Audience & The Importance of Engagement

 I feel lucky to have started with Crave Doughnuts and assisting their growth on social media. When I took it on, we had literally just started our journey as a small business. Over the past two years I've learned a lot with regards to posting but mostly in the power of our audience and engagement. For me it was important that our growth happen organically. I didn't want to have to "bribe" to get followers or constantly post contests or take the easy route out. I wanted these customers to WANT to follow us and STAY on. 

We are very active on Instagram and Facebook and consistently engage our audience on both platforms. Each month we come out with new flavours and prior to the new menu coming out we play a bit of a game with our audience to see if they can guess the flavours. Over time, our audience has come to enjoy these clues and I've noticed engagement levels skyrocketing during these few days. Below is an example for some clues we did recently both on Facebook & Instagram: 

If you're curious the answers to these clues are "Ferrero Rocher & Matcha Raspberry" ;) 

Over the years, I've learned in the power of engaging our audience through our stories which is a great way to bring them to our profile and follow us. 

We also take advantage of the poll/question feature on Instagram stories: 

Not only is this an effective way to engage our audience but it also helps us as a team to understand what our customers like and what may not be working. According to Kristy Bolsinger's article on "What Kind of Content to Publish and Share"  she mentions the importance of asking for help. She mentions "We as a brand have earned their allegiance by building value and investment into the relationship and once that has been established the audience will gladly reciprocate."

WANT higher engagement? BE CONSISTENT! 

Both brands I work with used to have the mentality that posting everyday was crucial to their business. Over time we've come to realize that it's not completely necessary and it's more important to post quality over quantity. Looking at insights can show you when each account is most active and see what posts do really well and which do not. Timing is absolutely essential to get the most likes, comments, saves and visits to your page. For Crave, posting right before 9 am (EST) is the most effective. This is right before their orders on their site go up and is most likely a time a lot of our key demographic (25-34 years old) are on their way to work or about to start work and have some spare time. Below is an example of a post that did really well for us by posting at the right time and one we posted only an hour or so later that still did well but not really what we hoped for.

This post was done at the most optimum time and as you can see it did very well!

Below is an equally well done photo but just posted a few hours later...

Overall, I've learned that having an engaged audience is key to success on social media. Finding what engages your audience is key to retainment, organic reach and following. Being consistent with timing and regularly looking at insights can help boost your posts!

Thanks for reading!

Feel free to give Crave Doughnuts a follow on Instagram and Facebook! 

Melanie

REFERENCES 

Bolsinger, Kristy, Staff Moz. (2020). What Kinds of Content to Publish and Share. Retrieved from: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-social-media/best-practices