How to Increase Social Media Engagement
The world has a love of visual communication. People of all ages and cultures share photos and videos of their everyday lives. We cannot get enough of pouring over photos images of travel destinations, fashion, and food. Do it yourself videos are the go to for many trying to master a new skill.
This is evidenced by the popularity of well-trafficked social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, and SnapChat. Video is expected to surpass images in popularity in 2016 so we have to include video is on sites such as YouTube and maybe even Vine in our marketing strategies! Images are only optional in two of the social sites I listed – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+.
We look to be entertained with no down time. If we are not engaged in an activity, we are heads down looking at something on our smartphones.
According to the US Department of Commerce, US E-Commerce Sales accounted for only 7.40% of retail Sales in the third quarter of 2015. However, many businesses are 100% online must do all they can to drive ecommerce traffic.
Data supports that including images on social media posts increases engagement. Figure one shows that by including native video, that post engagement increase by 8.71%. Including images increases post engagement by 3.71%. This number is a bit of a reversal for images. Facebook’s Edgerank prevents the majority of posts from ever appearing in Facebook users’ newsfeeds.
Including images also increases the likelihood of a Twitter Tweet will be retweeted! (Say THAT three times fast!) Tweets with images and native video simply stand out on the Twitter stream. They receive more retweets than Tweets that only include text. [Figure 2]
