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Top 5 Social Media Engagement Strategies for 2025
Picture this: a mid-sized fashion brand launches a new product line on Instagram, only to see minimal engagement. Despite regular posts, their likes and comments barely trickle in. They have thousands of followers, but the brand struggles to spark meaningful interactions. The problem? Their social media engagement strategy isn’t cutting through the noise. They post randomly, use generic captions and don’t tailor content to what their audience truly values.
Compare this to Nike. The company shifted its approach to community-driven content and micro-influencers. On Instagram and TikTok, they share insights into the team’s creative processes, athlete stories and customer highlights. This strategy humanized the brand, with micro-influencers generating 52% of Nike’s Media Impact Value (MIV) in 2023, highlighting their crucial role in boosting visibility.
In this guide, we’ll explore what makes a social media engagement strategy successful, discuss common challenges and share real-world examples to help boost your brand’s online presence.
What social media challenges do you want to overcome?
Before diving into engagement strategies, it's crucial for brands to have clarity on what kind of social media engagement they want to drive, and what objective this strategy should address. For instance, some companies might want to stay top-of-mind for their target audience. In this case, on-platform engagements including Followers, Likes, and Comments are preferred.
On the other hand, if you want to redirect your audience to a different location – get them to sign up for a webinar, or download an asset, you will need them to Click, move them to your website, and convert them there.
Recognizing these challenges early on helps set realistic goals, paving the way for sustainable growth and the success of social media engagement strategy across platforms. Let’s explore some of the most common challenges:
1. Difficulty increasing brand awareness
With social media saturated with content, distinguishing oneself is no easy feat. According to Forbes, 90% of social media users follow at least one brand, so competing for attention is a real challenge. Brands often struggle to create memorable and engaging content to break through the noise and maintain visibility, and in this case – a good engagement strategy would make their brand memorable and shareable to grow an engaged audience.
2. Struggling to drive website traffic
Many brands struggle to turn social media engagement into website visits. While likes and shares are always great, their real challenge is turning passive engagement into traffic that drives conversions. Even though platforms like Facebook boast 2.037 billion daily active users, simply relying on engagement doesn’t translate to business success. To truly capitalize on this audience, brands must move beyond simple likes and shares.
3. Managing negative feedback
Negative comments and reviews can tarnish a brand’s reputation, making it challenging to handle them effectively. In fact, 92% of consumers say a negative review discourages them from using a business. Managing these issues without damaging your brand’s image is an ongoing business challenge.
4. Sustaining audience engagement
Audience interests shift rapidly; what worked today may not work tomorrow. So, keeping up with the latest social media trends and ensuring your content remains fresh is essential. No wonder brands invest heavily—up to 8.7% of company revenue—in marketing. That’s not all. The same report indicates that 57.9% of marketing budgets are spent on digital marketing. This significant investment reflects the critical role of social media in modern business strategies.
5. Measuring social media ROI
Brands need clarity to optimize their strategies and justify social media spending. Determining the ROI from social media efforts can be like solving a complex puzzle. Not surprisingly, nearly 60% of marketing professionals struggle to accurately track ROI from social media marketing. Knowing what’s working is challenging without tracking the right metrics.
Top social media engagement strategies
Based on the challenge you are trying to solve, and your target audience, choosing the right type of social media posts is critical. Here are five highly effective post types that can significantly improve your social media marketing efforts:
1. Contests and giveaways
These posts encourage audience participation and sharing, significantly increasing visibility and engagement in a fun and exciting way. Offering enticing prizes helps capture your audience’s attention and motivates them to interact with your brand. This makes the process both engaging and rewarding.
Incentivizing your social media interactions expands your reach and generates excitement around your products or services. When users share the contest with their networks, it creates buzz, drives traffic and strengthens the sense of community among your followers.
For instance, Dove frequently runs social media contests, encouraging users to share self-care-related stories or photos. These campaigns boost engagement and align with Dove’s mission to inspire confidence and self-love.
Must Read 📚: 10+ Ideas for Social Media Posts That Move the Needle
Pro Tip 💡: One of the sure-fire ways to increase engagement outside of choosing the right type of content, is to simply post consistently. You need a strategy that has a mix of different types of content and is also adaptable to trending topics and customer behavior. Creating a single content calendar that breaks down your content across multiple platforms noting the captions and hashtags, content format and posting frequency for each channel can give you a birds-eye view on opportunities for new engagement opportunities.
But how can you make this process more efficient?
The answer is simple — try Sprinklr Social’s social media calendar platform. It:
✅ Provides a unified view of all your social media posts across platforms.
✅ Offers filtering and tagging options for better organization.
✅ Allows you to switch between time zones for global campaigns.
With Sprinklr Social, you can easily streamline your social media planning and execute global strategies.
2. User-generated content
User-generated content (UGC) is all the content created by your audience, in relation to your brand. In many instances, UGC are spontaneous and organic posts by consumers of products they enjoy, however, more recently, brands have also been promoting viral participation in the form of social media challenges or branded hashtags.
UGC fosters brand community, builds customer loyalty and improves organic reach. In fact, 79% of consumers think that user-generated content significantly impacts their purchasing decisions.
Look at GoPro. The brand invites customers to share adventure photos and videos taken with their cameras. It frequently showcases this content on Instagram, fostering a vibrant community and enhancing customer loyalty.
3. Interactive posts
Polls, quizzes and question-and-answer sessions actively involve your audience. These posts boost engagement rates and help gather valuable insights directly from the audience. They not only increase interaction but also provide useful insights into your audience's preferences and opinions.
For instance, Spotify engages its audience on X (formerly Twitter) through interactive posts. It often asks followers about their favorite music genres, artists or playlists, driving high levels of engagement and gathering valuable consumer insights. By actively involving your audience, you can foster stronger connections and create opportunities for real-time feedback.
4. Educational Posts
Educational posts, such as how-to guides, industry insights or pro tips, provide value by teaching something new and often find appreciation, and in turn engagement, on social media. It positions your brand as an industry leader, and drives higher shares, saves and reach.
Educational content also builds trust by offering tangible solutions to consumer problems. This increases engagement and encourages repeat visits to your platforms, as users see your brand as a go-to source for valuable information.
For instance, IBM frequently shares educational content on LinkedIn. They post articles, white papers and research studies on emerging technologies like AI and cloud computing. This positions the company as a thought leader and engages its B2B audience.
5. Behind-the-scenes content
Behind-the-scenes content offers a glimpse into your brand's culture, inner workings and events. It's a great way for your audience to engage with your brand and get a sneak peak behind the glossy images that social media content usually looks like.
One of the interesting things about behind-the-scenes content is that you might even reach a completely different audience than you would reach with your regular, planned content. In an interesting twist, Deloitte found that content that offers a behind-the-scenes look at sporting events resonate incredibly well with female audiences. This engagement stems from the authenticity and inclusiveness of the content.
A great example is from the Paris 2024 Olympics; USOPC, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, shared behind-the-scenes content to showcase various aspects of the Games, from athletes' preparations to the excitement of competition and the camaraderie among teams. The audience engaged with posts highlighting emotional moments, teamwork and athletes' challenges, fostering a sense of community and shared experience.
Social media engagement strategy examples
This section explores how three leading brands have expertly executed their social media engagement strategies. We'll examine their innovative approaches, unique tactics and their impressive results. These examples not only showcase their creativity but also offer valuable insights into effective engagement techniques that can inspire and inform your social media efforts:
1. Google Maps' fun meme strategy
Google Maps effectively uses memes to engage a younger audience by incorporating popular culture, humor and trends. This approach keeps its content fresh and relatable, capturing attention and encouraging more personal and enjoyable interactions with the brand.
⚠️ The challenge: Google Maps needed to stay relevant to a younger audience constantly exposed to new content. This group is particularly hard to engage because of their short attention spans and demand for relatable, entertaining content.
🎯 Brand strategy: Google Maps uniquely blends humor with its core values. For example, this meme humorously depicts a skeleton waiting two hours for a pumpkin spice treat, emphasizing how frustrating it can be to reach something distant. This witty approach subtly reinforces Google Maps' primary function—helping users locate destinations.
Pro Tip 💡: Keeping up with your audience is critical to engaging with them successfully. Whether that’s finding popular memes, trends, challenges, or fun conversations to jump in on – monitoring social media chatter can be the most important way to genuinely engage with your audience.
Sprinklr’s AI-enabled Social Listening allows you to gather and analyze data from over 30 social platforms, to effortlessly track all conversations that matter to your brand.
Request your demo today!
2. Starbucks' social awareness strategy
Starbucks leverages its social media platforms to spotlight social issues like sustainability and diversity. This aligns with the brand’s values and resonates with a socially conscious audience, enhancing engagement and loyalty.
⚠️ The challenge: Starbucks faced the challenge of reinforcing its brand identity while creating a deeper connection with followers. With the increasing demand for brands to take a stand on social issues, Starbucks needed to differentiate itself and build a brand community around shared values.
🎯 Brand strategy: Starbucks tackles this challenge by regularly posting about social causes, like promoting reusable cups. This commitment to sustainability boosts their brand image and builds long-term loyalty among followers who value these principles.
3. Wendy's bold interaction strategy
Wendy's is renowned for its bold and humorous Twitter interactions with followers and competitors. This strategy has helped the brand build a reputation for being witty and relatable.
⚠️ The challenge: Wendy's must differentiate itself in a highly competitive fast-food market. With numerous brands vying for attention, Wendy's needed to capture audience interest.
🎯 Brand strategy: Wendy's bold and humorous approach has led to memorable viral moments. For instance, when Burger King shared a photo of a man holding a sign about their patties, Wendy's cleverly leveraged the situation by pointing out that the man was outside a Wendy’s location. This witty and daring response generated lively banter, enhancing Wendy's social media engagement and visibility.
Related Read 📚: 7 Social Media Strategy Examples and How to Implement Them
Elevate your social media engagement
In this guide, we've explored the key challenges that brands face in their social media engagement efforts, the types of posts that can overcome these challenges and real-world examples of successful strategies.
However, while implementing these strategies can significantly enhance a brand's social media presence, it's essential to acknowledge the challenges involved. Your business may struggle to manage data overload, integrate fragmented tools and turn data into actionable insights.
Sprinklr Social offers a comprehensive solution to these challenges. The platform empowers brands to streamline their social media efforts and maximize engagement through:
🌐 Broad channel coverage: Supports over 30 channels, ensuring you can reach your audience wherever they are.
🤖 AI-driven visual insights: Provides advanced analytics to help you understand and optimize your social media performance.
📊 Engagement dashboard: Features an intuitive interface that allows you to track and enhance your engagement metrics in real time.
Ready to transform your social media engagement strategy? Request a demo of Sprinklr Social and discover how it can help your brand stay ahead in 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
To boost social media engagement, create high-quality, relevant content that resonates with your audience. Use various formats like videos, polls and stories to keep things fresh. Additionally, interact with your followers by responding to comments and messages promptly.
Track key metrics such as likes, shares, comments and click-through rates. Use analytics tools to identify posts that generate engagement and refine your strategy based on these insights. Regularly reviewing these metrics helps you stay on top of what works best for your audience.
Consistency is crucial; posting regularly keeps your brand top-of-mind for your audience. However, quality should never be sacrificed for quantity. Strive for a balanced schedule that delivers valuable content without overwhelming your followers.
Each platform has its unique audience and features. For LinkedIn, focus on professional and thought-leadership content. On Instagram, use visually appealing images and stories. Tailor your content and engagement tactics to fit each platform's specific characteristics and user behavior.
