Social media news feeds are now set up so that they give preference to accounts and groups with a high level of engagement. That is, the more often you are liked, commented on, and reposted, the more people see your posts in their news and recommendations. We tell you how to increase activity and engagement on your personal page, in any publishers, groups, and communities. You’ll need 5-10 minutes, but you’ll see the result right away.

Carry out a prank

The banalest but effective solution. To increase engagement, you need your subscribers to: subscribe to you; like the posts; write comments. If participants just like the post and write comments, you’ll increase engagement. If they repost, their friends might follow you, too. If you’re having trouble coming up with creative, turn to Cloutsy for quality promotion of your content. The usual “subscribe, click and win a prize” type of giveaway format will work, too. But it’s better to do something unusual: arrange a quiz, make riddles, make a mini-marathon. Unusual formats of draws are more effective than standard ones because they keep users interested. They don’t mindlessly “Like” your content, but study it and interact with it. For example, in a contest for the most active commenter, people are active in 10-20 posts, not just one. And if you run a quiz, subscribers will remember you better than your competitors with standard drawings.

Stimulate discussion

The old “support us with a like and a comment” doesn’t work. There’s even a theory that Facebook and Instagram cut back on coverage for posts that include the words “like” and “comment”. Find another way: ask a question at the end of the post. And one where the person can answer it in a detailed way. It will start a discussion, and engagement will increase. An unobvious recommendation: you should be really interested in users’ opinions. Unsubscripted questions tend to get fewer responses than those that are asked from the heart. Another way to stimulate discussion is to make a situational post to an info post that is important to your audience. You can also train users to communicate – create “chats” under specific posts. For example, publish a post every Friday night at 7 p.m. and suggest a topic for discussion.

Use interactive content

Interactive – the one with which people interact: do not just read and move on, but leave comments or click on buttons. On social networks, it’s easiest to run some kind of mini-game. For example, tell about some situation and ask subscribers to describe their reaction to it using the first and third most commonly used emoticons. Or you can write the beginning of a sentence and ask them to complete it using automatic input on their smartphone. Create the first sentence of a story and ask everyone to complete it together in the comments. Ask subscribers to write their names one letter at a time without anyone interrupting. There are a lot of ideas: you can use the ones that are already working or come up with something of your own. The results of the surveys or continuing phrases with automatic input are funny, and users don’t have to strain too much to write a comment. That’s why many people write them and like the post.

Post useful content

Useful content will not only help increase engagement but also build a good reputation for the brand. How does it work? Easy. You make a useful post: a recipe with lots of ingredients, a complicated chart, or something else that can’t be memorized or fully learned in a couple of minutes. And subscribers repost to save the information. And users can also write comments if there’s a question or something in the post that’s unclear.