If you’re an online coach without an advertising budget, social media marketing is one of the best ways to find new coaching clients.
But social media won’t help you if you’re posting to crickets. That’s why increasing social media engagement matters so much.
So, how can you make sure people engage with your content on social media? Keep reading to discover:
- The importance of social media engagement for your coaching business
- How to increase social media engagement
- How to measure social media engagement
- 7 ways to increase social media engagement
- How to create your own social media engagement strategy
The Importance of Social Media Engagement for Your Coaching Business
Social media engagement is more than just accumulating likes and followers; it’s about creating a community of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer!
When you engage with your audience on social media, you establish trust and credibility, leading to increased visibility, more clients, and a successful coaching business.
One of the key benefits of social media engagement is the opportunity to build a strong online presence. By consistently sharing valuable content and interacting with your audience, you can establish yourself as an authority in your field.
This can attract potential clients who are seeking guidance and support in their personal and professional lives.
And the more engagement you receive on any given social media platform, the more that platform will push your content out. Not only will your existing followers see more of your content, but you’ll also be able to reach new followers more easily.
By default, social media engagement is relatively low. For instance, only 0.15% of your followers will engage with your content on Facebook and 0.60% on Instagram!
The engagement rate is higher on TikTok, but it’s still only 4.25%.
So, if your current engagement is also low, you’re not alone.
This only shows why it’s important to prioritize engagement. Let’s say you have 1000 followers on Instagram – if you’re hitting average numbers, only 6 people will engage with each post.
How To Increase Social Media Engagement
All right, now it’s time to get that engagement rate up – because average just won’t cut it. This part will be split into three sections:
- How to measure social media engagement
- Ways to increase social media engagement
- How to create your own social media engagement strategy
Let’s get into it!
How To Measure Social Media Engagement
Before effectively increasing your social media engagement, you need to measure it to see if your efforts are paying off.
There are various metrics you can use to gauge your engagement levels, including likes, comments, shares, and clicks. Additionally, you can track the reach and impressions of your posts to see how many people are seeing your content.
The exact metrics will vary depending on the platform you’re using, but most of them have the following:
- Like
- Comment
- Share
- Save
But platforms like TikTok also allow users to Duett or Stitch someone else’s content or repost it entirely.
Additionally, the concept of “Sharing” varies depending on the platform. On TikTok, sharing involves literally sharing the link with someone else.
But on other platforms, sharing can either be sharing the link or reposting the content.
Some platforms also allow clickthroughs, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. So, if you’re using one of these platforms, you need to consider the number of clicks in your engagement calculations.
Okay, so now we know what counts as engagement. So, how do you calculate it?
First, you’ll find it much easier to calculate engagement if you have a professional profile (or business profile). On LinkedIn, this is also called Creator Mode.
No matter what it’s called, these professional modes allow you to get more insights into how people find your content and engage with it. In many cases, you’ll get to see the reach of your post in addition to engagement.
Reach is the number of people who saw your post. Engagement is the number of engagements.
So, to calculate the total engagement rate for a single post, do the following:
(Total number of engagements / Number of followers) x 100 = Your engagement rate
Because I have access to my own metrics, let’s see an example of one of my recent Facebook posts. The dashboard tells me that 352 people saw my post, but 62 people engaged with it.
I also happen to have 838 followers.
So, let’s plug in these numbers:
(62 / 838) x 100 = 7.39%
The engagement rate for this particular post is 7.39%.
But what about the average engagement for the past 28 days? In this case, you would take total engagement and the number of posts into account with the following addition to your calculation:
(Total number of engagements / Number of followers) x 100 / Total number of posts = Your average engagement rate
It seems I’ve reached 779 people in the last 28 days – and got 639 total engagements. I also posted 18 times in total.
So here’s what this gives us:
(639 / 838) x 100 / 18 = 4.23%
Great! Now, I know that if I want to increase engagement, I need to get over 4.23%. So, the previous post we looked at, which got 7.39% engagement, is likely a good example of what to do more to keep engagement growing.
7 Ways To Increase Social Media Engagement
Now that you know how to measure your engagement let’s crank it up with these 7 tips for social media engagement!
1. Create valuable social media posts for engagement
This is probably the most obvious way to increase your engagement. If you post content no one cares about, no one will engage with it.
So, how can you create social media posts for engagement?
It depends on your audience. As a coach, you’ll need to figure out your overall marketing strategy, including who you’re speaking to and what struggles they’re dealing with.
And once you have that information, your content will naturally fall into place.
I find it especially easy to create valuable content for coaches – because the ultimate goal of a coach is to help people! One easy way to figure out valuable content is to choose one of the transformations you help people with. Then, you can break down every step that’s required to get to that transformation.
For each of those steps, you can take several angles to create content, such as:
- What is this step?
- Why is this important?
- How does this step work?
- What can happen if you don’t do this step?
- Misconceptions about this step
- And so much more!
For example, Melissa from Dark Grove Press has several steps she helps her clients with on their path to getting a book written and polished. One of these is getting a first rough draft out of the way – and there are several misconceptions about the drafting process.
Melissa covers several of these misconceptions in one of her posts:
You can get more info about creating amazing social media content in our post about getting coaching clients from social media.
Working with top social media marketing agencies can amplify your reach and effectiveness, ensuring each piece of content is tailored to engage and educate your audience effectively.
2. Encourage conversation
Ask thought-provoking questions, encourage your followers to share their opinions and experiences, and respond to their comments. Actively engaging in conversations demonstrates that you value their input.
But it also lets the algorithm know you’re not just a bot posting content!
Engaging in meaningful conversations with your audience strengthens your relationship with them and encourages others to join in.
By responding promptly and thoughtfully to comments, you show that you are actively listening and interested in what your followers have to say. This fosters a sense of community and encourages further engagement!
Relationships with your followers are key to consistent engagement.
3. Use visuals
Incorporate eye-catching images, videos, and infographics into your posts. The chosen medium will depend on which platform you’re using.
For example, Instagram and LinkedIn are great platforms to publish attention-grabbing carousels. Use graphics such as arrows or “Swipe” to encourage people to keep reading your carousels.
On other platforms, such as TikTok, video is your best (or only) option. You can use titles with high contrast to your video to let viewers know what your video is about and why they should stop scrolling.
4. Collaborate with influencers
Partnering with influencers in your niche can expand your reach and expose your content to a wider audience. Their endorsement and support can also boost your credibility and encourage engagement.
According to the Attrock guide, Choose influencers that are in your niche but not a direct competitor. For instance, let’s say you’re a dating coach for college-aged women. You could partner with a coach who helps college students manage their time since you’re serving the same audience – and perhaps those time-starved students are struggling to find time to date!
5. Host contests and giveaways
Running contests or giveaways is an effective way to boost engagement.
Encourage your followers to like, comment, or share your posts for a chance to win a prize. This not only increases engagement but also spreads awareness of your coaching brand!
The prize of your contest could be a free coaching session with you. Additionally, you can offer up a bundle of digital resources that’ll take up less time for you to fulfill.
Just make sure the prize is juicy enough to warrant people’s attention.
6. Reach out to engage with others
Social media platforms like to know the people using it are real people. As such, it’s important not to “post and ghost.”
While I already covered the importance of responding to comments on your posts, you should also engage with other people’s content on your social media platform.
Some algorithms are especially receptive to people who engage before and after posting, such as LinkedIn. This means that before you publish your post, you should take some time to go like and comment on other people’s content, too.
So, who should you engage with? Consider engaging with some of the following people:
- People who fit your dream client avatar
- People whom your dream client avatar follow
- Leaders or influencers in your coaching niche
Make sure to leave genuine comments instead of generic encouragement or emojis. This will help you get noticed and encourage engagement back.
7. Try a value bomb
The value bomb is a type of social media engagement post, a concept I learned from ads coach Laurel Portié. You can watch the entire workshop for free on YouTube, but here’s the gist of it:
- You create a highly valuable resource, similar to a lead magnet
- Instead of asking people to opt in, you ask people to comment on your post
- You reach out to people who commented on your post via DMs
This is a helpful engagement strategy because it tells social platforms you’re being active in two ways:
In your comments and in your DMs.
This is a strategy that can work both for organic and paid social. But you can try it with organic first to validate if people want to engage with what you have to give!
How To Create Your Own Social Media Engagement Strategy
Now that we’ve covered how you can increase engagement… how do you put it into action?
Ideally, it’s better to have a specific strategy in place so you’re not throwing spaghetti on the wall. So, let’s walk through your own engagement strategy that you can deploy on social media ASAP.
1. Identify your goals
Determine what you aim to achieve through social media engagement.
Is it to increase brand awareness, generate leads for your coaching newsletter, start more DM conversations to book new clients, or build a community? Clearly define your goals to guide your strategy.
When setting your goals, it’s important to consider the specific metrics you want to track. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might measure success by the number of impressions or reach your posts receive.
But, if your goal is to generate leads, you might track the number of clickthroughs – or, in the case of a platform like Instagram, the number of profile visits and profile clicks.
2. Know your target audience
Understand your audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points before deciding how to tackle engagement. This knowledge will help you tailor your content and engagement approach to resonate with your target audience.
One effective way to understand your target audience is by conducting thematic analysis through market research. This can involve analyzing data from your existing customers or conducting surveys and interviews to gather insights.
Don’t have existing customers? You can survey your existing followers to determine what they’d like to hear from you. Give them a choice between specific pain points or outcomes they’re dealing with, or ask them which of your existing content they most resonate with:
3. Select the right platforms
Not all social media platforms are created equal; different platforms attract different audiences. Identify the platforms where your target audience is most active and invest your time and effort accordingly.
When choosing the right platforms, consider factors such as:
- The demographics of each platform’s user base
- The type of content that performs well on each platform
- The level of engagement you can expect
For example, if your target audience consists mainly of professionals, LinkedIn is probably a better choice than TikTok!
4. Plan your content
Develop a content calendar that outlines the types of content you will share, the frequency of posting, and any special campaigns or events you have planned.
Consistent and varied content keeps your audience interested and engaged.
In the previous sections, I explained how you can use specific parts of the transformation you provide as fodder for your content – but you can also keep things varied by giving them a different twist!
For instance, you can create a post that’s value-driven… or you can give it a more motivational/inspirational twist. Here’s an example of a more inspirational post – as you can see, it’s meant to inspire, not give specific step-by-step instructions.
5. Engage authentically
Be genuine in your interactions with your followers. Respond to comments promptly, show appreciation for their support, and consistently add value to conversations. Authenticity builds trust and fosters long-term engagement.
It’s important to go beyond generic responses when engaging with your audience. Take the time to understand their comments or questions and provide thoughtful and personalized responses. Show genuine interest in their opinions and experiences, and foster a sense of community by encouraging discussions among your followers.
6. Plan time for engagement
Finally, to make sure you actually engage, include time in your schedule to do the engagement!
Book a 15-30 minute time slot in your day to:
- Respond to comments
- Follow other people
- Add genuine comments to other people’s posts
- Watch and respond to Stories to start conversations (if applicable on your platform of choice)
You’ll find it easier to get this engagement work done if you prioritize it just as much as you’d prioritize other business tasks, like coaching sessions or content creation
Ramp Up Your Social Media Engagement Strategies
Now, you have everything you need to increase social media engagement, no matter your platform of choice!
With 7 unique ways to increase social media engagement, you’ll have a dream audience of potential coaching clients engaging back with you in no time.
Oh, and if you’re running out of time to engage on social media? Paperbell’s got you covered! Paperbell automates the tedious admin tasks in your coaching business so you can focus on what you love doing best. You can try it out for free by claiming your account right here!
