It Starts Tonight!

Roll up! Roll up! 

Those are the words we probably heard as kids, you hear it a lot less today. 

And in 2017 there was a fantastic film released with Hugh Jackman about the circus performer or circus ringmaster of historical fame, although the story left out some darker underbellies of truth, however it's a fantastic film and it's a really important film for marketing people. Because we have to be the greatest showman. 

I was working with some clients recently and one of the things they wanted to do was get more engagement, more commenting. 

So we talked about a strategy we use called comment driving. 

The end result of that session with the client was that they understood that they have to behave like a ringmaster, like an mc or a dj. 

This is something I've talked about before;

They don't get engagement, it's something they get given. 

So they had to work out and the problem we got them to focus on was; 

What do we need to do to get engagement from our audience? 

What would it take to get that engagement?

Which is a very different question to; 

Why aren't we getting more engagement? 

Which is the most common question. 

So the question then really is; 

What do I need to do to get engagement? 

Because if I ask for engagement, I won't get it. 

If I compel people to give me engagement, I won't get it. 

Yet I can still get engagement if I do the right things that have my customers or prospects, then engaging with me out of choice. 

Ultimately getting engagement isn't just fire and forget, you can't just throw stuff out and expect to get engagement. 

It doesn't quite work that way. Unless you're an epic level contributor and content creator, it's very hard. And unless you've got tons of momentum it's very hard to get that kind of engagement straight off from one post here or there. 

So getting engagement isn't just fire and forget. 

You can't just fire stuff out and hope that people are going to engage with you on it, because it never works. 

What you've got to do is you've got to hit the pain as early as possible, and you've got to ask powerful questions. Because when you do that what happens is people start talking to you because you're in the conversation they're having, as opposed to trying to pull them into the conversation you're having, which doesn't work because they don't care about your problems. 

I'm really sorry to break it to you. 

They just don't. 

They've got a busy life, they've got busy family, they've got busy business, they have not got the time to care. 

You've got to hit that pain, you've got to ask powerful questions. 

Ultimately you've got to conduct the orchestra. 

You've got to be that ring master, the mc, the dj. 

There's a really simple way we know to do it. 

First of all we're going to hit the pain in the ass questions. 

But when we talk about comment driving, what we mean is that anytime someone asks us a question on any platform, we want to do something else with it. 

Maybe we want to reply, maybe we want to take a screenshot of that question and post it elsewhere, maybe you want to provide a video reply, an audio reply, maybe we want to direct message and thank them for the comment and ask them to help us with more discussion, maybe tagging people in. 

Comment driving then is really about taking one comment and turning it into as many more as possible. 

That can be competitive as well. 

You could put in place, if you had a distributed team, all of whom could be active on social, you could easily incentivise and put it in place that whoever drives the most comments wins a ￡50 amazon voucher or whatever. 

But the point is it's very, very analytical. 

It's very structured. 

The outcome will be that you will be the ringmaster, you'll be conducting the engagement, it will be flowing because of you. 

And it's that simple; 

• Hit the pain, 
• Ask the question and then 
• Follow up with every comment as far as possible.

Certainly if you can dm an even more powerful message and a thank you to them using video, that's a pro tip. 

People love that, when you get a video personalised video message in your inbox whether it's on email, whether it's facebook, whether it's twitter, linkedin, insta, wherever it is, you're going to feel a lot better about what you've done. 

So that's really what it comes down to. 

You can't just fire and forget to get engagement, you've got to hit the pain and ask powerful questions, and that enables you to conduct the orchestra, which makes you finally the greatest showman. 

It's that simple.