Engagement vs Followers on Social Media: Which is Truly More Important?

Gaining followers is an important part of having social media presence, but many individuals and businesses place too much worth on the number of people following their accounts.

At the same time, these businesses tend to ignore the level of engagement and interaction that followers have with their content.

Unfortunately, having a massive number of followers on different platforms barely matters if your content has very few people interacting with it.

Engagement is a crucial part of social media success, as it references the quality of your relationship with your audience. If your work encourages only a few people to interact with it, your business has not garnered any interest.

How To Improve Engagement

If your business accounts have a lot of followers, there are several things you can do in order to improve engagement from your audience.

The first step involves creating high-quality content. If you’re hoping to have your audience interact with the posts and videos you create, be sure to present them with information that they’re going to find interesting. Bland, low-effort content cannot make up for quality, no matter how many pieces you post.

Next, become more familiar with your audience and learn more about their active time on different social media platforms. For example, if you notice that you have more followers online in the middle of the workweek on a given platform, schedule your content to post during active times.

Remember, active times may vary significantly from platform to platform. Keep an eye on your audience across several platforms.

Finally, consider the dedicated, engaged followers you already have. What sort of content do they respond to? Be aware of what your audience is interested in and formulate content based on their degree of interaction.

A low-effort piece of content might earn you 100,000 one-word comments, but something worth reading is going to garner genuine engagement. It’s far more important to have audience engagement than it is to have a large number of followers.

Businesses can buy followers and rely on bots to boost these numbers, but authentic audience engagement is a clear indication of your relationship with your customer base.