Social Media Engagement Examples & And Winning Lessons
Getting your audience to engage on social media can be difficult, even for established brands. So, what’s the secret to making it happen? Understanding what works and why.
If you want your brand’s social media to stand out, you need to get strategic about the content you create.
In this article, we’ll provide practical social media engagement examples that will inspire your strategy, help you get more attention from your followers, and attract new ones.
Social media engaging posts and examples
Social media engaging post examples for interactive content
Social media engaging post examples for UGC usage
Social media engaging post concepts for contests & giveaways
Social media engaging post examples for behind-the-scenes content
Social media engaging post examples for educational content
Social media engaging post examples of successful storytelling
BONUS: How to find engaging social media posts examples
Social media engaging post examples for interactive content
Interactive content, like polls and voting stories, plays a key role in boosting social media engagement. It encourages users to participate actively, creating a sense of involvement without taking up too much time.
Engaging content not only increases visibility but also helps brands gather insights, build stronger connections with their audience, and drive traffic.
Polls & open questions
Polls and open questions drive social media engagement by sparking curiosity and inviting users to participate with minimal effort. They also keep people coming back to the post, increasing its reach and encouraging more social media interactions over time.
To promote our social media benchmarks report and our insights, we created a LinkedIn poll.
In this example, we asked our audience to guess the most shared content type on the platform and teased the answer in the comments.
To reinforce our findings, we shared a screenshot from the report in the comments later.
By posting this directly on LinkedIn, we leveraged the platform’s own engagement trends to highlight our data in action.
While the post didn’t get many reactions or shares, the 142 poll votes show strong engagement, proving that the question resonated with the audience. This highlights how effective polls are in driving participation.
Voting Stories/This or That Story
Voting Stories are highly engaging because they encourage quick, fun, and easy interaction on social media. By making users feel involved, this type of content boosts engagement and can be used creatively to gather insights or promote products.
Canva, for example, has a bunch of examples of engaging content for social media. They use this approach by incorporating quizzes about design topics like fonts and colors in their Instagram Stories. This encourages the audience to engage by voting and also drives them from social media to their product website – boom!
By seamlessly linking to their blog at the end of the quiz, Canva provides a great example of a natural next step for users to dive deeper into the topic. This strategy effectively merges Instagram engagement with educational content and product promotion, driving both interaction and traffic.
Social media engaging post examples for UGC usage
User-generated content (UGC) can be a great way of fostering a sense of community and sparking increased attention for your brand. It is a powerful tool for engaging your audience because it highlights their creativity and makes them feel like they’re a part of your brand’s story.
Who wouldn't love to see their social media content shared by a brand they follow, right?
UGC surely adds authenticity to your engaging posts, which leads to more trust and interaction from your audience. When your followers get involved, they’re not just passive viewers – they’re active participants in your brand’s journey.
Challenges
Challenges are great examples of engaging social media posts. They boost engagement (especially when it comes to user-generated content), encourage creativity, and get people involved by offering a fun, rewarding experience.
With the #TravelGenius TikTok campaign, Booking.com turned travel vlogs into an exciting competition, generating incredible engagement on social media.
By selecting nominees for the best travel video and offering a cash prize, they motivated users to share their real travel experiences. This is a great example of how to engage social media audiences – not only did this campaign generate tons of UGC but also positioned Booking.com as a key part of inspiring travel content, boosting brand visibility and organic reach.
The campaign example was a big success, with over 16K engagement, 175 shares, and 98 saves. With more than 1.7M views, it reached a large audience on social media, proving the power of the challenges of generating brand awareness.
As of writing, the hashtag has been used in over 1,000 posts, proving that the campaign encouraged substantial user participation.
Testimonials
Testimonials make for highly engaging posts for social media because they provide authentic, relatable experiences from real people, which help build trust and influence potential customers. They showcase how your product or service delivers tangible benefits, making it easier for others to connect with your brand.
The Salesforce post is a strong example of that. OpenTable puts testimonials on social media to highlight how Agentforce boosts productivity and service efficiency. Multiple reviews reinforce the message by showing real user experiences – this adds credibility and demonstrates the positive impact of the service.
Making engaging social media posts such as this one part of your strategy builds trust and encourages potential customers to see the value in using your product.
Social media engaging post concepts for contests & giveaways
Contests and giveaways are a way to engage your audience on social media by offering them something exciting in exchange for their participation.
This type of content usually encourages entries through tagging friends, sharing posts, completing fun tasks, or all the abovementioned. These posts help boost social media interactions, build your community, grow your followers base, and drive traffic to your pages – so let’s get into that.
Trivia contests
Trivia contests offer a fun and engaging way to get your audience actively involved on social media. They engage your audience to test their knowledge while providing an easy opportunity to interact with your brand.
When aligned with current trends or industry-related topics, they not only spark curiosity but also encourage more discussions and increase participation. This type of content helps boost engagement, build anticipation, and create a stronger connection with your audience.
SEMrush's trivia contest is among humorous and most well-thought-out examples of engaging posts; it’s a clever way to attract marketers by focusing on the biggest trends from 2024. Not only does the contest drive excitement, but it also promotes SEMrush's free course.
It focuses on 2024’s top marketing trends, memes, and viral moments on social media – perfect for marketers who want to stay updated and have some fun.
By connecting the contest to the course, SEMrush keeps their audience engaged and offers a valuable resource that ties back to their brand’s expertise.
Caption this giveaway
“Caption this” giveaways are a fun and easy way to engage your audience on social media. It taps into their creativity and adds a playful element to your brand, encouraging followers to join in with a simple task. This type of content sparks interaction and can be a great way to have some fun with your community.
To make the most of this type of social media content, pair it with a striking image or video that will instantly catch people’s attention.
The giveaway from EGYM Global is a great example of a simple yet effective social media content strategy. By challenging followers to come up with a creative caption, the contest makes participation fun and easy while encouraging playful interaction. The clear prize incentive and straightforward entry rules help maximize engagement and keep the audience involved.
Make sure your instructions are clear, and include a call to action, like offering a prize for the funniest or most clever caption. This will not only boost engagement but also encourage people to share the post, helping you reach a wider audience.
Social media engaging post example for behind-the-scenes content
Behind-the-scenes is a great example of content that gives your followers a peek into the inner workings of your brand. It’s your way to showcase your company’s personality, values, and processes while building trust and authenticity with your audience – we all love seeing humans behind the business.
Such social media posts spark curiosity and humanize your brand, which leads to higher engagement and a stronger, more loyal community.
How it’s made or throwback content
Throwback content is a fantastic way to drive engagement because it taps into feelings of nostalgia, inviting your audience to reflect on your brand’s journey with you.
By showcasing moments from the past, you provide a behind-the-scenes look at the effort and creativity that shaped your brand. This engaging content highlights your growth and helps your followers feel more connected, as if they’ve been part of the story from the beginning.
For example, Monday.com is engaging customers on social media by sharing the energy and teamwork behind their El Cantoral in Mexico – with a backstage carousel and a long-read about their event, they show in detail how it came together.
By drawing attention to the team’s hard work off-stage, they show their dedication to creating memorable experiences; this single social media post gives their audience a deeper understanding of the effort that goes into making things happen.
Social media engaging post examples for educational content
Educational content helps you engage your audience by providing value while positioning your brand as an expert in your field. These engaging social media posts help people solve problems, answer common questions, or share useful tips, making them highly shareable and likely to spark conversations.
By offering knowledge on social media for free, you not only educate your followers but also encourage them to return for more insights, increasing long-term engagement.
Myth-busting
Myth-busting content is engaging on social media because it challenges common misconceptions, sparks curiosity and (sometimes heated) discussions, and encourages people to learn more. It also helps the brand build authority by offering clear and data-proven insights.
Microsoft talks about AI in a quick TikTok format but also mentions that there’s a whole blog on AI myth-debunking – so they use social media to drive extra traffic to their blog, where people can dive deeper into the topic, while also attracting new TikTok users at the same time.
This strategy allows them to reach a broader audience by driving engagement on social media and promoting more in-depth interaction with their blog content.
Now, this TikTok got more than 102K views, 242 saves, and an engagement rate by views of 2.20%, indicating that people found the content valuable enough to share or keep.
Quick tips
Quick tips are so effective because they offer practical, bite-sized advice that people can immediately put to use. This kind of content is perfect for busy audiences looking for easy solutions to common challenges.
One of the most successful social media engagement examples on quick tips comes from Expedia, who invited a travel blogger to share her top tips for navigating Japan’s public transit system.
By using popular hashtags like #TravelTips and #JapanTravel, this TikTok reaches a broader audience of travelers seeking advice, while working with “relevant” bloggers allows to blend audiences and expand social media reach.
The post delivers practical insights and low-key promotes Expedia, creating engaging and organically shareable content.
This post performed exceptionally well: over 2M views, 533 comments, 1,414 shares, almost 75k saves, and an engagement rate by views of 3.84%, showing that the content resonated strongly with viewers. The engagement rate by followers is also great – 5.65%, meaning a solid level of interaction from existing followers.
Overall, this quick tips example did a fantastic job of reaching and engaging a large audience.
Social media engaging post examples of successful storytelling
Successful storytelling on social media connects with your audience on a personal level by weaving relatable narratives that evoke emotions or share valuable experiences.
These posts often highlight your brand’s journey, values, or milestones – all that makes your content feel more human and authentic.
When done right, storytelling can spark conversation, boost engagement, and leave a lasting impression on your followers.
Company’s development history/Internal stories
Company development history and internal stories are powerful because they humanize your brand and show the effort behind its success.
Sharing milestones and team accomplishments on social media fosters a sense of transparency and pride for what you’ve been through and how you are doing now.
Grammarly reflects on a year of growth, celebrating their latest AI innovations and the overall contributions of their team – a great example of storytelling. The post gives people a peek into their journey, promotes the latest updates, but most importantly, highlights those who make it all happen.
By sharing internal moments, they strengthen the connection with the followers and make the brand feel more personable.
Milestone celebrations
Milestone celebrations work great for social media engagement – they often grab attention because they speak of progress and bring people together to share in the excitement. Be that a big achievement or a little but important new chapter, these moments evoke a sense of achievement, showcase progress, and invite the audience to share it on social media.
Atlassian took this approach by sharing the opening of its new office in Poland, emphasizing its growth in Europe and deeper ties to the local tech scene.
The post not only showed the thoughtfully designed space but also reinforced their #TeamAnywhere philosophy, balancing workplace flexibility with the value of in-person collaboration. This encouraged engagement from employees, partners, and the wider tech community.
BONUS: How to find engaging social media posts examples
To find examples of engaging social media posts and discover what works best, it’s important not only to track how your own social media posts are performing in terms of engagement but also to analyze your competitors.
By studying the types of content they post and how their audience interacts, you can gather fresh ideas to enhance your own social media strategy.
For example, some of Booking.com's competitors, such as Airbnb or Expedia, could use this technique to get inspiration from the brand.
Using Socialinsider, you can dive into competitors' performance data, uncovering the types of posts that generate the most interaction. This allows you to adapt and add new, effective content strategies to your approach, increasing social media engagement and boosting visibility for your brand.
When tracking metrics like likes, comments, shares, and overall engagement, you can fine-tune your content to match what your target audience really likes. These social media insights help optimize your content strategy – so let’s see how it works.
Steps to identify top-performing posts
- Add profiles to Socialinsider
Connect your competitor's social media accounts to gather engagement data.
- Navigate to the Posts section
Access performance metrics to see which content is driving the most interactions.
- Analyze top-engaging posts by channel
Identify patterns in content formats, messaging, and visuals that spark the most engagement – this is how you know what’s working and what’s not.
But it doesn’t stop there. Socialinsider also gives you insight into the best-performing content pillars for social media, which are the themes or types of content that consistently drive engagement.
This is an essential feature for optimizing your strategic approach. By analyzing these engagement examples, you can uncover key patterns that show what content truly resonates with your followers and how to increase participation across your posts.
We help you spot these patterns in what gets the most interaction, giving you the tools to adjust and improve your content for even better results.
Final thoughts
When it comes to boosting social media engagement, the key is to understand what resonates with your audience.
By analyzing top-performing posts on your social media and getting inspired by other brands’ successful interactive posts examples, you can identify patterns in content types, engagement tactics, and visuals that drive interaction. This approach helps you replicate successful strategies and ensures you’re always tuned in to your audience’s preferences.
The best way to keep your social media engagement high is by focusing on the content your audience loves most, and each piece of your content should be useful and create a conversation.
Finding the right balance between entertainment, practical value, and relatability will keep your followers coming back for more. At the end of the day, the more you understand your audience, the better you can craft content that encourages people to interact.
Socialinsider analytics make it easier to create that connection, giving you the tools to keep your social media content strategy fresh, relevant, and engaging.