As an influencers or brand it can be quite tempting; buying fake likes, reactions or followers. Such strategies often have an opposite effect though. As soon as followers realize you’re cheating them, you quickly lose credibility and followers will run away. Besides that, fake followers are practically of no value. Not the sheer number, but the level of commitment of the followers is the key to success for an influencer marketing campaign. Therefore, it makes much more sense to carefully build up a genuinely engaged fan base and have a lot of interaction with your followers. How do you create engagement in a natural way?
Why is engagement so important?
Engagement can be roughly (but not entirely) described as the commitment that the follower has to an influencer or brand and the way he or she participates. It can be measured by looking at the way someone is actively involved in posts by liking, responding to or sharing them.
Engagement is very important for brands. It indicates first and foremost that the followers are real. In addition to that, posts that receive a lot of responses are more credible. Engagement also starts the followers to identify themselves with the brand or products that the influencer promotes. As a result, people are much more likely to make a purchase and will often stay loyal to the brand. Besides that, committed followers increase the reach of posts by spreading them further on social media or through word of mouth.
How influencers can create engagement
But how do you create engagement? First of all, it is important that engagement comes naturally. An influencer can encourage this by creating honest, recognizable and exciting content that attracts attention on social media. That is why it is very important that the influencer builds a person brand. This makes the content easy to recognize and characteristic for the particular influencer, which gives followers the feeling they have a connection with the influencer.
It is also crucial to encourage interaction. Ask followers to respond to your posts and – more important- talk to them personally. Answer questions and respond to comments. By starting dialogues with followers they get personally involved with the content. You can also encourage conversations between followers by creating content that requires interaction, for example by starting polls.
To ensure that every post gets as much attention as possible, cross-promotion is very important. When you post a message on one social media channel, it is important to share it as well on other platforms. Not all followers are active on every platform after all.
Additionaly, the use of tags is very important to make sure that the message gets spread further. Tag brands that appear in the content. This increases the chance of followers or brands themselves reposting the content.
Commitment important
While it is tempting to buy fake followers, this is generally not very effective. Your influencer will most likely lose his credibility, while fake followers just have very little value. Real and engaged followers on the other hand, confirm the reliability of the influencer. They ensure a wider reach and ultimately realize much higher conversion rates. The level of commitment is therefore more important than just the number of followers. That is why as an influencer, marketeer or brand you can better focus on producing high-quality content.
