Social Media Engagement 101: The Power of Likes and Comments

There’s nothing more embarrassing than posting what you think is a bomb photo online only to hear crickets afterward. No likes, comments, or shares from your target audience—yikes!

Feel like no one’s giving your social media posts any love, no matter how aesthetically appealing they are? It’s time to be more proactive about engaging your audience and giving them a reason to interact with your brand. Here’s everything you need to know about social media engagement, especially what it means to drive engagement on Instagram.

What Is Social Media Engagement?

Not sure what online engagement is? Here’s a quick social media engagement definition for you before we get to the nitty-gritty of how to drive it.

Engagement refers to how online followers interact with your content on social media sites. That means doing something beyond looking at your posts or scrolling through your feed. It entails actively connecting with or conversing with you through specific actions. These include likes, comments, saves, shares, and many more, depending on the social media network’s features.

It’s one thing for someone to simply look at your content. But it’s entirely different for them to engage in social media posts you publish. When people like and comment on your posts, they actively involve themselves in your social media presence. That means they’re interested in your brand and feel a connection with the impactful content you produce.

Driving engagement is important for brands because it helps foster a strong relationship with their followers. It allows for meaningful conversation, sharing interesting content, and expressing thoughts about a brand they admire. This creates a rapport between the brand and its fans, boosting loyalty over time.

So, what is social media engagement? In a nutshell, it’s the interactions you drive among your fans. It’s what builds your relationship with your fanbase, allowing them to feel closer to your brand on a personal level. That’s why it’s incredibly important to include engagement posts in your overall social media strategy.

How Do You Measure Online Engagement?

The industry measures a post’s engagement score by computing its engagement rate. This metric measures the percentage of how high your engagement is in relation to your number of followers. It’s the standard for assessing engagement because it measures against your follower count, not the absolute number of interactions.

Calculating engagement rates makes comparing two brands’ engagement fairer since everyone has a different fanbase size. Think about it. Someone with 500k followers will likely always have more likes on content than someone with just 10k followers. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re engaging a bigger chunk of their audience than the smaller creator.

To compute a post’s engagement rate, simply add up all the interactions on the posts (likes, comments, and shares). Divide this number by that brand’s total followers and then multiply by 100 to get the final rate.

Say you have 50,000 followers, and a post you published garnered 4,000 likes and 200 comments. Following the formula, that post’s engagement rate is 8.4%, which is quite high! 

Different Types of Engagement on Social Media

People react to content they love in different ways. That means there are many forms of interaction that contribute to the overall engagement scores of your social media efforts. Here are just some that you should strive to drive whenever you post something new on your social media platforms.

Likes and Hearts

People tap the heart icon on posts to “like” them to show appreciation for the content. It’s the quickest way to engage with a post because it only takes a second to tap and like something.

Likes indicate that people are connecting with your content. When people like posts, it means they enjoy what they see. However, likes don’t really create deep, emotional engagement or conversation with the fans.

Comment Engagement

Next up, we have comments—aka little thoughts, feedback, or questions your target audience leaves on your posts. Comment engagement is deeper than likes because it allows for meaningful conversation with your followers.

It suggests a stronger interest in your content. People go out of their way to think of a comment to write and publish on your post. That’s way more effort than merely clicking the heart icon to like a post. It also means they want to communicate with your brand on a personal level and share their thoughts with you.

Shares and Reposts

People share posts on Stories if they love them so much that they want their followers to see them, too. If someone shares your post on their own page, it means it resonated with them immensely. It’s a terrific gauge of how relatable and relevant your content is.

What’s awesome about these interactions is that they don’t just drive engagement. They also expand that post’s reach since they reposted it in another avenue. And that opens the doors for even more engagement!

Saves and Bookmarks

Lastly, we have saves, also known as bookmarks. When someone saves your post, it means they want to revisit it in the future. That means they see long-term value in it and want to use it for reference later. People typically save posts like tutorials, creative inspiration, quotes, workout videos, and more. The more Saves your content has, the more useful it is to your target market.

How To Increase Social Media Engagement: What’s the Secret?

Wondering how to increase social media engagement effectively? The secret is two-fold. First, you have to create high-quality, impactful content. Then, you need to add elements that encourage active interaction from your target audience.

Let’s discuss the first step—creating awesome content. To captivate and engage audiences, come up with posts that are striking, appealing, and relevant to your followers’ lives. Think of content pillars useful to your niche audience, like recipes for moms or workout videos for gym aficionados.

Then, take those posts one step further by encouraging interaction. Add a question at the end of your post captions or a CTA to like your post. These are surefire ways to compel users to engage with your content, especially if they find it relevant to them.

Social Media Engagement Tips To Get More Likes, Comments, and Shares

Want to drive more likes, comments, saves, and shares on your Instagram post? Here are some tips and audience engagement strategies to incorporate into your content to see results faster:

• Ask your fans meaningful questions. You can do it on your feed post’s caption or through poll and quiz stickers on Instagram Stories.
• Use hashtags relevant to your niche to reach more audiences and drive more likes and comments.
• Post carousels instead of single-image posts. According to Hootsuite, carousels get much higher engagement rates than photos and increase by 16% in engagement year on year.
• Repost user-generated content that showcases your brand. This compels the original poster to engage with your content. It also drives interactions from other fans because UGC is considered more genuine than content posted by brands.

Follow these social media engagement tips, and you’ll be well on your way to building strong relationships with your followers!

Frequently Asked Questions

Drive Engagement With Our Tips Above and Catapult Yourself to Insta-Fame!

Engaging your target audience online is a surefire way to build a community and drive loyalty to your personal brand. Your creative strategy, social media networks you use, and the content you share all contribute to your brand’s engagement scores.

But we’ll give it to you straight—driving engagement online isn’t always a walk in the park. Sometimes, you need a little help to promote your content to push potential fans to engage with you online.

That’s something the Path Social team can help with. We use tried-and-tested targeting algorithms and promotional strategies to ensure your niche audience sees your Instagram content. With that boost of visibility, you get more followers and even more social media engagement for your posts!

We’ve worked for brands like Hailey’s Clothing, which gained 20,000 followers and averages 1,500 likes per post after our help. And we can confidently drive the same results for your brand, too! Grow your Instagram community and drive those well-deserved likes and comments fast with Path Social.