When you write social media posts, you might be thinking that you really have no idea how it’s going to perform. After all, you’re usually not wading through the metrics to evaluate historical performance. You just want to make sure that your promo, new service or new team member is seen by everyone possible.

With Facebook and Instagram especially, the algorithm places heavy emphasis on engagement. So if you want your posts to appear in more newsfeeds, you’ll have to garner some likes, comments and shares right away.

Don’t fret. We’ve got you covered. Here are 5 quick ways to increase your social media engagement:

1. Post to more than one platform

We don’t want to give you more to do here, but the fact is that the more places you post, the more eyeballs that are going to see it. Facebook and Instagram are making it easier than ever to share not only to your newsfeed, but also to Stories.

When you’re sharing an Instagram Story, it will ask if you’d also like to share to your Facebook Story. When you post to Instagram, all you need to do is click “share” and you will have the option to share to Facebook as well.

Here’s a screenshot of what we mean:

If you don’t mind having the same content on each channel, this is a real time-saver. Here’s more from Instagram about sharing across platforms and how to do it.

2. Create & REPURPOSE content

We love to remind you to work smarter, not harder—especially when it comes to marketing. Social media is an especially great place to repurpose your content that garnered lots of engagement or to simply post others’ content (with credit, of course) to develop a more consistent brand presence.

Here are the most recent posts for #massagetherapy on Instagram. Notice anything? LOTS OF CONTENT IDEAS! Social media doesn’t have to be a headache. It can also be a huge source of inspiration.

Pro tip: using hashtags increase your opportunity to be found by people searching for new content and also increase the likelihood that you will end up on the “Discover” tab. Discover is a feature Instagram uses to help people find new stuff they’d be interested in.

How does it figure out what to show you in Discover? It’s all based on what you search for and engage with the most. (Are you seeing a pattern here?)

3. Ask for action

There is an adage that says, “If you want something, ask for it.” Social media is very noisy and people might not know exactly what you want them to do. Ask for the like, tell them to click the link in your bio, ask for the share and ask for the comment. And no, it doesn’t have to come off desperate.

Simply finish your post with “Share if you loved this!” or “Have you had experience with this? Share with me in the comments!” Yes, it really is that simple. If you find that Facebook and Instagram are too noisy for you, LinkedIn and Pinterest are also great platforms to put up educational content and build a network of engaged potential clients.

4. Proactively engage with others

Social media is a living, breathing organism and finding little pockets of community is actually quite easy if you spend some time diving in. It’s not always enough just to reply to comments that you get.

If you engage with other people and brands similar to yours, they’ll want to return the favor.

That means going out and finding those brands to follow and engage with. They don’t have to be other bodyworkers, but keep your mentality and field in mind. For example, you might personally like baseball, but you don’t want to use your business page to go commenting on a bunch of ESPN and MLB content. The algorithm will then determine this is what you’re interested in and serve you more of that. Save that for your personal account.

Use your business account to curate meaningful connections with like-minded professionals and potential clients.

You might have to go looking for them, but they are there.

5. Be consistent

In January 2019, Facebook published that half of Instagram’s 1 billion users used Stories every day. That’s 500 million people! About the same amount use Facebook Stories every day too.

Because it is saturated with content, the platforms are designed to only show the most relevant ads, stories and posts to you. They determine this by what you’re engaging (and not engaging) with.

The same goes for your current and potential clients. If you’re consistently posting and garnering engagement, it will continue to show your posts on those people’s feeds. If you are inconsistent, however, your engagement can drop and you will show up less and less.

So there you have it: 5 quick tips for increasing your social engagement and writing more meaningful posts. If you’re taking the time to write it, you want it to be seen. Give these a try and let us know how it goes!