customer’s need, like mentioned above, drives engagement. But how can you connect the customer’s need to your social media posts? First of all, you have to know what need your offer is meant to fulfill. In your social media posts you can then show how your offer can satisfy that need. If the need is a problem your customer wants to solve, create a post that emphasizes the problem and how you can solve it. How-to videos and tutorials are great for this purpose. If the need is a desire to transfer to a new state – create a story on how you will help the customer get to that stage.
Gopro does this really well. It uses footage of adventures filmed with a Gopro camera to show the amazing things you can experience with a Gopro. They know their target audience is adventurers, always longing for the next adventure. Showing all the fantastic experiences you can get with a Gopro makes the audience travel to that stage and evokes the need for adventure.
The customer’s risk
We also know that the higher the customer’s perceived risk, the higher the engagement. Even if the risk associated with your product is not that high, you can highlight the potential risks of not getting your product. You can describe the problem or risk in a simple way that connects with your audience. Such as Old Spice highlighting the risk of being smelly in public. Or that you will get hangry if you don’t eat a Snickers.
Engaging issue
Your offer might not always be engaging in and of itself. But you can always create a bigger story around your product. Find a topic that your audience feels connected with, like a social or environmental cause. Connect this to your offer and create social media posts about it to create engagement.
Dove does this really well by connecting to body positivity. Their products like body lotion and deodorants are low engagement in general. But by connecting to a larger, engaging issue like low self-esteem amongst girls and women, they create engagement.
Engaging situation
Connecting your post to an engaging situation relates to the previous tactic. But an engaging situation can be anything that your target audience has an interest in. It means connecting your product to an engaging situation it can be used in.
For example, many clothing brands connects their clothes to the season and the highlights of that season. During summer they may display the clothes in a vacation setting. Connecting their offer to a situation the target audience is longing for.
The Fashion Bible UK, whose target audience is young women, does this through engaging situational quotes on their Instagram page.
Incongruence
Incongruence – or contradictions – can create temporary engagement. When a consumer sees something that makes them confused it makes them pause for a moment and think. Making them more engaged. These types of posts are more difficult to create but can get a ton of engagement if successful. An example is the dress that circled around social media a few years ago. Some people saw the dress as white and gold, while some saw it as black and blue. This incongruence created a debate on the internet that lasted for months.
The below Tweet from Alex Hormozi does this well by creating controversy in one sentence:
22 sentences that will teach you more about life than any college degree:
— Alex Hormozi (@AlexHormozi) June 2, 2022
Co-creation
Co-creating activities with your audience will help you get more engagement. One way to do this on social media posts is to use user generated content. Co-create posts with your most dedicated fans. Or share posts from your customers when they are using your product.
Glossier does this well by posting videos of their customer’s using their products.
To sum up what you need to create social media engagement posts you first need to understand how engagement is created. Then you need to understand the effects of engagement. And then you can create social media engagement posts through the following seven tactics:
- The customer’s self-concept
- The customer’s need
- The customer’s perceived risk
- Engaging issues
- Engaging situations
- Incongruence
- Co-creation
I hope you enjoyed this article and learned how to better create engagement in your social media posts. If you liked it, please share the article with a friend you think would benefit from the tips!
I'm Emma Ellinor
I’m a digital marketer, project manager and retail analyst.
For the past 7 years I have immersed myself into the field of marketing and management. I am on a mission to inspire more women to take their business to the next level. By sharing my journey to escape the 9-5 trap along with useful marketing, time management and small business tips.
