What Is Engagement In Social Networks?

The environment of Social Networks is gaining prominence in the current era. Due to the confinement situation, users consult the Social Networks of many businesses to communicate with them, so improving Engagement on Social Networks can be a competitive advantage.

In this post, we explain what Social Media Engagement is, how it is measured and how you can increase it.

What is Engagement in Social Networks?

Engagement is synonymous with commitment, but what does this mean when talking about Social Media? We could say that Engagement in Social Networks is a measure of loyalty of our audience that shows that this is a loyal follower and is committed to the brand. 

In other words, a true virtual community has been created. A significant part of the followers interacts with the brand regularly, thus contributing to disseminating its messages.

How to measure Engagement in Social Networks?

To obtain an Engagement metric, we have to consider the users’ interactions with the publications: likes, shares, likes, etc. As not all social networks have the same type of interactions, we must apply a different formula for each network we want to analyze. 

We must also consider that it will be a reference index to see the evolution of the strategy or to make comparisons with the competition because the truth is that the genuine commitment of people to the brand is difficult to quantify. Also, there is no single consensus on the best formula to measure engagement. There are several variations of the formula, but we will stick with the simplest ones.

How to measure engagement on Facebook

On Facebook, interactions can occur reactions (‘Like,’ ‘I love,’ ‘I’m angry’…), share posts, comments, and a user clicks. 

A formula to measure Engagement on Facebook would be the following: ( Number of reactions + number of shares + number of comments + number of clicks) / Total reach x 100

This formula can be applied to a single publication. To estimate the engagement in a given period, we could add the interactions of all the publications, divide this figure by the number of publications, and divide the result by the total reach. Multiplying the result by 100, we would measure engagement for a considerable period.

It should also be noted that other schools change the denominator ‘total reach’ to ‘a number of followers.’ In any case, the important thing is to choose a single formula and consistently apply the same one.

How to measure Engagement on Twitter

We must consider interactions on Twitter are mentions, retweets, and likes. In this way, the formula would be: (Number of mentions + several retweets + several likes) / Total reach x 100. 

As in the previous case, if we want to calculate the engagement of several tweets, we must first divide the sum of the interactions by the number of tweets. We will then divide this figure by the range and multiply it by 100.

How to measure Engagement on Instagram

To measure Engagement on Instagram, we must consider the number of ‘likes’ and the number of comments. As in the previous formulas, we will divide it by the Total Range and multiply it by 100.

We can also calculate the Engagement in Instagram stories. We will have to add the number of reactions to the stories and divide them by the total number of views. Then we will multiply it by 100.

Tips to Increase Engagement on Social Networks

• More emotional and less informative content. The contents that humanize the brand use humor or emotions tend to achieve more engagement.
• Don’t just try to sell. Remember that you are looking to create a community. It humanizes the brand by sharing the daily life of the people who make it up. For example, although many companies have now paralyzed their activity due to the health crisis caused by the coronavirus, they can take advantage of the break to continue creating Engagement on Social Networks: share the decisions made, answer questions from followers, offer them some content. Of entertainment and, in short, maintaining contact with the community is a way to ensure that, when the business is reactivated, they have not forgotten about the brand.
• Share visual content. Posts with attractive visual content favor engagement. Videos work very well in this regard.
• Know your followers well. Only then will you be able to connect with them.
• Interact with them. If you reply to their comments, people will perceive a friendly brand and be encouraged to interact more, thus increasing the reach of the messages.
• Go where no one calls you. If you see someone talking about the brand (without mentioning it directly), you can step in to make yourself seen and build trust. Of course, this practice is effective but very dangerous. Only a Community Manager with enough experience knows which conversations to get into (and which ones not) and how to use humor to make it a natural intervention but not invasive.
• Avoid repetitive messages. If people think you’re a bot, you can discourage their interactions.
• Post at the right time. Post when your followers are most connected to impact more people.
• Find your style. Make your posts stand out from the rest of the brands.
• Use hashtags. On Twitter and Instagram, hashtags get a greater reach. You can also use your hashtags: although they don’t increase reach, they give the brand personality.