get in the engagement ring.

we’ve all been there.

you’re hours into perfecting a post. your creative is stunning. you’ve checked your analytics for the optimal posting time. you’ve proofread your caption. so you finally press “share”.  

now all that’s left to do is sit back and let the fans start virtually swarming. so you wait. …and wait. minutes pass, then hours.

don’t scream into the abyss just yet. it doesn’t mean your whole strategy is a bust — just that something needs to be tweaked.

let’s start all the way at the beginning: what is engagement and why do we want more of it?

engagement is shorthand for interaction from your audience on social media. sounds obvious, but it’s worth noting that this is a relatively new phenomenon.

for decades, media was entirely one-directional. print, TV, film, and even web 1.0-era digital media: the power was in the hands of the brand. all they needed was a big audience, and the success would follow.

well, now it’s a little different. audience engagement single-handedly determines the success of all media channels. and the toothpaste isn’t going back into the tube any time soon.

it’s also our key indicator (KPI for the marketers in the front) for the holy trinity of social media marketing goals:

• building stronger relationships with your audience

• increasing brand awareness, and

• generating leads and sales

it’s a quantifiable measure of how well we’re hitting those goals and how well our strategies and campaigns are performing. oh, and stakeholders love numbers. the numbers don’t lie, after all.

but while the 👍’s and ❤️’s of yore are still important, the algorithms now prioritize newer metrics, and the machines use them all to understand one very human concept: shareability.

we’ll go over all of these and more in this checklist of 5 concepts we’ve picked up running socials for brands and artists over the years. let’s get into it:

1. KEEP IT REAL.

ads are for selling – social is for connecting.

authenticity is the name of the game on social media. consumers can tell immediately if a piece of content feels like it was made to sell a product or service, and will skip faster than you can say “skincare routine”.

there’s a time and a place for production, but there’s a reason why it seems like half of the viral TikToks you’ve seen over the last year have been filmed in a car with a phone selfie cam and zero editing.

in fact, Jessica Messier, Indie Label Partnerships Lead at TikTok told us:

“If you can’t shoot it on your phone, it shouldn’t be on TikTok.”

a little trending audio + :45 of iphone filming in the backseat. think smart, not hard.

2. VALUE, VALUE, VALUE.

(everybody now.)

if there’s one word we can’t get out of our mouths, it’s value.

today’s consumers have no patience for anything that feels sell-y. push your strategy to be selfless and provide value to your audience at all costs; be it informative, educational, or entertaining.

you bet i watched this whole TikTok — and my mushrooms have never been fresher. “lifehacks” ain’t dead.

value leaves your audience looking forward to more and leads to more engagement, which ultimately leads to growth.

speaking of which…

3. GROWTH.

where does growth come from in the first place?

**cue courtroom diagram**

exhibit A: somehow, somewhere, someone discovers your page or channel.

exhibit B: then comes the decisive moment when they decide “ok i’m in”. they like your post, follow your page, otherwise join the community, or take any other number of desirable actions (or “conversions” in marketing speak). BOOM. growth.

this hilarious take on an on-the-street giveaway held my attention long enough to educate me about the product, its consumer demand, and gave me a healthy dose of absurdist entertainment factor in the process.

4. SHAREABILITY.

in today’s media world, shareability is currency.

take a moment and reverse-engineer that for your brand with these 2 things:

1) content that people want to share.

there are any number of ways that this can happen, but for the purposes of this exercise, let’s say they either: a) send it to a friend, b) re-post it to their audience (stories, reposts, retweets, etc), or c) save it to their saved posts for future reference

2) a “sticky” page.

all this industry buzzword really means is that when people see that shared post, they click through to check out the rest of the account’s content, and ultimately, they hit that “follow” button.

not that kind of sticky…

…this kind of sticky.

so, how do you make that happen?

5. VIRALITY. PATIENCE.

virality is dead. long live virality.

ok, we’ll admit it: we haven’t stopped aspiring to the wildfire spread of a culture-shifting trend (think grandmothers singing along to remixes of the corn kid). and we don’t want you to either. that’s the stuff that fuels the fire.

don’t get lost in the virality sauce.

there’s no silver bullet to make something “go viral”. the key is to stop prioritizing virality, and start thinking consistency.

post often. don’t overthink it. you’re going to continue to evolve and your content will evolve with you. the story is always in the authenticity.

the algorithm gods aren’t as cryptic as their reputation: just like with us mere mortals, reputation is everything. if you have a poor reputation for engagement, they aren’t going to push your latest post to the top of everyone’s timelines.

but if you’re patient and you consistently put out content that people are watching and sharing, the robots will help get it to the right folks.

and when all else fails, cats.

ENGAGEMENT = GROWTH.

use the above concepts to drive value, relatability, and usefulness with your content. then, along with a message that resonates with real people and a little bit of patience, will come engagement and growth.

stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll break down the key metrics that the robots are sniffing out to get your posts to the top of the feed.

until next time, friends.