Social media engagement has tanked? You ain’t alone

If I had a dollar for the amount of times we’ve received SOS’ from our beloved online community in the last 3’ish months along the lines of, “halp TDP, my reach-slash-engagement has nose-dived! What do I doooooooo?” … I’d genuinely own my own private island right about now.

You think I’m joking, don’t you?

I’m not.

Genuinely the most received Instagram DM / FB comment / FB PM / email within our hello@ inbox right about now, and so because I’m a marketer who specialises in content? … I’m all about turning my most frequently asked questions into content.

This is that FAQ-come-content-by-way-of-this-here-blog-post.

I wanted to walk you through the top x3 reasons as to why your social media engagement has tanked, and each of my top x3 reasons will have the solution to that challenge. #yawelcome, but also … #yaready?

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The problem: we’re in the middle of a global pandemic.

I actually genuinely larf’d out loud as I typed that, because typing out “we’re in the middle of a global pandemic” feels so feckin’ obvious … but I can’t help but get the impression that some business owning folk think this couldn’t possibly impact their social media engagement and reach. As your resident content marketing specialist? Well, I’m here to tell you that it will.  And has.  And potentially will continue to negatively impact your reach for a little while yet.

Reason being? Your people are cooked, bruh.  GD.  Especially if they hail from Melbourne.  7+ months of home school’n, anyone? ha! Whatever their individual scenarios? They’re absolutely pandemic-impacted > checking out from social media > crawling into bed pretty early, and generally just resting those adrenals.

Truly.

The solution: either decrease your content, or increase the feelgood content a little.

So I felt the absolute shift with TDP’s content within the last x3 months especially, and I most definitely noticed the rapid decline in our usual social media engagement and reach … and so I actually did both o’ these things, i.e I decreased our content schedule / increased the feel good stuff.

An example of the feelgood? Right here;

Our community needed feelgood stories, so I scoured the internet for them > presented them via this carousel > gave them a sneaky discount code on the last image … and the response was wild.

Another example of [even more] lighthearted feelgood? Right here;

When in doubt? A lighthearted meme to speak to the obvious: our community is kentucky-fried, and could probably all go a solid night of melatonin + 10+ hours of sleep right about now, ha!

And finally, another example of a positive’ish post that still proved to me that our community are ready for some deep-thinking [but on lighter topics that still very-much-so relate to our brand];

As you can see here? 1k+ likes and hundreds of comments and so-very-above our usual average in terms of reach and engagement on our content. It proved to me that our community still wanna think … they just want it to be a little more light-hearted than the usual industry-disrupt’y kinda content that we usually share.

The next problem: believe it or not, your biggest competitor online is now … yourself vs. yourself. #lol

I’m not even joking, ha!

Look at Instagram, for example.  You’ve potentially been working so hard to build your online community there, and now your biggest competitor in terms of commanding reach > engagement > attention is you, actually.

You’re competing with yourself in terms of trying to meet your audience where they’re now, which is that they’re potentially really into your IG stories instead of static content, or your IG reels instead of IG stories, or IGTV instead of all o’ the above.

Long story short? Your followers are all still there … but they’re kinda here, there and everywhere now, i.e some prefer your static content, others wanna see what you got on IG reels, and then others are like … gimme all the IG stories or IGTV.  Get what I mean? You really are competing with yourself now, which when I flip my perspective to think of it like that? I’m really into it.

The solution: embrace the new.

It’s genuinely time to drop the fixed mindset and that fear of change, and just roll into the new. 

That might [for you] mean your very first IG story, or your very first IG reel, or your very first IGTV … whatever it is, it’s genuinely time to stop being so scared of all o’ that social media change > drop the perfectionism > give something [brand new to you] a red hot crack.

For me? That meant;

The wild thing about that kinda reach? This IG reel wasn’t perfect.  I made it in the x5 minutes I had post-school drop-off / before my first 9am Monday AM meetings-heavy day … and I was most definitely not wearing makeup etc. [truth be told? … I’m a nil makeup kinda gal, ha!].

It wasn’t polished.  It wasn’t perfect.  It clocked 16k+ views / bucket loads of engagement / incredible brand sentimentality … and countless opportunities for us to retarget some o’ that good stuff via paid ads retargeting if we felt like we wanted to [spoiler alert? We usually do. #lol].

The problem: it’s the end of year, and your content is fatigue’n.

There, I said it.  And honestly? I’m usually just as blunt-slash-honest with myself.  As much as monthly/quarterly, tbh.

Again [and because I specialise in content], I am regularly reviewing the content themes I regularly lean into for TDP across the social platforms that we’re on: Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. And I’m subsequently asking myself, “is this still performing well? Is our audience still into this?” and if the answer is no, I’m very quickly dropping that content theme and innovating on some new ones.

The solution: design new content pillars

In the last x6 months for us, that’s looked like moving away from content themes that used to work so well for us [industry disruption, small business honesty and some other great themes I’ve enjoyed a long’ish relationship with] … and recognising that they were beginning to fatigue for us a little, and so subsequently heading into what I realised people wanted at this point in time: social media advice [gahd damn it, I never wanted to be another “social media expert” online dishing out social media advice, ha! BUT the people spoke, and I listened]. #lol.

Exhibit A. The people wanted a video marketing challenge, so a video marketing challenge we gave’th them … and we clocked 400+ saves on this bad boi alone.

Has this helped you? Can you relate to some of what we’ve shared here? Feel like a few things apply to you here?

Let us know in the comments below, we always love hearing from you!

Keen to get some strategy inspiration? We’ve just opened our 2021 VIP program, which covers off on x12 different digital marketing topics over the year [we spend x1 month on each topic to really help you elevate in that space, e.g Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing, paid advertising, Google advertising, SEO etc.].

The cost? $50 per month, and it’s not just mentored learning [hosted live], but it’s also weekly Q&A’s with myself or my strategy team to help you with all of your social media questions.  And then it’s a whole lot of accountability, i.e expect us to whip crack a little [we’re gentle, we promise!] while we keep you accountable to your social media goals / new learnings etc.

Wanna learn more? You can see all the info here.