Social media is arguably the biggest development on the internet in the last decade, connecting billions from all over the world together in online communities. While blogs, search engines and email transformed how we do business and how we communicate, social media has undoubtedly transformed how we socialize.

Businesses and brands have learned that there is inherent value in social media for them as well. However, in order to truly tap into the power of social media, engagement is an absolute must. To make the process easier, we’ll look at how you can start improving engagement on social media starting today.

Engage with Your Audience

Everybody understands the purpose of social media from an individual standpoint, but many brands fail to grasp that a key component of social media is the social element. Finding meaningful ways to interact with your audience when they interact with your brand is paramount in building a strong level of engagement. Even if it’s just a simple thank you or acknowledgement, recognizing your fans and followers will naturally create more opportunities for dialogue and discussion.

Additionally, the more you engage with specific individuals, the more likely those interactions are to start pinging servers and showing up in the feeds of those individuals’ friends on sites such as Facebook.

Be Graphic

One of the easiest ways to boost engagement on social media is to use a wide variety of content options when posting and sharing. Generally speaking, images and videos tend to generate two to three times the amount of engagement as standard text-based posts. For brands seeking to generate more likes, shares, comments and other forms of engagement, it only makes sense to take advantage of this knowledge.

Most users’ social media activity is superficial when interacting with entities not closely related or associated with them. This means that while a user might not take the time to read – let alone common or share – a long written post, they can more easily absorb, comment on and share something that can be absorbed in just a couple of seconds.

Ask for Contributions

Many brands have discovered a remarkable level of success with respect to engagement by simply asking their fanbase to contribute to the process. There are many different ways to go about this. The simplest of options is to ask your audience to comment, like and share on various posts. However, there are many other ways that users can contribute.

Some brands hold contests that encourage users to submit their own content for publication. Others  ask for ideas on what types of content and what specific topics they’d like to see shared more frequently on the platform. For more dedicated brands, incorporating all of these elements into any broader social media strategy will ensure that users are consistently pinging servers with comments and other social signals, and that the brands have a steady stream of content ready to publish.

In general, you get out of social media what you put into it. For brands seeking to boost engagement, more engagement on their part is required. By engaging with your audience, sharing a variety of content forms that appeal to each aspect of your audience and asking followers to engage more thoroughly, you can begin building the basis of a healthy, vibrant social media community.