10 Actionable Tips to Boost Social Media Engagement

With 5.2 billion people using social media globally, the opportunities to connect with your audience are immense. But here's the catch: success isn't just about being seen but being remembered.

As Mari Smith, a Facebook marketing expert, puts it, “Content is KING, but engagement is QUEEN and she rules the house.” Imagine your brand's voice resonating with millions, sparking vibrant conversations, and amplifying your online presence. Well, that's the power of meaningful social media engagement.

To truly boost your social media engagement, you require strategies that transform passive viewers into active participants – users who click, comment, share, and ultimately convert. In this article, we share 10 such proven tactics. Read on.

What is social media engagement?

Social media engagement is a factor that measures how your audience interacts with your social content via likes, comments, shares, clicks or any other measurable action. These engagement metrics help brands and marketers understand the impact and efficacy of their content and social media strategy.

Beyond metrics, social media engagement is also about creating a two-way interaction where brands not only speak but also listen and respond to their audience. Such genuine engagement fosters deeper, more meaningful relationships, trust and loyalty.

3 reasons why your social media engagement is low

Scoring those coveted likes, comments and shares on crowded social platforms is no cakewalk, we understand. If you’re also battling with low engagement, here are three of the most common reasons.

1. Wrong platform selection

Often, low social media engagement is a resultant of wrong platform selection. Spray-and-pray approach on social media never works, especially when each platform serves different audiences and different content formats.

Being everywhere with the motive to reach a broader audience will do more harm than good. You’ll not only reach the wrong audiences but end up wasting resources, which could have very easily been utilized more effectively elsewhere. Hence, missing out on potential engagement opportunities.

Bonus: 5 Types of Social Media to Know in 2025

2. Posting at the wrong times

Posting time on social media has a huge impact on engagement. The best time to post on social media largely depends on factors like audience, industry, and platform.

For instance, posting an article on LinkedIn on a Saturday afternoon, when professionals are likely enjoying their time off-screen, might not get you much traction.

Similarly, posting on Instagram during weekday mornings or afternoons may not give the desired results, as most users are busy with work or studies.

3. Only talking, not listening

When you don't actively listen to your audience, you miss valuable opportunities to deepen engagement and relationships. One-way communication makes brands appear unapproachable and inauthentic. Moreover, there’s tons of constructive feedback and comments that go unnoticed and unaddressed if you live in an echo chamber.

10 Tips to increase social media engagement

Having a robust social media engagement plan can really help your brand in many ways. It makes your brand more visible and helps you form a real bond with your audience.

But it's not as easy as it sounds. You've got to create content that cuts through the noise and speaks to the right people.

1. Measure your engagement

Measuring your social media engagement is the first step toward improving it. Engagement metrics give insights into how your engagement stacks against competitive positioning and performance benchmarks. This is a reality check that sets the stage for the next steps.

To interpret engagement metrics meaningfully:

• Monitor trends in your engagement. Track drops and peaks in engagement metrics over time. Assess the causes like shifting audience behavior and social algorithms.
• Identify high-performing content. Analyze what is driving more engagement – is it the topic, the timing, the tone, or the visual element? If certain content is performing better, scale similar content.
• Utilize native social media analytics like Twitter Analytics, Instagram Insights, and Facebook Insights to view your engagement metrics.

🎁Get all your platform metrics on one window

Sprinklr Marketing Analytics aggregates metrics from 30+ platforms on one window. Assess your engagement at a glance. No tab switching required.

• View data from paid social and organic campaigns from all your channels.

• Optimize your ads and campaigns with AI-powered boost features.

• Monitor campaign sentiment in real-time and flag brand risks and potential issues beforehand with risk management.

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2. Build an engagement strategy

Engagement strategy involves understanding audience needs, delivering valuable content, and creating experiences that resonate with individuals. Hence, allowing you to foster meaningful connections with your audience.

• Ask questions: You can do it through casual polls, quizzes, or prompting followers to share opinions. A simple question like “What do you think” can invite responses and spark discussion.
• Encourage expression: Utilize your social media platform to encourage followers to create content related to your brand such as using hashtags, participating in media upload contests, or sharing reviews. This can help foster community and boost engagement.
• Offer incentives: People love prizes and wins. Especially on social media, you can increase your followers' participation by organizing contests and offering enticing prizes or rewards. Additionally, gamifying your content with challenges or scorekeeping makes it more interactive and fun.
• Provide value: Since people appreciate content that provides value, offering useful content like guides, tools, and webinars can both educate and engage your audience. It encourages them to come back and interact with your brand.

3. Pick the right platform

Each platform caters to different demographics, content formats, and engagement dynamics. That makes it essential to align your strategy with the unique strengths of each platform.

Selecting the right platform for your brand's engagement strategy helps optimize your marketing efforts that effectively connect with your target audience.

So here are a few steps to guide you choose the right platform:

• Outline your goals: Clarify what type of engagement you want to prioritize

👀Awareness-driven engagement to improve brand visibility (likes, shares, and reach).

🤼Interactive engagement in polls and challenges (comments, replies, or participation).

⬇️Conversion-driven engagement through social interactions (clicks, downloads, or purchases).

• Ensure content requirement aligns with platform strengths

For instance, if your goal is interactive engagement, you can create polls or surveys on Instagram Stories or LinkedIn.

• Match content style to audience preferences

For instance,

TikTok thrives on humor, creativity, and trends.

Instagram rewards visually appealing and aspirational content.

LinkedIn patronizes thought-provoking and value-driven content.

Eliminate guesswork from platform selection right away!

Sprinklr Social enables brands to make informed decisions about platform selection by:

• Aligning platforms to social media goals for your business.

• Offering AI-powered recommendations to analyze platform trends and audience preferences.

• Streamlining content with platform strengths.

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1. Post at the right time

Putting your content out there at the right time directly impacts visibility and engagement. The study says, the engagement rate increases by as much as 50%. This means, when you post at the right time your audience is more likely to see, interact with, and share your content.

The right time is typically when your followers are most active. That is the time when you grab their attention and spark meaningful interaction.

So how to understand when is the right time to post?

• Consider your content type: Users are most likely to check short-form content like YouTube shorts and Instagram reels during short breaks (mostly morning and afternoons). Meanwhile, long-form content requires more time and attention, so the engagement might be higher in the evenings or on weekends.
• Leverage native analytic tools:

TikTok Analytics shows hourly engagement trends.

Instagram/Facebook Analytics provides data on audience activity time.

• Experiment and adjust: Consider A/B testing by posting at different times and comparing engagement results.
• Keep up with industry trends: Compare your data with industry standards to align your timing.

💡 Let AI recommend the best posting times

AI analyzes audience behavior and activity to recommend the best posting time for each platform, region and industry. Posting in these golden windows allows you to catch people when they’re most active and ready to engage.

Sprinklr’s omnichannel publisher works on the same principle, maximizing your engagement by:

• Recommending tge best posting time based on engagement metrics.

• Analyzing up to 30 days of performance data to guide scheduling decisions.

• Automating posting and adjusts, schedules dynamically as new data comes in.

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You might want to read:

• Best times to post on Instagram
• Best times to post on LinkedIn
• Best times to post on Facebook
• Best times to post on x

2. Post valuable content

Valuable content is interesting, relevant, and offers useful benefits to your audience. It's a blend of content that provides real-time value, is engaging, and ranks well on search engines.

• Be authentic

Authentic content helps build trust with your audience. Sharing personal or real-life experiences, and offering reliable sources makes your content more relatable and credible. For 86% of people, authenticity is a deciding factor in liking and supporting the brand.

• Be practical

Ensure the content is actionable. The audience should be able to implement the advice you offer to solve their problems. Offering clear instructions or insights can add real value.

• Maintain proper format

Align the content length with the platform. For example, Twitter favors brevity. LinkedIn allows longer posts. For video content, keep it short and dynamic. Instagram reels/TikTok: under 1 minute YouTube: Up to 3 minutes.

Further read:

• Social media marketing ideas you should try
• 10+ Social media post ideas used by every brand
  
  

3. Run contests and giveaways

Social media contests and giveaways are a great way to generate excitement and chatter among your brand's community. It can convert passive observers into active participants and multiply your engagement rates rapidly.

Contest participants invest time and effort in creating content, interacting with your brand, and engaging with each other. All of this fosters a sense of community and drives engagement.

An iconic example of a social media contest is Starbucks’ #RedCupContest. Customers were invited to creatively decorate their red holiday cups. This contest tapped into the festive mood and encouraged artistic expression from social media users.

If you’re planning to leverage contests and giveaways to boost social media engagement, consider implementing these best practices:

• Use comment-based giveaways as they are quick and simple, forcing zombie followers (inactive, mute followers) into action.
• Encourage participants to tag their friends, which helps broaden your contest’s reach.
• Avoid too many steps for the participants.
• Call out winners on your company pages.

4. Be authentic

Being authentic is crucial for brands to establish long-term customer loyalty and build a community of enthusiastic advocates who will drive your growth forward.

Consumers are more likely to back brands that are transparent, honest, and ideologically aligned with them.

Patagonia's “Don't Buy This Jacket” campaign is a great example. It reflects the brand’s commitment to environmental sustainability and social responsibility by encouraging consumers to think twice before purchasing and urging them to repair or reuse their products.

Source

This sparked conversations about responsible consumption with many customers sharing the message on social media. As a result, there wasn't only higher engagement but also strengthened brand advocacy.

Key strategies to boost engagement by being authentic:

• Keep your brand voice, personality, and values consistent in all marketing communication. Don’t be swayed by volatile trends that conflict with your mission.
• Track your customer's feedback across social media channels and respond promptly and professionally. Acknowledge both positive and negative feedback.
• For social media collaboration, pick influencers and brands resonant with your missions and values.

5. Share UGC

User-generated content (UGC) is powerful social proof of how a brand’s customers, employees, vendors and partners benefit from the brand’s partnership or products. It spikes engagement more effectively than ads or endorsements on social media.

Studies show that 86% of consumers are more likely to trust a brand that shares UGC, while only 12% are inclined to buy a product endorsed by influencers.

Source

Best practices for sharing UGC are:

✊ Take consent from the creator

Get consent from the original creator before republishing their content. It helps avoid copyright issues and maintain healthy relationships.

🎬Leverage different UGC formats

UGC can be the form of photos, videos, or testimonials. If you’re planning to run UGC campaigns for content curation, set clear expectations about the type of content you're expecting to fulfill campaign goals.

📢 Credit the original creator

Give credit to the person who created the content. This reflects your acknowledgment of their contribution and increases transparency. Check out how Apple does this on Instagram:

Source

6. Focus on video

Modern audiences are more inclined to videos – with 91% of people preferring online video content over other forms of brand communication. Over 60% of marketers used videos as a marketing tool in 2024. That's because:

• Videos can tap into users' emotions more powerfully than text, fostering a stronger connection with your audience.
• Moreover, facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice convey authenticity, and sincerity, fostering trust and rapport.

How to create engaging video content for social:

1. Ensure authenticity and relatability: Share relatable, real-life stories like behind-the-scenes processes, customer testimonials, etc. that are scroll-stoppers.

2. Maintain quality: Focus on creating polished videos that deliver value. You can use engaging cuts, clean audio, and appealing visuals for that.

3. Put clear CTAs: State the desired actions at the end of the video to guide your audiences.

Ex, “subscribe for more tutorials”, “visit the website for more details”, or “share your stories in the comment”.

4. Keep experimenting: Experiment with different formats like streams, collaboration with influencers, and more to analyze what resonates best with your audience.

10. Use interactive content

Interactive content such as polls, quizzes, shoppable videos, AMA (ask-me-anything) and live streaming drives engagement at every stage of the buyer journey. Interactive content has been found to generate two times more engagement as compared to static content.

Best ways to use interactive content for engagement:

• Interactive quizzes and polls: Create quizzes that are fun and relevant to your audience. For example, personality quizzes or industry-related knowledge tests can be highly engaging. Polls are also great for gathering opinions and making your audience feel heard.
• Shoppable videos: Integrate clickable elements within your videos that allow users to purchase products directly from the video. This not only boosts engagement but also drives sales by providing a seamless shopping experience.
• Interactive infographics: Use infographics that allow users to click on different sections to reveal more information. This keeps users engaged as they explore the content and learn more about the topic.
• Live Q&A sessions: Host live sessions where your audience can ask questions in real-time. This creates a direct line of communication and makes your audience feel more connected to your brand.

👉 Read more: Social Media Interactions: Types, Strategies and Tools

Get ready to transform your social media engagement!

Managing social media engagement is a dynamic multifaceted challenge. As trends shift rapidly, and audience expectations evolve constantly, staying proactive matters the most to capture every engagement opportunity.

Hence, companies are heavily investing in powerful tools to analyze audience behavior, optimize strategies, and build meaningful relationships.

With Sprinklr Social, you can streamline your social media engagement by getting real-time insights, leveraging AI-driven recommendations, and ensuring your brand remains at the forefront of audience conversation. Booka Sprinklr demo today and experience the transformation of your social media strategy.