The Power of Genuine Engagement: Building Real Community on Social Media This Holiday Season

The holidays are here—our calendars are full, our phones are buzzing, and our feeds are overflowing with festive photos and year-end promotions. But beneath the hustle, what most of us are really craving is connection.

In this solo episode, Ruthie breaks down what authentic engagement truly means and how it can build real community on social media. Not the “drop an emoji and disappear” kind of engagement—the kind that creates conversations, strengthens relationships, and reminds your audience that there’s a real human behind the feed.

You’ll learn the difference between inbound and outbound engagement, how the algorithm actually interprets your relationships, and why DMs and thoughtful comments matter more than ever. Ruthie also shares how tools like ManyChat can support—not replace—real connection, and how small gestures of humanity can stand out during a busy, emotional time of year.

If you’ve ever wondered how to show up on social without burning out, this episode will help you build connections with clarity, generosity, and intention.

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and follow along over on Instagram!
@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie Sterrett (00:01.452)

In my very best Mariah Carey impersonation, it's time. Y'all don't want me to sing, but it is the holidays, which means our calendars are packed, our group texts are pinging nonstop, and there's glitter in places that glitter should not be, or at least it will be soon. As I'm recording this in October, I know this episode is gonna air right before Thanksgiving, I'm thinking ahead to the holiday hustle that I know we're gonna be in when this episode drops.

And I think among the holiday hustle, what we're really longing for in that chaos is connection. We're sending Christmas cars, we're planning cookie swaps, school programs, neighborhood parties, family, posting family photos, commenting on friends' family pictures. Even if those comments are just, my gosh, look how big your kids are, they've grown so much. This time of year, our hearts naturally turn towards

community.

And I have to say thank you for being part of this community. Thank you for listening to the Consistency Corner podcast. I am incredibly grateful that over 200 episodes in we are having these types of conversations. And today we're going to be talking about that same kind of connection and community energy and bringing it to the way we use social media for our business. Because the buzzword engagement is not just

not talking about using likes or emojis. We're talking about relationships. The kind that sustain visibility, build trust, and remind people there's a real human behind the profile photo and the portfolio feed. Today we're going to talk about why engagement matters, how it actually works behind the scenes, and ways you can approach it so that it feels authentic, especially during a busy holiday season.

Ruthie Sterrett (02:01.634)

Social media engagement at its core is basically a conversation. It's a conversation between you and your community. Your content is facilitating that conversation. And it's easy to forget that when you're buried in analytics or trying to batch content for Q1 or just ready to throw your phone in the lake because you're sick of social media, that engagement is the moment a message becomes mutual.

because so many people go to social media for that connection, for that relationship. Think about it this way. You would not walk into a holiday party and say, hey, my Black Friday offer is live, and then head straight for the cookies, grab a cookie, grab a glass of wine, get the heck out of there. I mean, maybe you would, but I wouldn't recommend it. You would likely mingle, you'd ask questions, you'd listen, you'd share stories, you'd chat with the people that are there.

That's engagement. And it's the difference between having an audience and having a community. And honestly, engagement doesn't just feel better, it actually performs better. So let's break it down. Inbound engagement, outbound engagement, and the algorithm. Inbound engagement is when people come to you. They're commenting, they're sending you DMs.

They're mentioning you on their posts or in their stories and you engage back. Outbound engagement is when you start the conversation by responding to others in the comments. You're commenting thoughtfully or maybe even sending a quick voice note or an emoji as a DM. And the number one way that people are engaging on Instagram right now is sharing content with each other, which the algorithm is seriously rewarding because they're sharing content that's like,

This is me, this is you, I get this, this is funny, I feel validated, I feel seen. And all of those things matter. Here's why. Every single one of those actions is telling the algorithm, hey, these two accounts have a relationship. Instagram's head, Adam O'Shaire, actually talked about this during a creator Q &A earlier this year, just a couple of weeks ago, and he asked the audience,

Ruthie Sterrett (04:27.393)

And it wasn't all creators. It was like a news conference. It was a lot of journalists in the audience. But he asked the audience how many of them had posted to their feed in that week. About a quarter of hands raised. Then he asked, well, how many of you have posted a story this week? About half raised their hands. And then how many of you have sent a DM in the last week on Instagram and almost every hand shot up? And his point was that Instagram is not just a broadcast.

platform. It's a messaging app with a social layer. And that's huge for business owners to understand because when you engage, when you reply to a story, you leave a thoughtful comment, you DM someone a genuine connection, not just cold DMing. We're not, hey girl, and over here. Okay. Then you're not only deepening the connection, you're literally training the algorithm to recognize mutual interest.

and it boosts your visibility and theirs. So if you've ever wondered whether spending 15 minutes genuinely engaging on the app counts as marketing, it totally does. And in fact, recently two of my favorite accounts and social media experts to follow and learn from, Pretty Little Marketer and Shannon McKinstry, were talking about the power of the comments section.

and that engaging within the comments, leaving thoughtful comments, replying to other people's thoughtful comments is the quiet revolution that's happening underneath our posts and where the relationships are really being built.

So, but that's not gaming the system, right? That's using the system intentionally, being part of it intentionally, and kind of having a strategy for how you're going to show up and engage. Now, let's talk about scaling that connection without losing the human touch. One of the things that our agency does is engagement for our clients. But before we jump in and reply to comments or...

Ruthie Sterrett (06:36.663)

send a hey girl DM, which we don't do, come on, you guys know that. We do a deep dive into your brand voice and into your audience and we collaborate to align on the types of accounts that should be engaged with, what types of things we should be saying and how all of that influences your sales process. But there's also tools that can support engagement and one of the things that I wanna talk about is many chats.

Now as a marketer, think that everybody knows about MiniChat, but when I talk to people who are not marketers, like, what are you talking about? So let me break it down. If you don't know what it is, if you've ever seen a post where someone's like comment plan and I'll send you my checklist or comment links and I'll send you the link to where I got my sweater or whatever. You know what I mean. And then you do it and you instantly get a DM with that link. That's MiniChat.

And if the DM feels personal, like they're actually having a conversation instead of just here by my stuff, give me your email address. That's many chat done right. But here's what it does. It automates simple responses so that you can start conversations faster. You can share links, you can answer frequently answered questions, you can deliver freebies, you can gauge interest to put people on wait lists. I mean, there's so many things that you can do with it without manually sending every single message.

And you can make it so that that trigger is either a comment or a DM or both. The magic is that it opens the door for genuine connection and allows your audience to raise their hand and say, hey, I'm interested in this. And it's like putting a welcome mat out so that you can spend your time inside having real conversations with the people that want to come in. When we use it for our clients, we always say automation handles the logistics, humans handle the relationship.

And often in the automated chat, we will acknowledge and say, hey, this is an automated conversation. But if you have a question, I'm going to answer it personally because the automation is just starting the message thread. And then you can jump in and engage as a real human. But that tool helped you get it started. Listen, during the holidays, everyone is distracted.

Ruthie Sterrett (09:00.151)

We're shopping, we're rapping, we're traveling, we're juggling. Attention spans shrink and emotions expand. But here's why that's good news for your brand. When people are emotionally open but overwhelmed, small gestures can really stand out. Replying to a story with a quick, that made me smile. Or DMing a loyal follower a note of thanks for being part of your community.

commenting on a client's holiday launch post and amplifying it by sharing it in your stories. Mentioning someone in your stories or even in a post that you appreciate or has been helpful to you in one way or another or that you think other people should know about because they offer a service or a product or a tool that could benefit your community. So while everybody else is just scheduling promotions, you're showing up

for people. And that builds long-term trust that outlasts any holiday campaign. And it's like watering a garden. You have to keep planting the seeds and watering them, and we don't know when they're going to sprout, when they're going to harvest. Listen to me trying to give you guys plant analogies when I don't garden at all. But the point is, if we never do it, it's never going to turn into anything.

So let me share another analogy. One, is a good one. I'm not trying to make things up that I don't know about like with gardening.

Then, but I heard this once on a podcast, I think it was one of Oprah's podcasts, and it really stuck with me. Social media connection is kind of like gas station food. It fills you up in the moment, but it doesn't really nourish you. If that's all you're consuming is social media, you constantly need more.

Ruthie Sterrett (11:01.569)

You're constantly picking that phone up trying to get more, just like after we eat the chips or the french fries or the candy bar, we want some more junk food. But a real meal, real connection happens off platform. That's your email list. It could be on platform, but in an actual voice note, not a pre-planned or batch piece of content. It happens in coffee chats. It happens at networking events. It happens in collaborations. So use Instagram.

as an appetizer, as a snack. It's the spark that leads to something deeper. Let social media introduce you and keep those connections alive, but remember that it doesn't replace actual relationships. I have met some of my favorite people on the internet, on Instagram, and I can't tell you a day doesn't go by that I don't crave an in-person connection with those people, that I don't wish...

My friend from this mastermind, my former coach, my current coach was right here and could take a walk with me. And I think that's why a lot of times, to be honest, we keep picking up our phones because we are craving that real connection and we're not getting it from social media. Get little gas station, you know, snacks that keep us, keep us just full enough, but it's not enough to sustain us.

And I saw a question in a Facebook group recently that was talking about this engagement. And the person said, I feel so lame leaving comments like way to go or the fire emoji. How do I make it feel real when I'm engaging if I like don't actually know what to say? And this is a really good question because authentic engagement isn't about what you say. It's about why you say it. So swap validation.

for curiosity. Instead of, love this, try something like, I haven't thought about it that way. Thanks for your perspective. Another way is using people's names. It makes the digital space feel smaller and more human. Or reference something specific, a detail from their caption, something that caught your eye in the video or the photo, something that they've said in the past that you relate to.

Ruthie Sterrett (13:23.095)

You don't have write paragraphs, you just have to prove that you're present and that you're connecting again as a human because something like 25 % of the content and the engagement that is happening on the internet right now, at least 25 % is bots. And I saw a scary statistic recently that said by like 2040, 97 % of the content on the internet will be bots. I mean, I'm gonna choose to believe that that won't happen, but that's what they're projecting.

So being a human on the internet really matters. And inside our agency, we design engagement strategies that help our clients figure out what authentic engagement looks like in their voice. For some, it's witty banter. For others, it's thoughtful encouragement. It's never one size fits all because connection never is.

And go back for a second to the comment that I was just talking about the like fake bots. I want to kind of like just shine a light on this. Real community building is real conversation. It's not trolling people. If you're here, you're not a troll. I I truly believe that my people are not those people. But I want you to remember that some trolls are actually bots. And even if they are a real person,

You can take the high roll and not engage, or you can do what's right for your brand and respond in a way that isn't aligned with your values. I highly recommend my friend Kelsey Curtis's book, The Connection Method. She actually has a whole section where she talks about online trolls. And that that's a signal that you really made it. Because when we start getting the attention of some people who don't agree with us, that means like people are paying attention. So.

recommend Kelsey's book, definitely don't recommend engaging with trolls, okay? So let's bring this back to the bigger picture of consistency. In our 5C framework, engagement lives inside both the fourth and fifth Cs, which are content and consistency. It's not an afterthought, it's part of the plan. So as you're mapping out your new year and your 2026 marketing strategy, don't just plan what to post.

Ruthie Sterrett (15:46.574)

Plan with who, plan who you will connect with. Build engagement time into your workflow the same way you schedule content creation or analytics. And if you're not doing any of those things and you don't have time to, the corner office can help, okay? But brands that win on social media aren't the ones posting the most. They're the ones connecting the most, whether that's connecting through content or connecting through comments.

So as you wrap up this year, I want you to think less about metrics and more about moments. The comments that turned into a friendship, the DMs that became collaboration, the stories and the reels that keep you coming back for more, the follower who became a client because you took the time to talk to them. That's the magic of engagement. So here's your challenge, and it's a fun one, okay?

When you finish listening to this episode, I want you to open Instagram and send one genuine message. You could compliment someone's work. You could ask a question. You could say thank you. You could cheer for another woman who's showing up. And whether it's in a comment or in a DM, that's it. Just one message. Because when you treat engagement like generosity instead of obligation, you don't just boost your algorithm. You amplify

your humanity. And honestly, that's the kind of holiday spirit that social media could really use a lot more of. I really appreciate you being a part of this community and thank you so much for listening. After you do today's challenge and send that message, get extra credit if you send me a message and tell me that you did it and how it made you feel. I'll see you next episode, friends. Thank you again so much for being part of the Consistency Corner community.