Marketers it's time for some spring cleaning on social media

SM spring cleaningWe are in the midst of a crisis and no I’m not talking about the economy or politics, I’m referring to a social media engagement crisis.

According to research and consulting firm Forrester, per-follower interaction rates on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus have drastically fallen in the last year. The only social media platform that showed growth in engagement was Facebook, but Forrester attributes this to paid advertisements on posts.

What’s odd is that followers and numbers of posts have actually skyrocketed in the past year. Forrester recently conducted a study of how the top 50 global brands market use social media platforms. The study included 11.8 million user interactions on 2,489 posts made by 249 brand profiles.

The research found that the top brands on average have 18.1 million Facebook followers, which is double what it was in 2014. In addition, the average number of Instagram followers reached just over 1 million—five times higher than last year. Lastly, follower counts on Twitter and Google Plus have almost doubled.

Forrester also shows that marketers are posting more than ever. The top 50 brands post 18.3 times a week on Twitter and 6.5 times per week on Facebook (on average), which is more than 2014. On Instagram, brands post on average four times per week—a 50 percent increase over last year.

So what is going on? Followers and posts have risen and yet engagement has dropped.

This lack of engagement indicates the challenge of cutting through the noise – more low quality, poorly targeted content is not the answer. With all these social media platforms engagement starts, appropriately enough, with engaging content. Marketers need to put in the extra effort to create content that will resonate with audiences. Moreover, it’s important to carefully adapt your content to be appropriate for each social media channel.

It’s vitally important for a brand to interact and engage with its audience. Why have thousands of followers if they’re not interacting with you? If you don’t have great content in your posts, people won’t engage and isn’t that what’s important?

So what do we at McKenzie Worldwide suggest? For starters, try introducing guest contributors – experts and luminaries with a real point of view. Ask probing questions to get people to respond, engage and comment on your posts. Make each post interesting and about something timely that will get people talking. Focus on the quality of the content first and foremost and engagement will happen. It’s all about building a connected community and a positive culture.

Is it time for some “spring cleaning” to clean up your social media programs? Give us a call to learn more about how we can help you boost engagement with your audiences.

Jessica Bettendorf

Author: Jessica Bettendorf