It’s indeed a little disheartening to spend hours creating content only to find it’s not resonating with your audience. But, it’s not the end of the world.
If you’re struggling to get content engagement, this article is for you.
Customer engagement is the act of building a relationship with your customers that goes beyond monetary transactions. There are many ways you can engage with your buyers: through emails, phone calls, social media, and more.
I’ve narrowed those down to seven practical ways that work!
1. Define your target audience
Businesses can use their target audience to create marketing messages that effectively get people to buy their products or services.
Here’s the rule of thumb to segment your audience effectively. One, define your target audience according to the platform where you will be publishing your content. Next, analyze the needs of this platform’s user base.
Let’s assume you run a sports clothing retail business that has just launched a new eco-friendly line of football boots. Your ideal customer—and therefore the type of person who is most likely to engage with your content—is environmentally conscious, is a football fan, and plays football.
With this strategy, you can now tailor your messaging appropriately for content engagement.
If you still don’t have a buyer persona, create one (here’s a good reference). The visual representation of your customer/reader will help you get an understanding of their needs.
Facebook Creator Studio is a great place to get information about your followers, such as their age and gender. This tool is designed to help you grow your brand and the community around it. As well as scheduling capabilities, it provides quality reporting, which can be used to define your target audience.
Take a look at the tech giant Apple’s iPhone website section, and you’ll conclude Apple used buyer personas to determine what to include there.
For the top model of phones, the desired persona is likely to be someone who prefers luxury brands, has some knowledge of tech, is under 40, and is interested in high-quality photography.
So, that part of the website has a clean layout and high-quality camera imagery, of course.
2. Write engaging headlines
You can use different news headlines or memes on social media sites to help with your headlines. Try following popular threads on Reddit or Quora, then research the topic further so you can write an informative post on it and ensure content engagement.
If you want to target people interested in social media marketing, they are more likely to read about social media marketing tips.
Engaging content means something different for everyone. It can be humorous, it could be touching, or it could be thought-provoking. It all depends on the person.
If you are struggling to write engaging content, here are a few tips to help you out:
- Make your headlines shareable, for example, “You and your training partner will love these delicious high-protein recipes!”
- Use questions in your posts to engage readers better, such as “How would you rate our latest business podcast?”
- Create posts that ignite curiosity and keep them guessing, for example, “10 proven techniques to help lose body fat.”
As a bonus, here’s a blog article from CoSchedule on “101 Catchy Blog Title Formulas That Will Boost Traffic By 438 percent.” It will provide you with a great set of examples. The blog post itself is a great example, too, with its compelling title.
It teaches us that it’s a good idea to include some form of data in the title of an article or social media post. The more facts you showcase, the more credible your content will be.
3. Encourage social sharing
If you want to increase the shareability of your content, you need to create something that people will want to link back to.
Aim for a takeaway message that is simple and easy to understand. Focus on emotions and creativity instead of just data.
One way to enhance content engagement is by using storytelling in your content. When people are engaged in the story, it will be easier for them to share it with others or find someone interested in it.
Another way is to encourage reviews so people feel comfortable sharing your product and services. This works both for online businesses and physical stores.
You can also encourage people to share what you’ve written by working with influencers. Consumers are likely to trust influencers when they share that sort of information on their social media profiles.
Food brand, Chipotle, runs an annual “Boorito” campaign over Halloween. Taking advantage of the massive reach of TikTok, they offered discounts to customers on the platform. To avail of the discounts, all customers needed to show were their before and after Halloween costumes.
For branding, the social media users had to use a custom sound bite by Chipotle. Some influencers also joined the campaign. The most liked posts, Chipotle said, would receive free burritos for a year.
Now that’s super shareable content!
4. Focus on your publishing frequency
You need to focus on publishing frequency if you want your content to succeed.
Too little content will make readers lose interest. Too much content just looks spammy.
While there are many resources on how frequently one should post on social media, the best way is to think from your audience’s perspective.
In short, post when it makes sense for your business and aligns with your audience’s expectations.
Social media publishing software such as Later can help you manage your publishing frequency. Some platforms can even suggest the most popular times to post. You can organize posts for the near and distant future across various channels by using a simple calendar. You can then use the tool to gather relevant data.
Stil Classics, a company specializing in organizational products to help women achieve their goals, utilized Later’s calendar to help increase engagement. Through consistent scheduling on Instagram, they got data that helped them determine the best time to post to boost engagement and used that to their advantage.
5. Use the comments section well
The comments section is where readers can communicate with authors. You should take advantage of that.
Always encourage discussion through your posts by asking questions that will spark readers’ interest. You can also use polls to get people to react. That way, your audience will feel more involved and invested in what you have to say.
Some people may post inappropriate content. Social media channels like Facebook have tools for these and allow the blocking of such comments. Remember, though, that comments with negative reviews should be responded to.
To engage your readers, you’d need to monitor what they’re saying all the time. However, this isn’t always possible. The best way, then, is to identify when your users are most likely to engage and then to allocate time for when you’ll respond to them.
Facebook Creator Studio can also help you determine the busiest hours and days for your audience. In the image above, the darker blocks represent the times most of your followers are online. The lighter blocks mean there are fewer people online. With this tool, then, you can determine the times you want to be online to engage with your audience through comments.
6. Send out newsletters
It can sometimes be challenging for your website visitors to find your content and read it. By sending out newsletters, you let them know when new content has been published.
They can subscribe to these newsletters to receive fresh content in their inbox without going back and searching for them. To get them to subscribe, you’d need great content in the first place, of course. Or you can dangle a lead magnet, maybe an ebook they can get for free if they give you their email address.
Once they subscribe to your newsletters, they’ll know what’s new on your website and will be more likely to engage with that content.
If you don’t know where to start with email marketing, there are plenty of accessible and affordable tools out there. One of these is MailChimp, which offers free services for a limited number of emails sent.
Charity: water, for instance, knows how exactly to use email marketing to keep people engaged. By providing updates on projects to people who donate, the organization makes its audience feel fully involved and included.
Personalized engagement is always the most effective. If you have the time, you can also send a follow-up email to those readers who have engaged with your original article to continue the conversation. That could also result in an emotional connection between the customer and your brand.
7. Add real examples and data to your content
If you want your content to be more persuasive, you need to use real-life examples. When people read your content, they want to know all the information there isn’t just theory. It’s based on real life.
Also, the more data you put into your content, the better it’s going to be. You can do this by utilizing charts or graphs which prove what you are saying. Graphs can make it easier for people to understand what you’re trying to say.
For instance, Mindstream Media Group used the graph above to summarize their findings on repromoting content to increase social media engagement.
In closing
You won’t be able to enhance content engagement overnight. But if you have a strategy, you will start seeing better results that will help your business.
Define your audience, craft catchy headlines, encourage social sharing and monitor your content frequency. Additionally, don’t shy away from asking for feedback and using real-life examples to make your content more relatable.
If you follow the steps above, you’ll be able to grow a community around your business and boost content engagement. Ultimately, you’ll stay ahead of your competition, and your brand will be well on its way to success.
