Golden Rules for Engagement

Hello Friends,

This week I’m focused on?helping you get more engagement in all facets of your digital marketing. To get started, I want to give you my Golden Rules for Engagement – these are five rules that we work to apply with all of our clients.

1. Talk in terms of their interests.?This is an abbreviated version of Dale Carnegie’s famous principle, and it is just as relevant today as ever before. When thinking about your online audience, ask yourself these questions:

• What challenges are they facing that I can help solve?
• What common interests do they have where we can add value?
• In what ways can we be useful to them? (ex: humor, motivation, knowledge)

2. 80/20 rule.?In this case, the 80/20 rule applies to value vs. promotion. In any post, video, eNewsletter, or other marketing pieces, I recommend 80% of the content be of value to the recipient, and 20% geared toward promoting your product or service. And when you’re creating your content calendar for the week or month, I would target the same post ratio of 80% value-based posts and 20% promotion-based posts.

3. Get dancers on the dance floor.?Getting people to comment on your posts can be very challenging. I often share the ‘wedding’ analogy with our clients when it comes to motivating people to comment. When it’s time to get dancers on the dance floor, the bride and groom are typically first, followed by the bridal party, and then everyone else. For those of us who would prefer the open bar to the dance floor, having a pre-arranged group go first often makes the electric slide less daunting. So, what does this have to do with comments on your posts? Get your team to be your bridal party. If you ask a question or share a video,?remind your team to comment on the post. Often, this will encourage others to join in the conversation.

4. Use bullets/numbers.?People often don’t read full paragraphs (TL;DR) anymore – we’ve become scanners. We scan posts, newsletters, etc., looking for quick and actionable tips. Using bullets (or numbers like I’m doing here) makes it easier to get to the point.

• Bonus! Go?BOLD.?As you can see above, using bold (or italics) can help the key points stand out and make it even easier for people to scan and absorb your content.

5. Clear call-to-action.?If someone has read your post, watched your video, or scanned your blog post, what do you want them to do afterward? You’ll never get the engagement you’re looking for if you don’t make it crystal clear what action you’d like them to take. So always end with a simple and easy way for your audience to take the next step. Whether it’s to provide an email address, call your office, or make an appointment, take a moment to clearly state how to take the next step with your business.?Don’t skip this part, or you’ll always be wondering why your content isn’t converting.?Don’t make me hunt for how to do business with you.

I know what you’re thinking. What’s Corey’s clear call-to-action?!? I thought you’d never ask. ?? It’s simple –?email me at [email protected] to set-up a conversation about your business or to tell me what you think of this newsletter. We offer both digital marketing strategy and social media management services and have been happily doing so for over ten years!

That’s it from me for now – more tips to come next week!

Corey