Social media has an undeniable grip on our lives. What began as a tool for connectivity has evolved into a multifaceted platform with opportunities for networking, marketing, and entertainment. We flock to it reflexively, our hands reaching towards our phones first thing in the morning and throughout the day for everything. From news updates to family photos and messages from friends to brand notifications, social media has become something we depend on.
With social media’s extensive reach to a diverse audience, brands with an excellent track record in content creation are more successful in engaging and retaining their audience’s attention. Recent studies have found that 73% of businesses opt for social media to distribute their content due to its efficacy in reaching and interacting with audiences naturally. The resulting increase in brand visibility is a huge driver for interest and sales.
As social media delivers content to users 24/7, you will need to capture your audience’s attention and cut through the noise. Whether you’re a professional working in social media or a brand seeing dips in your social presence, this blog outlines how you can increase social media engagement by using persuasive design and converting it into tangible business revenue.
How Persuasive Design Makes Social Media So Addictive
To build substantial and sustainable engagement, it’s important to understand why people keep coming back to scroll and post on social media.
Persuasive design practices, or UI/UX design, enhance user engagement and and keep us hooked onto social media platforms. Features such as likes, comments, and shares are designed to keep us engaged by gamifying social interactions into a reward system. This system offers users digital validation and keeps us coming back for the next dopamine hit.
Good UI/UX interfaces are also designed to make it easy for algorithms to read and process data, forming a digital architecture that continuously feeds you content that you find interesting, which further adds to doomscrolling. With an endless stream of content appearing as you scroll, it becomes increasingly difficult to tear yourself away. In other words, the more you scroll, the more personalised social media becomes.
Ways to Improve Your Social Media Engagement Levels
It’s important to understand that social media is the beating heart of your brand’s digital presence. The biggest mistake you can make is to only use it for marketing without connecting and engaging with your global audience. Here are a few ways you can provide value and create a positive experience for your followers:
Capitalise on the Visual Nature of Social Media
The introduction of infinite scrolling has undoubtedly encouraged user engagement by populating an endless stream of content, but it has also significantly impacted attention spans. To capture and retain the attention of your target audience as they scroll, it’s essential to create a content plan with a good mix of formats: videos, interactive elements, images, and more.
For example, you can repurpose an existing report into a carousel post with bite-sized infographics for each image and a video featuring the key findings to convey the information to your audience.
Use a content calendar to plan, organise, and strategise your content, before taking a big-picture look to ensure that your formats are diversified. By experimenting with a variety of content that appeals to different consumption behaviours and checking performance by A/B testing, you can better understand your audience’s preferences. These insights give you a better idea of how to align your content with what grabs their attention. Engaging professional social media content services can further help you in executing this strategy.
Gamify Brand Interactions for Community Building
Engagement is gold in the social media space, so take a page from social media’s persuasive design features and gamify your own content. By implementing a “reward system” for user engagement, you can foster a relationship with your followers and create a brand that is built on collaboration and partnerships, epitomising effective brand-building.
The key to this type of community building is user-generated content (UGC), the holy grail of social marketing. Not only is it considered credible brand amplification, it’s also an excellent source of relatable and fun content that helps you get to know your audience better.
Start by regularly incorporating interactive elements such as polls and Q&As to encourage user participation. Over time, incentivise these interactions with reposts, giveaways, or contests to make the experience rewarding for your community.
Harness the Dopamine Effect
Associated with feelings of pleasure, dopamine is what drives our social media behaviour. The chemical is released when we have successful social interactions, such as scoring ‘likes’ from our online friends and watching entertaining content. This surge of dopamine makes people want to return to social media time and time again.
Similarly, you can employ a dopamine-inducing content plan for your brand to strengthen loyalty. Stay on the lookout for trending content and leverage the topics or formats by incorporating them into your brand’s narrative.
For example, you could reference this week’s hot topic to add that thrill of recognition and stay relatable to your audience. Go the extra mile to delight your followers by responding to their comments. A positive interaction can result in digital validation and foster a sense of belonging, enhancing your social media engagement efforts.
As these efforts can take up significant time and bandwidth, you can also consider engaging a PR company in Singapore for support to help you do this on a regular basis.
Boost Your Brand’s Growth Through Social Media
When used effectively, persuasive design in social media can be used to understand and capitalise on your target audience’s tendencies. In turn, you can effectively and intuitively guide customers towards your brand.
Cultivating an engaged following is a long-term strategy that affords no shortcuts, but it’s immensely gratifying. With the right tactics and strategies, it’s possible to dominate the digital landscape by creating a cohesive content plan with a focus on visual appeal, interaction, and relevance. Above all, always remember that your followers, lurkers, and fans hold the key to your brand’s success. It would be in your brand’s best interests to prioritise them by tailoring content to their needs and preferences. By embracing these strategies and interacting meaningfully with your audience, you can turn your brand’s social media presence into a dynamic hub of engagement and growth, beyond just marketing.
Need a communications agency in Singapore to help you break into social media, build meaningful connections, or revitalise your brand’s digital presence? Talk to us at [email protected]