What Is Social Media Engagement? The Complete Guide

10 Social Media Engagement Posts Ideas

Generating engagement on social platforms keeps your brand top-of-mind and active in the community, building trust and expanding your network. 

To achieve this, your content must spark curiosity, attention, and emotion, keeping your audience engaged. If you need inspiration, we’ve got you covered!

Here are 10 engaging post ideas you can add to your social platforms:

  1. Posts AMAs (ask me anything)
  2. Share “fill in the blanks” and “caption this” posts
  3. Create a weekly series 
  4. Run a contest or giveaway on your social media accounts
  5. Post content on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok Stories
  6. Share how-to posts and tutorials
  7. Create memes and fun posts
  8. Run social media exclusive deals
  9. Post polls and questions
  10. Promote user-generated content

Now, let’s explore them in detail!

1. Post AMAs (Ask Me Anything)

One great way to boost your engagement is through AMAs (Ask Me Anything) posts, which you can add to your social media feed or stories section. 

Encouraging your audience to connect with you by sharing their curiosities related to your brand will grow your comment section significantly. 

Here’s an example of such social media post from Radford University:

Ask me anything post

Replying to comments on the spot or a few days later are both great social media strategies to consider. Engagement grows as you keep threads active, yet coming back to a post a few days after it’s been inactive can help you get the spotlight back on.

2. Share “Fill in the Blanks” and “Caption This” Posts

Another way to boost your engaging social media posts is through “Fill in the Blanks” pop-ups, which is a type of interactive content that requires users to leave comments and sparks their interest in the process. 

Fill in the blanks Instagram post

If you’re a business and want to promote your brand, you can opt for posts like these:

  1. My favorite product from XYZ is ___.
  2. I always use XYZ’s product before ___.
  3. If I were to gift an item from XYZ to my best friend, it would be ___.
  4. The most surprising benefit of using XYZ’s product is ___.
  5. I can’t start my day without ___ from XYZ.
  6. XYZ’s product makes my life easier by ___.
  7. The first time I tried XYZ’s product, I felt ___.
  8. My go-to XYZ product for special occasions is ___.
  9. The best place to use XYZ’s product is ___.
  10. I would recommend XYZ’s product to someone who ___.

“Caption This” posts usually speak to younger audiences, as they encourage users to come up with something funny or relatable to the picture you’ve shared. 

Essentially, people will meme your post in the comment section, which can spark a lot of attention and interest from other users who find the thread funny and love your post.

3. Create a Weekly Series

To keep your audience engaged, you’ll want to post relevant and regular content. You can do so by creating weekly series. 

Here are some ideas of weekly series:

  • Create a featured product of the week
  • Share a blog post every week
  • Offer a special deal every Saturday
  • Do something similar to a throwback Thursday
  • Feature a star employee weekly

Here’s an example of weekly series:

Weekly Challenge Yoga

Essentially, anything that you can repeat every week and makes sense for your audience to find out more about is a good idea, because it enables you to stay consistent and creates a sense of anticipation among your audience.

Don’t forget to be creative and have fun with your posts on your social platforms.

4. Run a Contest or Giveaway on Your Social Media Platforms

Considering that everybody loves free stuff, social media giveaways are a great way to increase social media engagement and grow your follower base.

In exchange for likes, tags, reposts, and follows, both big and small brands agree to send out free products and services. It’s a win-win situation, and everybody loves it!

Here’s an example of a social media giveaway:

Giveaway post example

Set up a giveaway by choosing a product or service that acts as the prize, such as products from your latest collection, a free month for one of your best-selling services, or a pre-paid city break, and make a social media post about it. 

Allow some time, usually about two weeks or up to a month for your audience to engage with it and follow the steps required to enter the contest. 

When you’ve got the winner, announce it publicly and keep your end of the rope, meaning that you’re going to send out the prize. You can ask the lucky contestant to certify for you and let everyone know that you’re a trustworthy brand.

5. Post Content on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok Stories

Along with social media engagement posts, Stories are one the best ways to connect with your audience and maintain an open line of communication with your followers.

Through Stories, you get to share events and ideas to the tiniest detail, as you don’t have to prepare a post for everything you want to communicate. You can share how your day went, repost something you find relatable, or further promote other posts on your feed.

Here’s an example of Story that generates engagement:

SocialBee Instagram story

As seen above, you can use stories to engage with your audience on a deeper level by asking questions with multiple answers, doing yes or no quizzes, Q&A sessions, sharing memories, “Did You Know?” contests, or other similar stories and polls.

6. Share How-to Posts and Tutorials

Among the most popular posts on social media are tutorials and how-to posts. Essentially, these are posts that aim to educate your audience regarding your offering. 

Whether you’re a travel influencer, a food delivery company, an online clothing store, a service provider, or anything at all, tutorials are a great way to attract an active follower base and keep the ones you have loyal to you. 

Here’s an example of a social media tutorial:

How to video tutorial on instagram

Usually, a series of pictures or short videos work best when it comes to explaining to your audience how to use your product or how to do something you’re promoting.

You can either film yourself explaining a step-by-step approach or create a post dedicated entirely to this purpose.

7. Create Memes and Fun Posts

Throughout this decade, memes rose from an internet-exclusive comedy genre to a whole culture, with history and levels of depth, much like notable periods in humanity.

Although we like to joke about it, memes are one of the best ways to address the young generation.

If you want an active, engaged audience, you’ll want to pay more attention to fun content and especially social media memes. The more relatable they are, the better! 

Here’s an example of a meme you can share on social media:

chipotle meme

People react and interact with content that speaks to them on a deeper level, such as acknowledging a common struggle.

For example, if you’re a fashion retailer, you could post a picture describing a situation where you make up a whole outfit in your head, but it looks chaotic when you try it on.

Caption it with something relatable, and your social media engagement post is likely to go viral!

8. Run Social Media Exclusive Deals

Social media success depends on engagement. Boost it by connecting personally with your audience online and proving your content offers tangible benefits. Nothing drives customer loyalty more than exclusivity. 

Here are five examples of social media exclusive deals:

  • Special discounts
  • Promo codes
  • Free shipping
  • Free e-books
  • All that glaze that comes with subscribing to your posts and being loyal to your brand.

Take a look at an example of a special discount:

social media exclusive deal

People love to be repaid for their active engagement, so receiving promo codes, vouchers or additional gifts will make them feel appreciated.

Needless to say, you’ll surely help yourself in the process too, as you’ll notice a boost in sales and an increased engagement!

9. Post Polls and Questions

Polls and questions are fun ways to learn more about your followers or let them learn more about you. 

Some ideas for polls are:

  1. I am a morning person/ night owl.
  2. I usually do cereal first/ I usually pour the milk first.
  3. I prefer the right/ left dress in the picture.
  4. I’d rather go to the XYZ business for lunch/ dinner.
  5. I find the XYZ company open-minded/ conservative. 

Take a look at this poll shared by the Mailbird marketing team:

social media poll

Get creative and have fun! This is your chance to share more about yourself and gain valuable insights about your followers. Ask open-ended questions and read as many responses as possible to understand your audience better.

10. Promote User-Generated Content

User-generated content is any piece of material that comes from customers. It can be a review or testimonial, a video reply to something you’ve talked about, the product of a recipe you’ve shared, or anything similar.

Here’s an example of user-generated content:

user generated content instagram

User-generated content acts as social proof—it promotes the positive experiences other customers had with your brand. It improves credibility and encourages other prospects to give your products/services a try.

You know by now how important it is to keep your audience engaged. To help you out, here are five top-notch tools that can make your job easier.

Each of these tools offers unique features tailored for social media managers who want to spark conversations, track engagement, and keep their content fresh and exciting.

Here are our social media engagement tool recommendations:

  1. SocialBee
  2. Hootsuite
  3. BuzzSumo
  4. Sprout Social
  5. Buffer

1. SocialBee

SocialBee is a handy AI-powered tool that helps you manage social media content across different platforms.

It focuses on creating, scheduling, and recycling content, so you can keep your audience engaged without always having to come up with new stuff.

One of its coolest features is the Social Inbox, which brings together messages and comments from all your social media accounts into one dashboard. This makes it super easy to manage and respond to everything in one place, ensuring you never miss a message.

SocialBee's main app dashboard

Monitor conversations from one unified dashboard with SocialBee.

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What makes it special? Here’s a breakdown of the key social media engagement features that SocialBee offers:

  • Multi-platform support: Manage your social media tasks across a variety of platforms like Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Google Business Profile, and Bluesky. 
  • Universal posting: SocialBee allows you to plan your content for any social media platform. With Universal Posting, you can easily post on networks not directly integrated with SocialBee, like Threads, WhatsApp, Facebook groups, Mastodon, and many others.
  • Visual content calendar: Our tool helps you visually plan out your posts, giving you a clear picture of what your content schedule looks like over time. It’s perfect for ensuring you have a good mix of topics and maintaining a steady flow of posts.
  • Content categories: Keep your posts organized by sorting them into different categories based on their topics. This helps you stay on track with your content strategy and makes sure you’re covering all the bases.
  • Content customization: Fine-tune your posts for each social media platform. This means tweaking your content to match the unique style and audience of each site, which can really boost how much interaction each post gets.
  • Post expiration: Set your posts to expire after a certain time or after they’ve been shared a lot. This keeps your feed fresh and engaging by preventing old or over-shared content from lingering too long.
  • Evergreen scheduling: Automatically repost your best content at just the right times. This not only saves you time but also ensures that great posts get seen by people who might have missed them the first time around.
  • Best posting time suggestions: SocialBee can suggest the best times to post based on when your content has performed well in the past. This takes the guesswork out of scheduling and helps you hit your audience when they’re most active.
  • Social Inbox: Manage all your interactions from various platforms in one spot. This makes it much easier to keep up with messages, comments, and mentions, ensuring you don’t miss a beat in conversations with your audience.
  • Social media analytics: Dive into detailed social media analytics about how your posts are doing. You can track everything from overall engagement to how fast your follower count is growing, giving you valuable insights to fine-tune your strategy.
  • Team collaboration: Collaborate with your team seamlessly within SocialBee. Assign tasks, share feedback, and streamline your social media management process to ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

Pros: 

  • Features AI-powered tools for content creation and planning
  • Automatically recycles your top content over time
  • Organizes content into folders for varied posting schedules
  • Includes premium options like a Social Inbox and advanced analytics for a reasonable cost
  • Integrates with popular tools like Canva and Zapier
  • Offers outstanding customer support

Cons:

Pricing:

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is another favorite among social media marketers because it brings together everything you need in one spot. With this social media engagement platform, you can schedule your posts ahead of time, keep an eye on your engagement, and check how well your content is performing. 

Plus, with features like social listening and options for team collaboration, it’s really helpful for businesses that want to keep their social media performance strong. 

hootsuite dashboard

What makes it special? Hootsuite makes it easier for businesses to handle their social media interactions with its smart social inbox. This tool includes automatic language detection and smart routing, which directs incoming messages to the appropriate team member based on their relevance. 

If necessary, you can manually adjust these assignments with just a few clicks, allowing for greater control over how messages are managed.

Pros

  • Centralizes monitoring of multiple social networks
  • Allows for scheduling posts in advance
  • Provides easy access to analytics data
  • Offers social media listening capabilities

Cons

  • High pricing compared to competitors
  • Complicated user interface
  • Pricey URL shortener feature
  • Lack of content queuing tool

Pricing

3. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a powerful social media engagement tool with great features for content research, influencer marketing, and social media analytics.

It helps users discover trending content, analyze social media performance, and monitor their brand’s online presence.

buzzsumo dashboard

What makes it special? The platform’s comprehensive analytics provide detailed insights into content performance, engagement metrics, and competitor strategies.

You can track which types of content perform best and at what times, helping you refine your content strategy for maximum impact.

Pros

  • Excellent for finding trending topics and popular content
  • Helps identify key influencers in your industry
  • Provides detailed insights into content performance and engagement
  • Allows you to analyze your competitors’ content and strategies

Cons

  • Pricing can be steep for small businesses or individual users
  • Focuses more on content discovery and analysis 
  • The interface can be overwhelming for new users

Pricing

4. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is your comprehensive solution for social media management. It allows you to schedule posts, analyze performance, and effortlessly engage with your audience.

Sprout Social Analytics Dashboard

What makes it special? The social media management plaform allows businesses to monitor and analyze conversations across social platforms, providing insights into public sentiment and emerging trends.

The platform’s social listening tools enable real-time engagement, helping businesses respond promptly and effectively to their audience.

Pros

  • Intuitive and user-friendly interface
  • Robust social media management features, including scheduling, analytics, and engagement tools
  • Advanced social listening capabilities for monitoring brand mentions and industry trends
  • Excellent customer support and resources for users

Cons

  • Higher pricing compared to competitors
  • Limited customization options for reports and analytics
  • Some users may find the interface overly complex for basic tasks

Pricing

5. Buffer

Buffer is another social media engagement software ideal for entrepreneurs and small businesses aiming to boost engagement by simplifying their social media tasks. It streamlines content creation and scheduling, allowing users to efficiently plan and publish engaging content across various platforms.

buffer content calendar

What makes it special? Buffer’s interface stands out for its simplicity and ease of use compared to other digital marketing tools. Designed to be intuitive, it’s accessible for anyone looking to manage their social media presence effectively.  

Pros: 

  • User-friendly interface
  • Time-saving features
  • In-depth social media analytics
  • Great customer support

Cons: 

  • Slightly expensive
  • Doesn’t provide content categories
  • Doesn’t allow bulk media import
  • Occasional interface bugs

Pricing: 

  • Has a free plan
  • Starts at $6/month per channel

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