Are you getting the most out social media? For your dropshipping store, it is important to consistently work on engagement. Any brand that plans to be successful on the internet should have strong social media engagement.
It’s not just about popularity: it’s more about meaningful interactions and long-term connections with current and future customers. As a result, you will boost your brand (and ROI).
Read our ultimate guide and find out how to to build, manage, and measure social media engagement!
One of the first social media engagement questions to answer: What is Social Media Engagement?
Social media engagement is the measurement of comments, likes, and shares.
Of course, your first intention is to collect followers, but ultimately, the greatest measure of social media success is an engaged audience, not just a big one.
As an owner of a dropshipping store, you should think of what is the best for your business. It is quality, not just quantity that you should be striving for.
Social media engagement is measured by a range of metrics that could include the following:
- Shares or retweets
- Comments
- Likes
- Followers and audience growth
- Mentions (either tagged or untagged)
- Branded hashtags use
Why is social media engagement so important?
Social Media engagement is important because social media platforms’ rank and prioritize based on it.
Facebook, in fact, uses “meaningful engagement” as an important signal that a post should be prioritized; Social Media posts with more active and thoughtful interactions get more reach.
Your customers expect you to engage, particularly when it comes to providing support. Social media is the number one choice for customer care — every month, people and businesses exchange 8 billion Facebook messages.
It may be a bit intimidating to respond publicly, for example in the comments, but if you provide great service, your customers will love you for it. An average of 66% of people between the ages of 18-54 view brands more favorably if they respond to customer service requests on social media.
How to measure social engagement?
Analyzing social media performance is crucial for measuring the success of your brand.
Luckily, there are plenty of tools out there to provide a general overview or check your various social stats in one place.
Beyond that, you can always measure effectiveness from your social platforms directly. The specific metrics will vary with each social site, but there’s always some juicy insight to take away.
Explore all of these tools together, and you’ve got access to some serious social intel.
Here’s what you might expect to find from some of the most popular social media platforms directly:
Facebook Analytics contains a very comprehensive dashboard with plenty of ways to track your audience engagement.
You can track the following metrics on this popular social media platform:
- Reach and engagement: How many people saw your posts? Who interacted with them? Which posts did people hide? Did people report any posts as spam?
- Actions: What actions do people take on your Page? How many people click your call-to-action button? How many people click through to your website?
- People: What are the demographics of the people who visit your Page? (You can dive deeper into this topic with Audience Insights). When do people visit your Page? How do people find your Page?
- Views: How many people are viewing your Page? Which sections are they looking at?
- Posts: How are your posts performing over time?
*Please note: Facebook is deprecating Facebook Analytics on June 30, 2021. They’ve recommended that users switch to Facebook Business Suite (if available), Ads Manager and/or Events Manager moving forward to track the performance of their Facebook posts.
Likewise, Twitter offers a robust set of tools to measure your metrics.
You can track the following metrics on Twitter:
- Engagement rate: How many engagements and impressions did it get?
- Reach percentage: How many followers saw a given tweet?
- Link clicks: How many click-throughs did a posted link get?
- Optimal posting time: When is your audience most likely to be online? What time zone do they live in?
If you have a business profile, you’ll be able to access Instagram Insights to track your Instagram engagement. This dashboard provides you with all the vital social media engagement metrics you’ll need for your campaign.
You can track the following metrics on Instagram Insights:
- Audience demographics: Where do they live? Are they men or women? How old are they?
- Optimal posting times: When are your followers online? What days and times are they active at?
- Popular content: Which posts get likes? What discussion topics get more comments?
TikTok
It can be overwhelming to join a new social media platform like TikTok at first, but analytics help take the guesswork out of a content strategy.
Insights are available to pro accounts, and include the following metrics:
- Audience demographics: What is my follower growth? What are they watching and listening to? Where do they live and how do they identify?
- Profile views: When has my traffic spiked?
- Content stats: Which videos have been viewed most this week? How long is the average play time? How many comments, likes and shares did my video get?
5 tips for increasing your social media engagement
#1 Shape your audience and learn more about it
You can post beautifully designed and meticulously written posts, but it won’t be of any use if your audience isn’t interested in the topics you’re talking about. That is the reason why the first thing you should take care of is understanding who is the target audience of your dropshipping store. You can take a pen (yes, a real pen) and draw your client. How old are they, are they married, do they prefer TV or YouTube, which things are important for them, and so on? Once you’re done with the portrait of your client, it will be much easier for you to choose content that’ll drive an emotional response from people.
#2 Ask people to talk to you
It might sound silly, but most often, people need some encouragement to share their opinion. Well, compare someone speaking about cool things but not paying attention to you with a person that asks for your opinion directly. Our guess that the second one has much more chances to draw responses. Social media is all the same, so here are the ways to ask your followers to talk:
- Invite people to share their opinion at the end of each post (even if it is such a small CTA as “tag a friend”)
- Post polls (it’s quite easy nowadays)
- Offer a knowledge test (oh, it’s irresistible!)
- Simply post a question. If you manage to ask a timely & provocative question, that will be the most engaging piece of content of all. This is the reason why people love personality tests that much 🙂 Well, use this to your store’s benefit!
#3 Make people feel seen & heard
Asking questions will help with the matter a lot, but it won’t be enough 🙂 First and foremost, respond to all comments on your store’s social media accounts. If they’re positive, show your gratitude & appreciation. If they’re negative, offer a resolution to a problem & show that you care. Also do not forget to share reviews & photos with your product – user-generated content will make you look trustworthy & reliable.
#4 Gamify
People LOVE games, contests, giveaways, and so on! Don’t ignore this opportunity to attract new audiences and entertain your followers. Here are some ideas you can use for your dropshipping business:
- Media upload contest. Encourage your followers to post a photo, story, video featuring your product (don’t forget about hashtags!) in exchange for some benefit (like a discount, freebie, cheaper membership).
- Bingo. Let your followers enjoy a virtual bingo and you’ll be surprised how many people shared your post.
- Giveaway. Typically, people just need to tag a couple of friends or share the post in Stories to participate in that type of contest. It’s super easy for them and a free way for you to promote yourself. Yes, you’ll need to give a prize to a winner, but the prize can be expensed by your dropshipping income. Bonus tip: be fair, there is nothing more important than people’s trust.
#5 Stay positive and think ahead
There are some common social media mistakes that most dropshippers make and that can slow down their way to success. Here are some rules that will help you avoid them:
- Choose to post content that will receive a positive reaction from people. Inspire people, make them laugh, cause ‘awww’-reaction, but leave controversial topics to politicians.
- Have your own voice, and stick to it. It might be funny, sarcastic, or whatever you create, but your store audience should like this manner. Once you’re done with tip #1, it won’t be difficult to pick.
- Create interesting & valuable content. You’re selling through your social media, but people would like to be entertained at first, so post educational & engaging posts and only then sell your products.
- Know algorithms & post regularly. Study your store audience and post when they’re here to engage with you and post 2-3 times every day (not when you have inspiration).
Top 5 ideas for social media engagement questions you can ask
#1 What if…
All of us dream from time to time, so why not do it in your comments? You can ask questions as referred to your store theme, or just general topics that would be interesting to anyone.
- What if you won the lottery/ could travel back in time / could have one superpower…
#2 Fill in the blank
This type of question might be interesting to followers because they rarely think of it or don’t really have an opportunity to answer. This is exactly why they would be glad to talk about it in the comments.
- Life would be boring without _________
- If I hit my goal in a month, I will reward myself with ______
- _________ is what I like about myself
#3 Funny posts
Silly tests & questionnaires are not that bad because they make us laugh, so give your followers a reason to smile in your posts.
- Name a candy that starts with the same letter as your name
- Create a team of superheroes whose names start with the letters of your name
- The first word you see describes you
#4 Questions to get to know your audience
These are quite fun for people to answer and you can learn a lot more actual info about your audience rather than guessing. However, we recommend skipping too personal questions.
- Where are you from?
- What emotions motivate you most?
- What is your favorite cartoon?
#5 Ask us anything!
You can offer your followers questions: this is beneficial for both you and your audience. The curiosity will be satisfied, you’ll get some insights, and show your business from a human side.
Whatever you do, have fun on the way!