When you start running your own internet business, there are several challenges you face. Attract customers, make sales, prepare a quality product. All this is good, of course. But none of this will be effective if you don't organize audience engagement.
In this article, we have collected all the useful information about audience engagement. Here you will find information about what engagement is, how to engage your audience, and at the end of the article we will give you a handout that will make engagement even easier.
So, thoroughly study all the points in this article. And then your internet business will definitely start to soar. Along with your conversion stats.
Audience engagement – what is it?
But let's start with the basics. In case you don't know what audience engagement is. And with what is actually eaten. So here it is:
audience engagement is a measure of your audience's readiness and willingness to share feedback and participate in the life of your business.
In other words, it's the activity of your audience. And your desire to respond to all your messages and, if you are in business, to buy your products or services.
Read More: 5 Best Sites to Make Money with Clicks
Why is it important? Because social networks constantly monitor the engagement rate of the audience. And many decisions are made based on that. For example, whether to show first in search. Or if you should recommend it to friends of your followers.
Ways to increase audience engagement
If you want to grow your social media community, you need to increase audience engagement. Fortunately, there are no impossible and complicated methods here.
So anyone can increase engagement. Even a true novice in his field. We will introduce the most popular methods below. So prepare your work notes – there will be a lot of useful information.
1. Find out what your audience is interested in
Seems a bit obvious, I agree. But unfortunately, not everyone follows this simple rule. And as a result, subscribers receive completely different information than what they signed up for.
Increasing audience engagement is easy if you know that same audience. Are you talking about weight loss? You must not publish information about replacing horseshoes on domestic donkeys. Only do this if you usually talk about the house.
Try to create an image of your target audience. And define the image of a person who will be interested in your publications. Find out what sex, age, where he lives. And, of course, don't forget about your profession and hobbies. When your posts become interesting to your audience, they will generate significantly more responses.
2. Study what your competitors are doing
Chances are you are far from alone in your niche. But this is really very good. Because now you have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others.
So feel free to enter the communities of competitors and study them. See which posts are most popular. And try to highlight certain themes. You can use them on your website.
But don't use everything word for word. Just check out the popular topics and formats for yourself. And maybe they will inspire you to create something new. So don't overlook this way of increasing audience engagement.
3. Watch your stats
Don't trust your premonitions. Because what's interesting to you isn't always interesting to your audience.
Measure the stats for each of your posts. Note the number of likes, reposts, comments. See if the feedback was helpful. And if so, try using it in the future. Because a loyal audience can quickly increase engagement.
And once you find patterns to increase engagement, make changes to the content plan. But don't be afraid to change it up as the week progresses. Because tomorrow trends can change significantly.
4. Create useful content
This also seems obvious, but believe me, it's not for everyone. Because many people think that posting ordinary photos or unstructured thoughts is enough. But no matter how.
Educational content is very popular now. People come to you not just for entertainment, but also for some benefit. And this benefit will help you increase audience engagement.
Post any helpful comments. Or share your opinion about an important event in your area. And provide readers with useful tools. After that, people will want to not only participate in discussions, but also visit your site as often as possible.
5. Ask questions
If you have your own platform and some kind of audience, you are already considered an expert. Therefore, people are happy to hear your opinion, like and comment on posts.
But to increase audience engagement, sometimes you need to do the exact opposite. Ask your followers something. And they are happy to use the opportunity to be of service to you.
Just ask exactly what you are really interested in. Because fake questions and attempts to flatter people get it very quickly. And they quickly stop any attempt at such manipulation.
6. Use surveys
Subscribers love to share their opinions. And this should be used if you want to increase audience engagement. Also, with this tool you can get to know your subscribers better.
Just choose a topic that interests you and set up a poll. If you're doing this on social media, use the built-in toolkit. And for WordPress-based blogs, there are special plugins.
For example, ask your followers about their musical tastes. Or help decide on the next topic for your webinar. In other words, let the subscribers decide. And then they will definitely take an active part in the life of their community.
7. Raise important questions
Another way to increase audience engagement is to talk about important topics. But speak, of course, expressively. It helps the reader get closer to you, start empathizing and trusting you.
And it's easy to check. Go to the account of a blogger you actively follow. Find the post with the most comments. With a probability of 90%, this will be a heated discussion of something important for the blogger himself.
Feel free to talk about what hurts. And it will certainly resonate with your subscribers and casual platform visitors.
8. Gamify
Gamification, translated into the language of a simple Russian person, is the realization of small games. That is, the direct involvement of the public in any action through games.
At the same time, you are limited in this respect only by your creativity, time, and desire. This is where gamification is good. But let's give you some examples so you don't get confused. And maybe that will boost your inspiration and you will create something unique.
For example, you might offer to complete a sentence. Or leave any complicated problem and send your solution in the comments. Also, people love quizzes, little quests and are happy to share any answer. So gamification is a great way to increase audience engagement.
9. Contests, giveaways and giveaways
One of the most popular ways to increase engagement. We have already talked about how to win money in lotteries. And yet they mentioned how useful this tool is.
Check it out: 2 Best sites to make money with uploads and downloads
These can be complex creative contests with certain conditions, as well as regular prize draws. But attention: every draw must have clear rules. And the prizes in any case must go to the winner. Otherwise, your platforms will be blocked and you will have a bad reputation.
Also, it is not necessary to invest a lot of money in it.
10. Reply to your followers
Surely you will be asked. This is a common occurrence if you have a certain number of subscribers. But many make a gross mistake, leaving these questions unanswered.
Therefore, we will immediately say: do not do this. If you see a comment on your post, reply to it. If it's not a question, but an opinion, just say thank you. And then you will not have one comment, but two.
And if there are already several comments in your thread, you can easily duplicate them. Because it makes no difference to the algorithms who leaves comments. Engagement is getting better anyway.