Proactive engagement is one of the most essential parts of a social media marketing strategy.

But gurus teaching engagement as a way to hack the algorithm and get a quick win means it's no longer seen as a priority, which hurts the whole marketing strategy for a business.

In recent years, the way proactive engagement has been taught has led to it being:

• Seen as an unimportant admin task.

• Outsourced to people with no marketing knowledge.

And when that happens, the rest of the social media strategy starts to fail or, at best, underperform.

Proactive engagement is one of the only marketing tactics that can work alone.

If you only did proactive engagement by leaving comments on other people's content, you could still grow a thriving business without creating any content!

In some ways, comments are more influential than content.

They allow you to build connection and brand awareness, resolve problems (sometimes before they even happen) and create relationships that lead to long-term loyal customers.

Proactive engagement is part of your daily life as a human. It's simply conversation, or in a business sense, networking.

If you take the time to build a relationship with someone, they'll become a supporter, friend, customer, colleague, referrer, or advocate.

By leaving comments, you also build a reciprocal relationship where the creator might feel compelled to comment on your content, which will help more people see your brand.

It's time to stop thinking of proactive engagement as secondary to content creation, or worse, an algorithm hack.

To get the best from your social media strategy, ensure a proactive engagement strategy is front and centre.

Successful proactive engagement starts with social listening and responding to people talking about your business and related topics.

Next, use the brand's Audience Personas to proactively engage with your target audience or people you share an audience with.

Building authentic relationships and giving more than you expect to receive is the key to proactive engagement.

It's time to ditch the old advice of commenting on five other accounts before you post

Most social media users go wrong by focusing on the number of comments and prioritising the algorithm's needs.

The quality of conversation and the connections you are building are more important than the number of comments.

Proactive engagement brings far more benefits than simple algorithm hacks when done well.

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