In today’s hyper-competitive social media marketing landscape, keeping your audience engaged is essential for remaining relevant and reaching your business goals. One effective way of stimulating natural interactions with them is through interactive social media posts. These invite your guests to engage in conversations about your brand. Whether by prompting them to provide feedback or encouraging them to offer their opinions, interactive posts stimulate reciprocal dialogue between you and your audience.
Social media is one of the best places to spark interactive consumer relationships because it is designed specifically to facilitate and encourage organic engagement. By utilizing these platforms and coming up with great interactive post ideas and strategies, you not only form deeper relationships with your audience but, from a data analytics perspective, also significantly boost engagement through increased comments, DMs, likes, tags, and responses of all kinds.
Best Interactive Social Media Posts To Generate Engagement
Contrary to what you might think, not all social media posts are hardwired for engagement. Anyone can upload a photo or write a decent caption. But what matters most is how you present these things and what action they inspire in consumers. Fortunately, most social media platforms understand this and have structured their channels to encourage interactivity.
Also see our free Social Media Engagement Tracker: Find the Perfect Social Media Mix for Your Marketing Strategy
Here are seven interaction post ideas for your brand to try out:
1. Polls
Polls have been used for centuries to garner the opinions of the public. These days, polls on social media have become more than just tools to get public opinion. Presenting consumers with a selection of options to choose from or vote for, with results that are shown automatically, social media polls have become a fun way to connect with audiences and let them know that their feedback matters.
Today, most social media platforms have integrated polls into their upload options. Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and others have built-in poll features. These polls encourage interaction and anonymous contributions while providing you with valuable data or insights into what consumers want and how they feel about specific topics or products.
2. Quizzes
Wildly popular media sites like Buzzfeed tell us that people love quizzes. They’re fun, engagement-oriented, and a little self-indulgent—perfect for adding to your content strategy.
There are lots of ways to make quizzes relevant to your audience. If you’re a sustainable water bottle brand, for example, you can create a quiz that allows followers to find out which style of bottle they are or which sustainable home they would be most suited to live in. There are a lot of great ideas—you just need to get creative to design a quiz that would resonate with your audience.
3. Facebook Giveaways and Contests
Interactive FB posts are some of the highest-performing posts on the internet. Giveaways and contests have long been a way for brands to encourage back-and-forth engagement with consumers, often prompting them to tag, like, share, or comment in order to enter the competition. Not only do these contests boost your engagement, but they also help you expand your reach.
4. Games
Incorporating fun, simple games for your audience to play is one of the best ways to encourage interactivity on social media. This can be done in a variety of ways, including:
- Interactive maps
- Fill-in-the-blank posts
- Interactive calculators
The key to incorporating gamification into your social media strategy is to make it relevant, easy, and fun. It must relate to your target audience and be simple enough that people from a wide demographic will be able to enjoy it, thus ensuring higher engagement rates.
5. Live Q&A Sessions
Live Q&As are one of the most engagement-oriented social media posts. Whether hosted on Instagram, X (previously Twitter), or Facebook, consumers seem to love the real-time engagement that a live conversation with the brands they follow offers.
You can host Q&As on just about any subject as long as it is relevant to your brand. If you let followers know it is going to happen in advance, they can prepare questions beforehand and show up in higher numbers.
5. Challenges
Over the years, we’ve all seen global social media challenges take center stage. From the famous ALS Ice Bucket Challenge from 2014 to the more recent Vogue challenge, people love trying out different skills and scenarios to participate in something bigger.
These funny interactive posts often have a serious side, too. The Ice Bucket Challenge, for example, was all about raising funds for ALS. This highlights your brand’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, building trust, and creating a feeling of authenticity with your audience.
7. Data Visualizations
Data visualizations are graphic design posts that illustrate relevant data in a more creative and easy-to-understand way. This makes complex information more accessible to audiences and encourages them to want to share that information with their friends.
There are many other benefits to using data visualizations in your social media posts, such as enhanced brand credibility, higher online engagement, and educating the greater public on important issues.
How to Create Interactive Posts on Social Media
There’s an art to creating and publishing social media interactive posts. They need to be crafted in a way that feels natural to consumers but excites them enough to make them want to respond.
Here are some top tips for planning and uploading fun interactive posts on a regular basis:
1. Be strategic
Before uploading anything, consider what long-term goals your posts are hoping to achieve. Consider branding, timing, and audience relativity to garner the best results possible.
2. Embrace best practices
Some best practices for utilizing interactivity to boost engagement include using a professional social media software program, asking consumers for feedback on what kind of content they like best, and keeping an eye on competitor and peer trends.
3. Measuring and tracking your success
Use social media analytics to track the performance of your uploads and tweak them to create the most brand-adjacent and effective strategy possible.
Make Posting Interactive Content on Social Media a Breeze with Clearview Social
Clearview Social is a software platform that helps brands across the globe strategize and implement effective employee advocacy campaigns and other social media strategies. With comprehensive social media automation, AI, and publishing features, Clearview Social can be your brand’s go-to social media tool for better engagement, interaction, and success. Get in touch and request a free demo today.