.jpeg)
Although brands' investments in social media are growing, investments in engaging and interactive content are not growing at the same rate. For this article, we explored the social media channels of Finland's most respected brands listed by Kauppalehti: according to the average engagement rate of the most respected brands' last 20 posts, it was 1.35% on Instagram. When diving into Facebook, the number drops to around 0.05-0.3% with only a few brilliant exceptions. We can therefore state that the content does not particularly interest or appeal to the audience.
The original purpose of social media was to democratize media and enable direct connection between consumers and brands with their audiences. Currently, however, the situation on social media resembles the traditional setup again, where brands produce advertisements to channels and pay technology companies like Meta, TikTok, or Google for advertising.
It's easy to blame social media algorithms or claim that brands or commercialism simply don't interest people on social media. However, the root cause is not in the aforementioned, but rather in the fact that brands do not produce content interesting enough to their audiences on social channels or attempt to build dialogue with their audience. The content resembles one-way communication, which doesn't work on the social media playing field.
Brands don't compete on social media for consumers' attention solely against their competitors, but consumers' time is also divided among social media content creators and different media outlets. For a brand to build an impressive audience relationship on social media, it must offer interesting and competitive content through its social channels. The consumer's most important single reason to follow a brand or content creator on social media is interesting, engaging content.
1. Be where your target audience is too
The most important thing for creating an engaged audience relationship is to choose the most relevant distribution channels for your target audience. Too often, the choice of channels is guided by ingrained perceptions rather than verified data. For example, YouTube is no longer just youth media: 72% of all Finns aged 18-64 actively use YouTube. It's also not advisable to limit efforts to a single channel, but to utilize content across multiple channels as much as possible. Alongside more established channels, it can be useful to at least test newer social platforms for marketing purposes, such as podcasts, TikTok, or Pinterest – depending on where your desired target audience can be reached best.
2. Provide a reason to follow
After choosing distribution channels, a brand's social media content production is best started by asking why anyone would follow the brand on social media. Consumers must be offered some interesting brand promise through the content, which also materializes in practice.
Interesting and regular content production is the best way to keep consumers engaged with a brand's content and commit to the brand outside of social media during purchase situations. Regular content production also supports that famous social media algorithm as the audience keeps returning to the content and engaging with posts.
According to research, the biggest reason for stopping to follow a brand on social media is publishing content too frequently and content that is too commercial. As mentioned earlier, content that interests the audience is the most important glue to engage consumers with a brand. In content production, it's important to find a good balance between audience-serving content and commercial messages.
Where possible, it's worth creating content types or formats based on content themes for social channels, so that the brand's entire social presence has a clear common thread. This also makes content production more efficient and easier to plan: constantly bombarding with commercial messages does not serve the brand, but can instead alienate the consumer and push brand perception in a more negative direction.
To achieve engagement with your target audience, the brand must have genuine dialogue with its audience. Superficial and scripted conversation is not enough; the brand must also offer concrete actions to create interaction. Interaction can be increased, for example, by bringing customer service on social media into video format, i.e., responding to audience comments "TikTok-style" on other social platforms as well. This increases both openness and interaction, and brings the brand genuinely closer to consumers.
Reactive, spontaneous, and not-too-serious interaction with the audience also makes the brand more approachable and human to consumers.
Although content and its interestingness is the most important cornerstone of building an effective social presence, engaging content alone is not enough – the content must also reach a sufficient audience and serve the brand's business goals.
Interesting content enables the creation of an engaged audience relationship, from which accumulated data can be utilized for business and commercial purposes. For example, organic content should be distributed to a wider audience through sponsorship, and content production should be supported with more tactical messages by utilizing so-called "dark posts" or purely paid advertising.
