How to Boost Shares, Views and Follows on Social Media

In the digital age, social media has become a key player in the world of marketing. It's not just a platform for sharing photos and updates; it's a powerful tool for businesses looking to expand their reach and engage with their audience on a deeper level. For small business owners, content creators, and social media managers, mastering the art of increasing social media engagement can result in significant growth and brand visibility. In this article, we'll explore effective strategies to boost shares, views, and followers, with a particular focus on hosting social media contests.

Understand Your Audience

Before you start crafting content, it's crucial to understand who your audience is. Knowing your audience's demographics, interests, and behaviors can help tailor your content to meet their needs. Utilize analytics tools on platforms like Facebook Insights or Instagram Analytics to gather data about your current followers. This information will guide your content creation process and ensure your posts resonate with your audience.

Create High-Quality Content

Content is the backbone of any social media strategy. To boost social media KPIs, focus on creating high-quality, engaging content that adds value to your audience's lives. Here’s how:

• Visual Appeal: Use high-resolution images and videos. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok thrive on visually appealing content.
• Authentic Storytelling: Share stories about your brand's journey, successes, and challenges. Authenticity helps build trust and reliability.
• Value Addition: Offer insights, tips, or educational content that your audience finds helpful. This encourages your audience to share your content with others.

Why Social Media Contests Are a Game-Changer

Social media contests are becoming increasingly popular—and for good reason. According to Tailwind, Instagram profiles that host a contest or giveaway can grow 70% faster than those that don't. With the right strategy, contests can be an effective way to boost social media engagement and increase followers. But how can you ensure your contest is successful? Let's break it down:

The Truth About Follower Verification

When it comes to boosting followers, many brands run comment-to-enter contests with rules that require participants to like and comment on the post, and follow the page. But here's a crucial insight—third-party platforms can't verify if someone follows your page due to Meta's restrictions. Surprisingly, many Instagram users don't know this! Why bother asking for a follow, then? Because it works! The Milgram Experiment, replicated in 2009, showed that about 70% of participants would follow through with a task if instructed—an insight that applies here, too.

How to Run a Comment-to-Enter Contest Effectively:

1. Create an eye-catching post explaining the giveaway and rules.
2. During the contest period, enjoy the surge in shares, follows, and engagement.
3. When selecting winners, use a tool like ShortStack to import comments and randomly select a winner.
4. Manually verify the winner(s) completed all necessary steps and announce them. If a selected winner did not complete the steps required to win, simply choose a new winner. 

Tracking and Verifying Actions

Engagement doesn't stop at follows. Incentivizing shares, video views, and page visits can significantly amplify your reach. While third-party sites can track click-through rates, verifying final actions like following a TikTok page can be tricky. Instead of relyin on only click-through rates, use analytics such as GA4 or Pixels on your website to monitor traffic and engagement changes. These analytics will provide a more in-depth view of how long visitors are spending on your site and what pages they are visiting. Additionally, consider implementing points-for-actions campaigns using platforms like ShortStack, which offer rewards for watching videos to a specific point, ensuring complete views.

ShortStack’s Points-for-Actions template awards entrants additional entries, or points, for completing specific tasks. Common tasks include visiting website pages, watching videos, and encouraging follows on social media. 

Incentivizing Sharing and Collecting New Leads

Using contests to generate new leads is a fantastic way to expand your audience. Consider a refer-a-friend contest, which encourages current fans to share your contest with their network.

Most refer-a-friend contests use a unique URL that entrants can share with their friends and family. By using a unique URL, the original entrant can be rewarded with additional entries to the contest for every new entry. Keep in mind that the refer-a-friend contests can not track how many times someone shares your campaign to their network, but rather how many additional entries the original person can collect. 

Refer-a-friend contest are a breeze with ShortStack. Simply enable refer-a-friend for your campaign, and let the additional entries roll in. 

 Conclusion

Boosting social media engagement isn't as daunting as it seems. By hosting contests and incentivizing actions and sharing, you can significantly increase your platform's reach and impact. Remember, all social media contests should adhere to each platform's terms of service to avoid penalties. For example, incentivizing likes on Facebook is against their Promotion Guidelines and could result in a ban of your business page. 

With these strategies in your toolkit, you're well on your way to mastering social media engagement and driving meaningful growth for your brand. Ready to start your next contest? Let's see those likes, shares, and follows soar!

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