By Danielle Mellema, Chief Ghostwriter, Digital Content Manager

For many people looking to grow their personal brand, social media can feel like an exercise in futility. You know it’s necessary to be at least semi-active on social media to be competitive in today’s job market, but the whole thing feels like a riddle that is impossible to solve.

How many likes are “enough?”

What is considered “good engagement?”

How do you know if the way you’re using social media is working?

For healthcare leaders who are used to relying on hard data to make decisions, it can be especially maddening to try to rely on a platform that appears to have no rhyme or reason in order to position yourself to reach your career goals.

By the numbers

In my view, quality engagement is less about hard metrics (number of followers or likes on each post, for example), and more about what type of engagement is going to contribute to reaching your personal branding goals. When it comes to running the numbers on social media engagement, it's most helpful to compare your current engagement numbers against your own numbers from a year earlier or between different types of content you post rather than to try to figure out how you stack up against some kind of industry standard. 

But metrics alone can only reveal so much. Numbers of likes, etc., can certainly help as one of many data points, but don't give a full picture. They need a large dose of context to be helpful. That’s one reason that social media is best used as one tool of a larger marketing or brand building plan.

Three tiers of engagement

If your goal is to solidify your personal brand and position yourself as a thought leader in the healthcare industry, it is more helpful to think of engagement as a tiered system.

Tier 1: Likes and the like

Likes, light bulbs, “wow” emojis, etc., are the bottom tier. They're helpful in terms of convincing the algorithm to get your content in front of more people, but a quick hit of the like button requires very little of the person engaging with your content. They may not have even read it, really. Furthermore, the number of likes a post receives doesn't necessarily give you much to go on when you're considering what you could write about next that might resonate with your audience.

Tier 2: Comments and conversation

Comments are the next tier of quality engagement. I would rather see a post with a handful of thoughtful comments than one with a higher number than average of likes but no comments. Not only does the algorithm seem to respond slightly better to comments than likes alone, but you are actually in conversation with your audience, which positions you as a thought leader on the topic you’re sharing about. Plus, you are more likely to get a "trail of breadcrumbs," so to speak, to another topic idea, or be alerted to an area where you need to expand or clarify your own thinking.

Tier 3: Sharing is caring

Shares are the top tier of social media engagement. When a connection shares something you have posted, you are getting access to people beyond your own circle of influence and are expanding your audience. As people are scrolling their social media feeds, there are plenty of easier ways to engage with content they see besides sharing, so though shares tend to be more rare, it's a big deal when it happens. When your content gets a share, it is always worth asking yourself what it was about that particular article, video, or piece of content that inspired someone to share it with others. If you know the person who shared your content well enough just ask them why they chose to do so. This is part of how thought leaders start to find their niche and focus their content.

Want help thinking about your social media engagement more strategically? Let’s talk.