15 Tips To Help You Get Better At Audience Engagement

Just imagine how you would feel if someone slammed the door on your face? Well, that’s precisely what your audiences do when you do not meet their expectations. What’s worse is that Google figures this out as it shows up in your website’s stats, under ‘bounce rate’ and your rankings drop. The key to avoiding this is by focussing on content that draws a higher audience engagement and that’s quite an art. After all, your content is your biggest asset and by planning it wisely, you can decrease your bounce rate in no time. All that you need to focus on is creating great content that draws higher audience engagement and keeps your audience engrossed. Also, by creating such content, you unleash countless monetization opportunities. That’s because you’ve managed to grab the attention of your audience and unless they find your content useful, they wouldn’t spend their precious time on your content. That brings us to the big question, which is ‘How to create useful content?’. So to make things easier, let us now look into some quick tips that can considerably boost your audience engagement.

1. Plan an effective Content Strategy

Your success largely depends on the effectiveness of your content strategy, so you need to devise one that instantly connects you with your target audience. You can do this by using survey tools that help you gather relevant data directly from your audiences. These tools can be used to identify a common problem area or to assess the effectiveness of a particular recommendation. In fact, you can collect almost any type of data by running surveys and gathering information straight from your audiences. As you would now deliver precisely what your audiences seek, there’s a better chance of higher audience engagement.

2. Create useful and relevant content

Every business is eager to get on the top of Google search results, but ever wondered how Google’s search engine algorithm works? Google wants you to create content that’s relevant and useful for information-seekers. When you do this, the search engine’s algorithm ascertains it by taking into account your website’s bounce rate and the time spent by your audiences to read, listen or watch your content. The key to achieving better audience engagement lies in creating useful content and delivering it at the right time. So merely posting on your website or your social media five times a day without delivering actual value would only annoy your target audience. On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time planning and strategizing content well in advance, it becomes a lot easier to connect with your audience.

3. Meet the Expectations of your Audience

Content is the king and there is no doubt about it but the days are gone when more content meant better search engine rankings. Now, the search engines want you to focus on creating content that results in better audience engagement. So, you need to spend more time understanding what exactly your followers or readers want and deliver that. As you would be giving them exactly what they want, you can be sure that this sort of content would draw better audience engagement.

4. Ask more questions to ensure better Audience Engagement

To ensure better audience engagement, you need to be on their mind and the simplest way of doing that is by asking questions and seeking answers in the comments section. If that’s not applicable to your business or if that seems impractical due to the size of your audience, then we completely understand. So, in such situations where managing responses from your audience can get difficult, here’s a little trick. You can stick to asking rhetorical questions, which don’t really require an answer coming in. Instead, rhetoric questions make your audience think more and that in turn ensures better audience engagement.

5. Roll out Content at the right time

You could roll out the most comprehensive article on a highly relevant topic, but if you do that at the wrong time, then all your efforts are in vain. So you should have absolute clarity on the behavioral pattern of your target audiences. In case, you have global audiences (which is very common in online media), then you need to find the rights subsets and cater to them.
So if you have 70 percent Canadians, 20 percent Australians and 10 percent British audiences, then you need to work around Canadian and Australian timings. Get to know their habits, how they go about their routine and then roll out content. For example, if you are selling Garden Supplies, then roll out content over the weekends, when people are relaxed. After all, that’s when the hobbyists would find time to nurture their hobby. Likewise, if you are promoting a textbook rental service then you would want to do that just before the semester begins. You can then roll out content that promotes flexible rental packages for the entire semester.

6. Give your audiences something to react to

You cannot expect your audience to stick around unless you engage them by giving them something to react to. Doing this isn’t very difficult and you can do so by putting across a hypothetical situation and making your audience think about how they would have reacted to a given situation. Now that instantly connects you with them and ensures better audience engagement.

7. Invite a Volunteer

The most effective way to engage your audiences is by inviting one of them to participate. You can do this by inviting guests to either comment, blog, or to simply participate in a live stream. Since the rest of your audiences relate better with the volunteer, you are assured of better audience engagement. Moreover, you can make it appear like a contest or a lucky draw just to make it more exciting. For example, if you run a blog that teaches SEO, then you could declare that you would randomly pick one of the blogs from the comments section and run a free SEO audit.

8. Share Success Stories

If you run a blog that imparts financial education on a regular basis and also sell some e-courses on the side, then here’s what you can do to ensure better audience engagement. Find out from your students about how they have benefited from your tips or courses and how much profit margin they have been able to generate. You can then create video clippings, in which your successful students talk about their achievements and how your course has changed their lives. This not only builds trust, but also motivates your audience to buy your products or services.

9. Collaborate with niche leaders

Presently, we live in a world of social media, where Influencers play a pivotal role in audience engagement and lead generation. By having a well-known Influencer on your video or podcast, you don’t just grab eyeballs but also stand to gain from the goodwill of that particular niche leader. This also ensures better audience engagement as you are probably collaborating with someone whom they already follow. So, by teaming up with influencers in a particular niche, you can reach out to people in a better manner and also increase the size of your audience. So you can benefit in many ways by collaborating with trusted niche leaders.

10. Create Poll-based content

If you have a website, then at some point you are going to run out of topics to create content around. So, why not run a quick survey on the most popular topics and deliver exactly what the majority want? By connecting with your readers in this manner, you instill a sense of importance in them and that, in turn, ensures better engagement. This also ensures that your efforts are directed in the right direction, because you then create content based on what your audience expects.

11. Use Infographics

By using infographics, you can skyrocket your audience engagement considerably through platforms like Pinterest and Instagram. You can create visual stories that are easier for the human brain to perceive and process. Although most Experts have contradictory opinions, the fact remains that infographics still work. However, what has changed is the manner in which you present it and its relevance to the rest of the content that you have posted. Just like Google no longer tolerates keyword stuffing, it doesn’t appreciate random infographics either.

12. Plan Webinars

The most ideal way to start planning a webinar is by choosing the right topic, something that your target audience would look forward to. Stay away from highly specialized topics that may pique the interest of only a few. You can always carry out surveys to narrow down topics that your audience is most interested in. By involving your audience from the very start, you connect with them in a better way. However, you must not organize webinars way too frequently, else it loses its significance. Finally, Webinars are a great way to improve and enhance audience engagement, as it adds a personal one-on-one touch. We say this because we strongly recommend that you use all the visuals that you intend to, but also turn on your webcam and remain approachable. Then all you need to do is shoot out a personalized email to your target audience and you are ready to start.

13. Contests and Giveaways

Who doesn’t like giveaways? Weekly contests and giveaways are one of the best tools to generate brand awareness. However, before you get started with it, you need to have a clear goal and work around it. You could also increase audience engagement by asking questions that compel your audience to skim through your entire piece of content. However, keep it realistic and don’t give away expensive gifts, right from the start. If you do that, then you attract those who are interested in the gifts and not your content. Attracting such an audience isn’t desirable and what you need to focus on is an audience that’s genuinely interested in the product or service that you are offering.

14. Add Videos

No matter what type of product or service you are promoting, adding videos can make it quite interesting and result in better audience engagement. However, while interesting and well-crafted videos can bring in better audience engagement, it could also work against you. So what matters is how creative and attention-grabbing your videos are. Now this depends on the products or services you are promoting and the manner in which you present them. Creative animated videos or explainer videos are a good way to start. The golden rule of making effective videos is to always make it a point to hook your audience in the first 3 seconds, as this ensures better audience engagement. So start from the thumbnail and pique the target’s curiosity for at least the first 30 seconds. According to studies, 45 percent of those who watch a video for the first 3 seconds, continue to do so for the next 30 seconds. Unless you do this, you are not going to have them sticking around until the end. So, with that in mind, you need to plan your videos.

15. Use the Storytelling technique

In the field of marketing, storytelling has proven to be one of the most effective techniques, that has the potential to spice up even the most boring topics. However, to be effective at it, you need to ensure that the story doesn’t focus on you, instead, it should focus on your audience. In other words, storytelling is a narrative that connects your brand and your target audience and acts as a bridge between the two. As this helps your audience relate better with your product, the likeliness of them buying it also increases.

We have compiled proven strategies that ensure better audience engagement and help you generate more leads. All of these strategies aim at delivering better user experience and that’s precisely what the search engines want you to do. Also, the above-mentioned strategies are formulated on the basis of human psychology and are based on scientific evidence and studies, which have been cited wherever necessary.