The general masses’ social media activities are primarily for fun and games. But it’s not the same for businesses. The race you compete with your fellow brands is an absolute cutthroat.
So how do you stand out from all your competitors? The answer is simple. By grabbing as much audience interest as possible.
However, the question that must haunt all is how to increase your social media engagement and audience. If a brand is trying to leverage prominent social media platforms for its business goals, every move on its part is made strategically.
The best way of playing it smart for any marketer is to make interactive social media posts. The prime goal is to indulge the audiences’ whims and draw them in so they engage with our fun social media engagement posts.
This blog will highlight some interactive social media post ideas for business, which will bring you likes, comments, and shares.
Table of Contents
What is Interactive Content?
Interactive content is the type that evokes a reaction from the audience. The response can be of any kind, a like, comment, share, or some specific action asked of them in the post itself.
Making interactive content is not as simple as it seems. As a marketer, you would have to have a thorough knowledge of these two things:
- Your target demographic
- Marketing objectives which you want to achieve
This will narrow down your perspective, and your social media campaign will be effective to the maximum extent. Leveraging the benefits of interactive content can benefit your business in every aspect, from customer loyalty to achieving those sales targets.
Let’s have some of those pros of having the right content online.
5 Benefits of Interactive Social Media Posts
Any social media marketer would surely know why everyone runs after those numbers regarding engagement metrics. The whole concept of visibility rests on the engagement from interactive posts for social media.
Here are the benefits as to why we netizens make all these efforts to bring in those audience engagements.
1. Inclusive Participation
Any digital marketer knows that “content is king”, be it any platform. So when your content is good, the audience is bound to interact with it. It might be a single like or comment. But know this, every single one counts in increasing your visibility.
The more people interact with your content, the better it is, which applies to all content creators. You can take references from some inspiring social media campaigns to verify that good content will get you those engagements.
2. Tap into the Audience’s Emotions
Connecting is the key. Mustering up social media campaign ideas will become a cakewalk when you know what kind of content is working on the platform. Understand what it is that your audience relates to the most.
Then create interactive post ideas that will engage your audience.
It can be funny, emotional, inspirational, or an opinion piece on a controversial topic. As long as you make them tick, know that you are reaching them and making an impression.
3. Demographic Data via Engagements
There is a point to every move a marketer makes. When people engage with your content, you come to know what they like. Their reactions are essential information that we marketers carefully collect and leverage.
Businesses nowadays can take the help of popular social media analytics tools to gain rigorous insights. This data helps us draw the reference point in our strategic roadmap. The more engagement, the more we know, and the more effective our predictions will be.
4. Brand Loyalty Boosted
The relevance of content matters to the marketer and the audience. If people see you promoting something noble or delivering a social message, the intentions of that content will reflect on your brand.
You might have seen Apple’s curated user-generated content. This has built them an identity of having superior cameras which shoot high-quality but authentic visuals. The above still is from a video ad done by Apple highlighting black photographers in the United States.
5. Spike in Traffic and Sales
If you are an online or e-commerce business, social media marketing is crucial. The primary marketing goals, i.e., brand awareness and website traffic, will get a massive boost if you optimize your social media marketing strategy accordingly.
Marketers often place CTAs strategically integrating with their interactive social media posts. If the audience engages with the content, such as when businesses embed Instagram posts on their website, they are way more likely to click on the call to action button, leading them to the seller’s website.
There are many direct and indirect advantages that creating interactive social media engagement posts will bring to your business. These apply to every social platform, though the strategy might have to be slightly tweaked, the pros are all the same.
But how to ensure that the people ARE engaging with your content?
Interesting Read: 5 Social Media Monitoring Tools for Staggering Engagement
10 Types of Interactive Social Media Post Ideas
There is a vast variety of content floating around on the internet. Here are some compelling social media engagement post types that capture your audience’s attention.
1. Test your Audience with Quizzes
If the demographic is right, quizzes can be one of the best ways to draw people in to interact. Even better if it’s a scoring quiz!
They can be trivia questions, personality quizzes, knowledge or entertainment-based true or false, or games like spin the wheel. Buzzfeed is the champ in using all quiz-based interactive posts to drive engagement most effectively.
The platform is most known for its quizzes we all have taken at some point, telling us which cartoon character is our spirit animal based on the type of coffee we like. We don’t believe in them, but we still take them because they are fun.
Using quizzes has worked wonders for Buzzfeed. Many other brands also use this interactive social media post idea to achieve those engagements. It just might click with your audience and boost your audience interactions.
2. Excite Them with Contests and Giveaways
Netizens love trying their luck. So a good old contest always seems to work when it comes to getting them to respond. Many brands use this strategy to hike up their social media engagements.
According to data, 91% of the posts on Instagram having more than 1000 likes or comments are related to contests. And pages that run contests on a regular basis tend to grow 70% faster than those that don’t. This proves the point.
A contest in itself works great, but if you pepper it with a prize or giveaway, the exponential rise of interest will surprise you. You can also excite the audience at an offline event with these giveaways by displaying a social media QR code. QR codes will give them easy access to the giveaway. Also, it will help you spread your brand’s reach and its messaging.
GoPro, being an adventurous brand, conducts contests all the time. One of their notable ones would be the #GoProMillionDollarChallenge. The brand had asked its audience to submit videos of their active lives, shot with the newly launched HERO 7 Black.
The brand had offered a million dollars to the winner. But going with the huge number of entries and GoPro’s values, they selected multiple winners. All of them ended up sharing the prize equally and got featured on the brand’s Instagram profile.
3. Crunch Some Numbers with Appealing Infographics
Visual content is always better at drawing people’s attention than any basic text, especially in social media. The data reveals that people retain 80% of what they see and only 20% of what they read.
Infographics are an excellent way to engage the audience and help them retain our content. Using them makes your posts more easily digestible. Imagine the data given below as simple sentences. It would have hardly looked as interesting as this illustration does.
If you present some form of data in the infographic format, the probability of them being interested or interacting with the post will automatically increase. For example, you can use Instagram reel stats on your infographics if you post about Instagram growth.
Interactive social media posts include infographics in the form of click-throughs to other landing pages, pop-ups, informative content, etc. Even quizzes and contests can use interactive infographics to make a bunch of fun interactive posts.
4. Periodic Series to Get those Recurring Visits
You might have seen creators making their content in series with a common theme. This can be on a weekly or monthly basis. If the concept of the series appeals to the audience, they will come back to check out the post next in line and keep coming back.
The above post is from the beauty brand Clinique which posts make-up tutorial posts every Monday. This is an excellent way of boosting user engagement with your post. The trick is to reel them in, and tuning into your content will become a habit for them!
To keep track of the regular posting, you can use social media content calendar tools. Plan out the episodes beforehand so you don’t miss posting that day when your audience is waiting for it.
5. Seek Audience Opinion with Polls and Surveys
Netizens feel more involved in your social media campaign ideas if you can make them believe that what they say makes a difference. And this feeling of involvement will encourage engagement and interest on their part.
Surveys and polls can involve any topic.
You might ask them what sort of look might suit your office, or it might be something as important as a change needed for your product or any current happenings in the industry or even the world.
Polls and surveys are effective as interactive social media posts, and depending on the question or the context, you might end up gathering important insights into public opinion. You can even showcase the results of your surveys via Google Forms to help your audience.
6. Let Them Know You Better with Q&A Sessions
Aside from knowing your audience, you must let them in on some information about you and your business. This interactive post idea will familiarize you with the people and hike up their interests.
You can let them ask you questions and selectively answer some of them publicly. If you are flooded with questions, know that you have been noticed and roused public curiosity.
7. Sneak Peek with Teasers and Announcements
Teasers and sneak peeks work wonders to increase the audience’s interest. It can be minor hints or countdown clocks.
Think of the incoming engagement interactive posts for social media will bring but do maintain a certain mystery around the campaign.
Drop snippets of information, revealing as little as possible but keep on reminding them. So when the actual post or content drops, its engagement will shoot through the roof.
Most movies are promoted this way, creating a buzz before any actual trailer is dropped.
8. Pull A Broad Smile with Jokes and Memes
Humorous and fun social media engagement posts are also ideal for drawing netizens’ attention. Memes are one of the most abundant content on social media.
You can complement your content with funny jokes and memes, but remember it has to match your pre-existing brand identity’s theme. This will also help you build brand awareness effectively. McDonald’s has always marketed itself with the online image of humor and fun. Here is their recent meme regarding the flavor and strength of their Sprite. This goes in perfect harmony with their vibe.
9. Go Live for On Spot Engagement
Live streams are the most direct mode of engagement through interactive posts for social media platforms. This feature is available on almost every social platform.
Famous social media influencers and even celebrities often live-stream, and millions of viewers join the session to chat directly and drop comments on the stream. And it’s not just sitting and conversing. People live stream while doing certain activities like traveling, unboxing a product, and even cooking.
For example, if you are looking to market your restaurant, live streaming while cooking is a great option, and you can refer to Live-cook’s channel on YouTube for the same.
Live streams also host productive sessions like webinars and discussions by collaborating with other personalities right there. This is as direct as online conversations with the masses go.
Beauty brands like Sephora use Instagram live sessions as a go-to marketing tactic. They talk about their products, chat with the audience, and often invite celebrities to promote the brand.
10. Teach’em with How-to’s
DIY and tutorial content is well-loved by the audience these days. The trend of teaching oneself with the help of online videos is a familiar concept now. People don’t ask others about simple tasks. They simply watch tutorials and do it themselves.
These clips might range from “How to boil water” or “How to become a successful digital marketer” and so much more. We all know how popular make-up tutorials are among the young female audience.
Tutorials are used as short-form content, a series, or long-form video. It depends on the brands and their requirements.
As a brand, you can produce videos and blog posts related to your industry and product-related things, showing people how to use them.
Social media marketing for a brand is a tricky business. If the style and theme of your branding differ in every social channel, you won’t be able to create a concrete brand identity, and your marketing efforts and all that engagement will go in vain.
We can’t define any definite outline for every type of industry or even company. The kind of content we have listed above will bring you traffic, but you have to keep the whole of your strategy on every platform in harmony.
To help you streamline your social media marketing management, you might need a little help. Here’s how you get it.
Top 6 Tools to Publish Interactive Social Media Posts
Social media marketing automation tools are your answers to all those marketing challenges you face as a professional marketer. An all-rounder tool will take care of all aspects of your social media campaigns, such as posting, content curation, social listening, analytics, etc.
Here are the top 5 tools for a hassle-free social media marketing experience:
- SocialPilot: Social media management tool
- Canva: Graphic designing tool
- Keyhole: Social listening tool
- Google Analytics: Analytics tool
- Promo: Video editing tool
- Paraphraser: Content optimization tool
The point to be noted here is that all these tools have specific expertise and are not affordable for smaller companies or solopreneurs. In that case, go with an all-rounder who looks after all aspects of your social media marketing. SocialPilot is a great tool that offers excellent features at more economical pricing, so it is a great option to start with.
Interesting Read: 5 Affordable Content Marketing Tools That Every Marketer Must Have
Conclusion
If you want to garner some attention from netizens, interactive social media posts are the way to go. But being a social media marketer, you have to keep in mind that not all engagement is good engagement.
Identify your target demographic as precisely as possible. It makes creating practical social media post ideas for business easy. This will bring the most relevant traffic and achieve your marketing objectives.
We hope this blog post helped you to grasp the concept of interactive social media posts to boost engagement and what type of content works best for this purpose. For more insightful content, keep an eye on this space. And if you have some insights of your own to share, do consider writing for us.
Frequently Asked Questions
🌟 How do I make social media posts interactive?
To make social media posts interactive, you must first identify your target audience. Understanding their preference is very important. After that, create content that is relevant to your online brand image. Here are some types of content that have proven effective in engaging the people:
- Quizzes and polls
- Tagging friends
- Contests and giveaways
- Infographics
- Weekly or monthly content series
- Surveys
- Open Q&As
- Teasers and sneak peeks
- Jokes and memes
- Live-streams
- DIYs
🌟 What is the most interactive social media?
Facebook, to date, remains the most popular social media channel. It has 2.9 billion monthly active users. It has the advantage of being an early entrant in the social media scene and hosts the largest demographic of the population. More than 200 million businesses use FB tools to promote their business. A tremendous amount of engagement on Facebook comes from Interaction posts.
🌟 What are interactive posts?
Interactive posts are the content posted online that prompt a reaction from the audience who encounter it. They can be any posts that get any form of engagement, such as likes, comments, views, shares, or answers if the post is asking a question.
🌟 What are the most engaging Facebook posts?
Facebook is the leader amongst social media platforms with a considerable share of monthly users. When it comes to engagement, interactive social media posts are the best way to go. Facebook interactive posts include:
- Images, funny and interesting
- Relatable quotes
- Infographics
- An emotional story
- Videos
- Sharing trending content
- Live streams
🌟 How can I be interactive on social media?
To be interactive on social media, you have first to understand the landscape, the type of content that works in your target audience. You can then start posting engaging posts. Remember to be regular with your posting. Netizens have very short attention spans. You should also share user-generated content to leverage their benefits as well. Participate in challenges and popular trends.