Five ways to reengage a stagnant social media audience

Social media trends, and even platforms, come and go. But can the same be said for your brand’s social media engagement? If you’ve had a channel go stagnant and plan to reengage your social audience as part of your annual priorities, here are five surefire strategies to help you win back your audience, and the algorithm.

‍1. Commit to Consistency

Ninety percent of the time, your audience has become unengaged because you haven’t consistently given them content to engage with. For one reason or another, your social media channels have fallen off your priority list.

See if this sounds familiar: You don’t have a routine content strategy and your feed has been nearly completely dormant. Every once in a while, usually with a holiday, the launch of a new marketing campaign or a new team hire; you make a post, likely even committing to posting more frequently. This leaves your feed full of starts and stops, and your audience unclear on what they should expect from you.

To understand why this doesn’t work, imagine if your favorite TV show produced content the same way – you’d eventually tune out too, right? What’s more, the network carrying your show would probably start to push it to less desirable timeslots, which is what the social media algorithms are doing, too.

‍The Fix: Find a posting frequency that’s realistic and that you can commit to. Sure, your top competitor might be churning out posts three times a day, but if you only have the resources to do one quality post a week, that’s where you should start. Over time, your audience will begin to recognize your brand as a reliable source of content worth returning to. Consistency also gives platform algorithms more opportunities to surface your content to the right people.

2. Turn Off Auto-Pilot

But wait! You’ve been religiously posting every Motivation Monday, Throwback Thursday and Fun Friday, you say. Consistency isn’t your issue! This is a signal that you’re in the other 10 percent of stagnant social profiles with stale, auto-pilot content.

If your posting frequency is consistent, but your content is recycled or playing on the same hashtag themes, your low engagement numbers could be due to audience burn out.

If that TV show from our previous example ran re-runs every week or had the same three story lines playing out in every episode, you’d eventually change the channel.

‍The Fix: Inject authenticity and relevance into your content. Share behind-the-scenes moments, employee perspectives, customer stories or timely industry conversations that give people a reason to stop scrolling. You can still have evergreen posts to help fill your content calendar, but creating a sense of timeliness with the majority of your posts will send the message that this is a brand worth engaging with again.

‍3. (Re)Introduce Dynamic Content

Have you been relying too much on link posts or stock images? This could be sapping your brand personality, leaving your channel feeling like it’s run by robots and not humans.

Your audience follows you on social because they want to forge a connection with your brand. There’s something about who you are that resonates with them and they want more of it. If you’re using the same images everyone else has access to, there’s not enough you shining through in your posts.

‍The Fix: Mix it up with some thumb-stopping content! Short-form video continues to perform well across platforms, but don't assume every post needs to be a Reel or TikTok. Mix in employee-generated content, carousels, graphics, photos and occasional video to keep your feed engaging. The best-performing content is often the most authentic – not the most polished, and platforms often prioritize content that keeps people engaged.

4. Ask Your Audience to Participate

We’ve all heard the saying, “It never hurts to ask.” And on social media, it’s even been proven to help!

Something users love about social media is the opportunity to participate and have 2-way conversations with the accounts they follow. If your engagement is falling off, maybe it’s been a while since you’ve actively sought a conversation with your fans.

The Fix: Ask questions, share polls, invite feedback, or request user generated content. Most audience participation allows you to mine content for future use, helping you fill up your content calendar with poll results, how you’ve incorporated feedback or images of users engaging with your brand IRL. You can even incentivize participation with a contest or giveaway to help get your engagement back on track.

Don't forget to participate yourself. Responding to comments, answering questions and engaging with others in your industry signals that your account is active and approachable.

‍5. Run an Ad Campaign

The previous four strategies can help move the needle organically, but they’ll have the most impact when supported with a paid strategy.

Low engagement numbers tell the algorithm your audience isn’t interested in your content, so it starts serving that content up less and less. To combat low impressions, pay to get your content in front of your audience.

‍The Fix: Run ad campaigns or selectively promote your strongest-performing organic content.. This guarantees impressions on your more consistent, engaging content. While you’re spending money, you might as well pick up some new fans. Make sure your website tracking is configured properly so you can build audiences, measure performance and retarget visitors with relevant content.

A stagnant social media channel is something that has happened to even the best brands. But a disengaged audience doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel. With these five strategies, you can reinvigorate your presence, reengage your audience and create content that's positioned to reach not only your existing followers, but also new audiences discovering your brand through search, recommendations and AI-powered feeds.