Engaging Your Audience

Yes. We’ve ALL heard this phrase uttered a million times on social media. You have to “engage with your audience.”

Every social media expert, guru, ninja and/or digital marketer pounds this into our heads like it’s the be-all-end-all of having a successful social media presence. The fact of the matter is, it does play quite a large role in your brand’s awareness on social media and helps to establish your Social Currency with your audience.

You see, social media algorithms use this engagement from your feeds to determine how many people will see your content. And here I mean organic content not paid content.

I’m sure you’ve heard this term “algorithm” a LOT on social media before. Do you know how this social media platform’s algorithm works? Or, hey did you see this social media platform just changed their algorithm.

Truthfully, even when the algorithms do change, it’s not all that much. Nothing that would cause some major paradigm shift in how they function anyway.

One thing you have to remember is that engagement can come in the form of any number of forms. Shares, Comments, Direct Messages and so on. All of which the algorithms will count as engagement with your brand.

That’s great, but what type of content tends to get more engagement than others?

Well, that’s a difficult question to answer really. It comes down to what your industry is and what your audience wants to see (and engage) with your brand. Using triggers in your content cue people to talk, choose, use & most importantly -- Share!

Good content gets their attention, however triggers keep them talking. Top of your audience's mind leads to the tip of their tongue & posting about it on social media. The more engagement your content can produce, the more people will see your content and the more exposure your brand receives from [insert social media platform here].

So, how are we going to create content that can generate more engagement for your brand?

Well, there are a few ways that can really help you generate more engagement from your content without using any “Click Bait” type of posts. Which most social media platforms hates and will penalize your brand for.

One way is to simply ask. But how do you do that?

ASK OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS

By asking open ended questions, you are inviting your audience to respond to your content.

As an example. Say you are an Italian restaurant. By simply asking a question using a fill-in-the-blank style question. “Our pizza is ________ (Fill in the blank), will surely get your audience to engage and answer the question.

Not only that. More often than not if they find this style of content fun, they’ll share it with their friends. And as we learned in the previous chapter, what will that do to your content?

Get a boost in the algorithm which in turn means your content will now be seen by even more people.

The more fun you have with it, the more fun your audience will have and the more engagement you'll create for your brand.

PULL BACK THE CURTAIN

Customers want to feel like they have a relationship with a brand.

Many companies create product-based social media posts, but behind-the-scenes posts can help potential customers feel connected to your brand. When you share how you create a product or post an accelerated version of creating a new window display, customers feel like they're getting to know your company. This type of post can also help you fill gaps in your content and post consistently on your channels.

Employee-created informational videos that share tips or celebrations such as birthdays can help build rapport with customers. This level of sharing can translate into increased revenue, as 53% of customers say they are likely to buy from brands that are transparent on social media.

Many companies create very formal behind-the-scenes posts, but even an informational video of an employee speaking or a funny Video showing the product loading process can help engage customers. Often, the most effective posts of this type use video, but images can work as well, especially if they include great captions. Whenever possible, direct people back to your website from your social media post. Your goal is to keep your website and online store at the center of interactions.

Behind-the-scenes posts are great to share on Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories, which are posts that are visible for 24 hours. In a Facebook survey, 62% of respondents said that they have become more interested in a brand or product after seeing it in Facebook and Instagram Stories.

BE PROACTIVE

We all know the importance of communicating with your audience when they ask you a questions or post a comment on your content. But where a LOT of brands miss the boat is by not proactively engaging with their audience and even beyond.

Proactive engagement is where you basically take the engagement to your audience. This can come in the from of jumping on say Instagram and engaging with other brand's or people's accounts as your brand.

What this does is a few different things. One, it shows that it's not ALL about you on social media. Of course we see brands all the time posting about this product or that service. But we rarely see brands just being "SOCIAL" on social media. Proactively engaging with other brands/businesses in your local area (or beyond) shows you are in fact a "SOCIAL" brand.

Not only can you proactively talk to other brands, but don't forget to engage with the people that follow those other brands. Chances are, they could be your target audience and you could not only find new followers, but potential customers as well.

Thanks for reading! If you found this article helpful, please consider sharing it with a friend!