9 Reasons Your Social Media Engagement Isn't Growing

As a female entrepreneur looking to grow your online business, maintaining the right amount of social media attention can be a daunting task. Putting out engaging and exciting content every day with no new follow or, worse, no likes can also be disappointing.

But social media can have a significant impact on the growth of your online business, so you need to keep showing up. In this article, I have highlighted nine possible reasons why your social media engagement isn't improving and how to fix this. Let's dive right in!

1# You Are Not Targeting the Right Audience

Creating content for the wrong audience is like pouring water on a hard rock because they can’t relate to the content. This applies whether you are trying to reach them organically or through paid ads. 

You need to identify who your target audience really is and if you're using paid ads, make sure to study analytics properly before you set up campaigns to avoid losing money. 

The easiest way around this is creating buyer personas, this would help you picture what a day in their lives looks like. If you think you've found your problem right here and you need to go back and do some groundwork around your ideal customers, you can download my Free Guide to help you find clarity and a  better understanding about what your target audience wants and needs. I've created a very useful guide that you can print out and use to define your very own ideal customer. 

Spare no details and dig deep at every question. The more details you compile about your Ideal Customers (and target audience), the easier it will be to build a community around your brand and convert your followers into raving fans and, of course, paying customers.

2# Your Content Isn’t Providing Value

Valuable content should be educative, informative, inspirational, interesting, and most importantly, helpful to your audience. If your content isn’t any of these then your social media engagement might suffer.

An effective way to provide value is to create content that sparks emotion in your audience. This is where you channel your "feminine energy" and make your audience feel. They need to relate not only to what you are talking about but also directly to who you are, and how you present yourself. Your pieces of content should speak to them directly and address their pain points and needs. Do this and watch your engagement grow.

3# You Are Using Too Many Platforms

Just because you can own accounts on different social media platforms doesn't mean you should. As a female entrepreneur, you should focus on platforms that would help you gain a wider reach, and you feel comfortable (and delighted) using them.

For example, if you own a yoga studio, you might want to focus on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest to reach a wider audience instead of Reddit or Quora. If you are a corporate business coach, you might want to spend more time on LinkedIn. Do you get it?

4# You Are Not Optimizing Your Content

Let's say you narrowed it down to fewer social platforms and you still don't get engagement. Have you tried optimizing your content on these platforms? 

There are different strokes for different platforms. Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter work with algorithms, so you should create content that aligns with these algorithms to help push out your content.

Also, add the necessary hashtags, and use relevant images, catchy headlines, and captions. Then do a proper review on your social media platforms to make sure it represents your brand voice. But remember, But remember, the algorithm is not everything. At the end of the day, you should create content that speaks to your audience and is aligned with you and your business. That should always be your top priority. 

5# You Are Using Cross-Platform Auto-posts

Using cross-platform auto posts can also affect engagement because you get to post the same content everywhere! This is a no-no. This could feel like spam for customers who follow you on all platforms. There should always be uniqueness in each post you make across different platforms. Not an entirely different message but content that fits into the environment you are making that post for.

6# You Are Posting at the Wrong Time of the Day

Since you create content for your audience, you should be strategic when scheduling posts. Study your audience to know when they would be actively online, this is when you should publish your content.

Although this might need some experimenting at first and you would have to post at random times to measure the impressions, engagements, and likes you would get at different times. 

You can use social media management platforms like Loomly or Tailwind to achieve good results.

7# You Are Making Everything About Money and Sales

Take a scroll through the posts you have shared recently or in the past. Have you been too salesy?

No one enjoys being sold to. If you have been doing this repeatedly, you have to tone it down. Try to appeal to your target audience's human side and create content that would be valuable to them instead. After you have done this, you can then introduce your services. Remember, you should create and add value well before you intend on selling anything. 

8# You Are Posting the Same Content Repeatedly

Reposting old content may be easier, especially if you are trying to hype a promo but this could bore out your audience. Remember, the aim is to keep them glued to what you post. 

Instead of repeating contents, look for other ways to relay that same message. Get creative, and pull out ideas to make your content much more appealing.

9# No Call-to-Action (CTAs)

CTAs guide your audience and tell them what to do next. It could be a save or like for Instagram users, A "like and share" on Facebook, or leaving a comment on your blog. By using CTA's you can easily get feedback from your followers. 

You can also leverage the social influence of your followers to get their friends to engage with your content using CTAs. The secret to using the right CTA's is by aligning them with your goal to gain more engagement.

These are nine possible reasons your social media engagement isn't improving and a few changes would help fix them. Meanwhile, always remember that the interest of your audience comes first when creating content. In the meantime, if you need more information about why it's important to know your Ideal Customers in great detail, read this recent post about Why Knowing your Ideal Customer is Key to Generating Leads.