What Exactly is Social Media Engagement? Why do I Need it?

what is social media engagement

The more you learn about social media management (taking care of your profiles and fanpages), the more you hear Engagement. In fact, it’s everywhere you look. Increase engagement, improve engagement, engage your followers, etc.

  • But what is social media engagement?
  • What does it mean?
  • Do you really need engagement?
  • Do I want it on other websites?

Social Media Enagement- A Definition

Engagement simply means getting your fans to do something in response to your post.

  • Like
  • Comment
  • Click to open picture
  • Click on Link
  • Share

These are all forms of engagement, and each time one of these things is done, Facebook specifically measures it.

Not only that, but it becomes more popular, and on Facebook more people will see that post.

Edgerank Measures Engagement

This is all part of your edgerank, a number that describes how much you engage fans, and decides how many of your fans will see each post.

Do I Need Engagement?

Yes, It’s very important on Facebook to do everything you can to increase your edgerank, because you want to reach as many fans as possible with your message.

Generally speaking only 10-20% of your fans will see your updates, unless you increase your engagement/edgerank. This only applies to Facebook though.

Do I Want Engagement on Other Websites, Too?

Yes, on Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and Linked you want engagement because it expands your reach. Your reach is the amount of people that ultimately see your post/pin/update etc.

The more people that see your post, the more that can take action on it.

Types of engagement on other social media sites include:

  • +1
  • share
  • retweet
  • mention
  • tag
  • pin
  • repin
  • comment
  • favorite

These are the reasons you often see people asking you to RT (retweet), share, comment, or like a post. They want to increase engagement, and need fans like you to help.

How to Increase Engagement?

  1. Post better content. Use a content curation tool like Fan Page Robot.
  2. Get more followers. Social media tools are your friends.
  3. Interact with your followers.

 

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4 Comments

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  2. Alexis C.September 5, 2014 at 11:14 am · Reply

    Engagements are important most especially when it comes to one’s business ventures. No one would want to talk to a brick wall right? LOL That said, to better engagements on all of my social media sites I made sure that I implore the use of social media management tools like the ones provided by vWriter.com. These sorts of tools keep you organize by enabling the use of all of your social media accounts in one place and allows you to update your accounts through pre-scheduled posts and content management.

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  4. LouiseMay 17, 2015 at 2:46 pm · Reply

    Does ‘engagement’ include observers? People who are only there to read or follow.
    Or is engagement only considered people who click, like, share etc.?

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