Have you ever made a post on your blog or business page only to receive a handful of views and comments? Well, you’re not alone. It’s really difficult to increase post reach, engagement, and get followers as a business organically—especially when you’re first getting started. We’ve helped several small to medium-sized businesses with this exact issue. So, in today’s post, we will go over some tips for increasing audience engagement so you can strengthen your digital presence with engaging content.

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What Is Audience Engagement?

Audience engagement is the measurement of interactions with your content, whether it’s on your social media accounts, landing pages, blog posts, or website. Growing your following or increasing your visitors is great, but really, the greatest measure of your content’s success is its engagement rate.

Engagement is measured by a number of actions users take on your post, including but not limited to:

• Shares or retweets
• Comments
• Likes
• Audience growth
• Click-throughs
• Landing page visits
• Mentions

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Tips To Boost Engagement

1. Create a Conversation
Post content that is helpful by addressing needs and pain points. You want to try to create conversations that show thought leadership rather than just “broadcasting” your brand. If you’re only talking about how great your brand or products are, you’re going to have a difficult time connecting with your audience on a personal level.

Take a look at Domino’s Pizza’s Twitter. One thing Domino’s does is constantly engage in the debate surrounding pineapple on a pizza. Sparking debates in their threads generates a lot of activity.

2. Make Your Posts Visual
With 65% of people being visual learners, and 90% of the information transmitted to our brains being visual, using images, GIFs, and short videos with your posts are a much better way of connecting with your audience.

3. Embrace and Allow Sharing
Repost customer or follower posts, allow guest posting, or consider gaining the attention of influencers through proposing an affiliate partnership. Don’t forget to make your content shareable.

4. Humanize Your Posts
People are more likely to engage with a brand’s post when they know there’s a person behind it rather than some faceless entity. One way you can do this is to send personalized responses to people’s posts or comments. A lot of brands even encourage their social team to personally sign-off on their posts.

• Go beyond retweeting, liking, and commenting to engaging in conversations
• Acknowledge and answer questions
• Respond with humor and warmth
• Show the faces behind the brand

Many brands even engage in banter. Some brands have mastered the art of the comeback, such as Merriam-Webster in the example below. Keep it playful and be careful not to alienate your followers.

5. Use Relevant #Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to reach new people who aren’t already following you. Many people follow certain hashtags, so if you do your research and use the hashtags, there’s a chance new users will engage with your post and follow your profile.

6. Create Polls, Surveys, and Quizzes
Polls are a simple way to engage followers as it is fun and requires little effort for the user. They are also a great way to get customer feedback. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Stories all have poll features that are very easy to use.

7. Run Contests and Giveaways
Contest and giveaways are a great way to get your audience more involved. People love freebies, and contests and giveaways usually require some level of engagement in order to win. Oftentimes they require people to tag a friend or share the post, helping your contest get seen by new users.

8. Post Frequently (at Optimal Times)
Social media moves very fast, meaning once you’ve posted, it will not likely show up on someone’s timeline in a week or even a few days after it’s published due to the staggering amount of social media posts every day. That’s why for many campaigns, posting at least once a day, and even up to 3 times spread throughout the day is acceptable to ensure followers see your content. Do your research to determine the best times to post and schedule out your content in advance.

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The Bottom Line

Lack of engagement with content often leads to many small businesses giving up on their efforts. The truth is, content marketing requires a long-term strategy and continuous effort to see positive results. But if you stick with it, the results, in the end, can be tremendous. We hope you are now inspired to strengthen your digital presence with new ideas on how to increase audience engagement!

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Need Help?

Feel free to contact us with us if you have any questions.