Are you looking for ways to boost engagement on your posts and attract new followers?
Every social media strategy you implement is a chance to expand your audience and capture more of your target market as leads.
In this post, we share ideas for interactive social media posts that will help you grow your audience.
What are interactive social media posts?
Interactive social media posts are posts that are designed to increase engagement by specifically being made to be used by your viewers.
For example, the Poll sticker you can add to Instagram stories is meant to be interacted with, meaning your audience is supposed to pick an answer in your poll and tap on it.
Sometimes boosting engagement is as simple as finally taking advantage of a feature you’ve been neglecting for one reason or another, including not knowing it existed.
Interactive social media posts are important for a couple different reasons.
For starters, they help you grow your audience by demonstrating how fun your content can be.
They also improve your overall engagement rate, which is important for marketing purposes. After all, if your audience doesn’t interact with your regular content, why would they interact with your promotional content?
10 ideas for interactive social media posts
1. Polls and quizzes
These features are among the most effective ways to make social media posts more interactive.
You ask your audience a question and give them a few different options to pick from as answers.
Polls are often used to gather audience feedback about a particular topic, but they can also be used to ask trivia questions.
Unfortunately, TikTok and YouTube removed their poll options. You might still have it on TikTok if the Stickers button still appears when you create a new video for the platform.
Otherwise, you can add polls to posts you create for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter (X), Snapchat and Threads.
2. Answer questions
Many marketers recommend answering most comments you receive as a way to grow your following, but they don’t really explain why this method is so effective.
It all boils down to relatability and human connection. It’s the same reason why consumers, especially younger consumers, prefer to follow influencers over brands.
When you answer a viewer’s question, you extend that connection even further, leading to them and others to follow you and ask additional questions to hear more about topics from your perspective.
Hank Green’s entire TikTok career is built on a foundation of answering society’s science questions.
You can answer any question with a comment on all social media platforms, but different platforms have more unique ways to accomplish this.
On TikTok, you can follow the Hank Green approach of replying to questions left in comments with a video.
He also stitches other people’s videos, especially people who ask for his assistance directly.
On Instagram, there’s the Question sticker for stories. It allows you to ask your audience a question and have them answer it individually.
However, you can also say something like “Ask me anything” in the header to have your followers ask you questions.
3. Add yours
Add Yours is a sticker available for Instagram stories.
It starts a photo or video trend in which other Instagram users are encouraged to share similar photos and videos of their own.
For example, if you recently learned how to kickflip on a skateboard, you can share a video of you performing one using the Add Yours sticker. This will encourage your followers to share their own videos of them kickflipping.
Since other social media users who partake in this trend will upload “theirs” to other platforms, you have the potential to start a multi-platform trend that increases your following and popularizes something in your niche.
It helps to name your trend or attribute a hashtag to it.
4. YouTube end cards
There’s a lot of distractions on YouTube.
Google (and maybe even yourself) is insistent on filling videos with multiple ad breaks that have a minimum of two ads each.
Because dwindling attention spans cause us to lose interest in content quickly, it causes some of us to abandon a video the second an ad interrupts it, especially if that ad does so in the middle of a video.
Plus, since its inception, YouTube has filled video pages with several recommendations for additional videos in an attempt to keep users on the platform for as long as possible.
You should have the same mentality.
Not only will it increase your earnings, it will also increase your following. This is because some viewers don’t always follow you based on the first video they see from you. Some need a little more encouragement.
So, if a viewer has gotten all the way to the end of one of your videos, make sure you insert end cards for related or popular videos to encourage them to keep consuming your content.
If your next video captures their attention just as well, you may earn a new follower.
5. Social media giveaways
Social media giveaways and contests are fantastic for boosting engagement and follower count.
This is because many giveaway tools allow you to require contestants to like your post and follow you in order to enter.
SweepWidget does this well if you want to host a giveaway on a dedicated web page but require likes and follows to enter.
6. Leave your guess in the comments
Social media is filled with content that’s half about “flexing” (showing off) and half about promoting something.
This is why a lot of viewers become captivated by content that does neither.
Create a challenge your viewers can complete from each video you create, such as finding an object you’ve hidden in a series of images.
Jake’s Macro Nature has built his entire brand on guessing.
He takes macro photos of objects and asks viewers to guess what they are in the comments.
He doesn’t reveal the object in the same video it features in. He gives viewers time to see the video and leave guesses, then reveals the answer at the start of the next video.
Not only does this increase the number of interactions a post receives, it also increases the number of followers he has since viewers are anxious to see the next video to see if they guessed correctly.
7. Following goals
Some people like to see other people succeed. And like I said before, some viewers don’t always follow you just because they like each and every post you publish.
So, if you’re nearing a milestone on a social media platform, tell your viewers about it.
Just say something along the lines of “please do me a solid and hit that follow button. I’m very close to finally hitting 100k.”
Incentivize viewers by promising to perform a specific action once you reach your goal, such as revealing something you’ve been keeping a secret or taking part in a challenge.
8. Harmless rage bait
Social media users can’t help but point out something that doesn’t seem right.
You can use this to your advantage by placing a new thing that’s “not quite right” in each video you create to see if viewers notice and comment on it.
It’s part of a social media strategy that’s frowned upon: rage bait.
Rage bait involves being controversial on purpose with the intention of boosting engagement. It’s frowned upon because it’s often done subtly to the point where viewers aren’t able to tell it’s fake.
But if you take a more lighthearted approach by ensuring what changes in each video isn’t too outrageous, you may be able to increase your following as more and more of your viewers will want to see your videos in anticipation of what will be different in each one.
Note: We mention this because it works but you need to be careful with how you use it. There’s always a chance that if you approach it wrong or do it too much, that you could damage perception of your brand. So, take care with this one!
9. Request duets
Collaboration is a powerful marketing strategy.
Influencers, brands and artists who collaborate are able to combine their audiences to create content that receives huge boosts in engagement, including follows.
But if you’re still a smaller creator, you may find it difficult to arrange collaborations.
So, create videos with the intention of inspiring collaboration.
Request singers to lend their voices to a cover or song you created. Ask other creators to be your scene partner in a movie or TV show scene you lipsync.
Come up with creative content ideas other social media users can build off of using TikTok’s duet feature.
10. Choose your own adventure
Choose your own adventure is most often seen in the book and video game corners of entertainment, but carousel posts have made them possible to do so on social media as well.
Come up with a make believe scenario in your niche, and have your viewers scroll through a carousel post to take part in that scenario.
The slide should kickstart your scenario with a prompt and two or more options, such as “you are at the royal banquet when suddenly a group of thieves rob attendees of their jewelry and even steal an entire seafood platter. What do you do? A, B or C.”
You can either hide what options A, B and C are or reveal them so viewers know which paths they’re taking.
If you create this type of content on a regular basis, more and more viewers will follow you to consume more.
Final thoughts
Interactive content is a great way to grow your audience.
A diverse social media strategy will require a bunch of these types of content but when you’re getting started, you should just pick one and try it.
You’ll want to try it a few more times, then add it as a regular or semi-regular fixture in your content calendar. Then move onto the next post type.
Related reading:
- Inspiring Social Media Marketing Examples (+ Key Takeaways)
- How To Promote Your Blog On Social Media
- Proven Social Media Marketing Ideas To Grow Your Brand
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