Engagement pods can be a great way to increase engagement on social media, but they’re not nearly as effective as you might think. While large pods can help certain posts receive an influx of engagement, they’re almost never a valuable long-term strategy . It’s also pretty rare to see a significant increase in follower count as a result of posting in an engagement pod. This is because, by nature, they’re incredibly impersonal. It’s much better to find accounts with things in common and develop real relationships with your followers.
So what exactly are these pods and do they ever really work? How do you know if an influencer is using engagement pods? And what impact can it have on their metrics?
What are engagement pods?
Engagement pods are groups of social media users who share their posts in a private chat or group and engage with each other by liking, commenting, and sharing each other’s content. Particularly prevalent on Instagram, these pods can vary in size, from smaller niche pods to larger groups that have thousands of users. The IG Engagement Space group, for example, has over 73,000 members to date. Pods can focus on office 365 database specific niche markets, such as fashion or photography, or they can be more general, where posts related to different topics are shared.
Do they work?
It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? You join a pod and you get an instant influx of likes, comments, and shares on your posts that boost your social media engagement and help your campaign reach more people. The more engagement you have with other posts, the more engagement you receive in return.
So where’s the catch?
In reality, since engagement pods don’t generate organic engagement, the growth in the number of interactions you have on your posts doesn’t reflect the reality of your followers . You may have an exponential increase in the number of likes and comments at first when you join a pod, but in most cases, all of this comes to nothing and once you leave the pod, your engagement level plummets to what it was before you originally joined the pod. This is because the people who have been liking and sharing your content weren’t actually interested in what how many calls do they receive from wild telemarketers? you have to say – it’s forced engagement. They’re only engaging because they want something in return (engagement on their own posts). And that means you won’t get any loyal followers from your inflated engagement level – it’s just noise.
Engagement pods are also time-consuming . The reason is that in order to see a noticeable improvement in your own engagement levels, you have to like and comment on hundreds of posts every day. And that takes a lot of time. You’ll be much better off investing that time in developing real relationships with followers who actually have a genuine interest in your brand.
Finally, engagement pods rarely lead to significant results. You’re better off creating engaging content.influencer marketingthat provides added value and that you do old-fashioned networking.
How do engagement pods impact influencer metrics?
Using engagement pods can have a negative impact onInfluencer analysisIf an influencer relies too heavily on the forced engagement that happens in these pods, it can falsely inflate their metrics and make them appear more influential than they actually are. And this can make it difficult for brands and agencies to select the right influencer.
As a brand or agency working with influencers, you need to make sure that the influencer you choose is going to generate real, organic engagement for your campaign . You need to know that the content they generate for you is going to reach the right audience, and that this audience can potentially become your own loyal followers. But you won’t be able to do that if an influencer repeatedly relies on engagement pods to falsely inflate their metrics.
Initially, you may think you are doing a good job if, when you dotracking your performance, you see that their reach, engagement, and awareness look good and real. However, if all of these metrics are related to posts published in engagement pods, then the statistics are meaningless and you are cell phone number very unlikely to see a true ROI. This means that it is vital that you know how to identify whether an influencer uses engagement pods or not.
How to identify if an influencer is using engagement pods
So how do Influencer Metrics you know if an influencer’s metrics reflect authentic, organic content or if they’re using engagement pods to boost campaign results?
The most effective way to identify influencer pod activity is through social media artificial intelligence . In fact, this method is so powerful that many social media platforms are using AI to fine-tune their algorithms so that they can identify and debunk posts that have been artificially promoted through engagement pods.
You can also do your own research. For example, take a look at who engages on an influencer’s posts and see if the influencer engages on their posts as well. Like-for-like engagement like this is usually a clear indicator that something fishy is going on. If you spot repeating patterns, then it’s more than likely that the influencer is relying on engagement pods to falsely inflate their metrics.