8 Ways To Increase Engagement With Your Audience

Engagement is not about growing the audience, but taking care of the one you already have. That’s how small audiences turn into loyal armies. In this post, I shared with you 8 ways to increase engagement with your audience.

One of the most critical objectives for content marketers is increasing engagement with website visitors. While the term has been around for decades, the concept of engagement has taken center stage in the digital age. In an era where multi-screen usage is nearly at its saturation point among connected consumers, the problem of distraction is only going to get worse.

Engagement doesn’t just start or begin at your website. It goes even further that including your social media channels. Brands and marketers who can get an audience to engage with their content, products and offerings at a higher level achieve far more success than those who are unable to do so.

Here are 8 ways to increase engagement with your audience:

1. Offer Serious Value

Not sure where to start with your content? Follow one simple rule: Help other people. You can do this by creating valuable content. Valuable content is anything that makes a positive impact in someone else’s life. This can be things like a list of actionable tips, an ebook that explains a complicated subject in an easy-to-understand way or a podcast that features uplifting messages of hope for those who need to hear it.

Valuable content can be anything as long as it helps your audience. That makes it difficult to define because only you know what it means to offer serious value to your own audience. You can figure this information out through surveys, experimentation or a competitive analysis.

2. Search Referrals Get More Engagement

Data shows that Google search referrals are 10% more likely to continue browsing and see beyond one page on a website. Social referrals see a 65% bounce rate on one page. So, even though it’s great for you to get your content shared on social networks, it’s also a good idea to optimize your pages with the right search keywords and phrases.

People don’t realize that social media is highly distracting. As a result of this, people have very low attention spans when they leave social media to go somewhere else. The search engines are far less distracting and people have an agenda in mind. Search traffic is still extremely valuable especially to get interested users to connect with a brand.

3. Use Multiple Forms Of Content

95% of communication is nonverbal, but so many people limit their content creation efforts and engagement efforts to solely writing. Don’t forget that a website can be a multi-format platform. Audio content enables people to hear your voice and video content enables people to hear your voice and see your face.

This helps you get beyond that 5% of communication that is just written. It creates a deeper connection with the audience and it caters to those with the ‘short attention span’. While video or audio is more time consuming to create, it also has a much longer shelf life. Content with longer shelf life results in increased levels of engagement over the long run.

4. Write About Newsworthy Topics & Be The First To Jump On Trends

Looking out for trends and being the first to write about them is a great way to grow your audience and increase engagement at the same time. Reading larger publications in your industry can be a great way of spotting these trends; you can then publish posts, commentaries or responses to what’s happening.

5. Publish At All Hours

For virtually every social media platform, it’s a best practice to increase engagement by publishing when your buyer personas are online. This typically means creating social media posts outside the normal work hours. Studies have found that early morning and evening posts have around a 20% higher engagement than those posts made between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm.

6. Make It Easy For Your Audience

Your audience may love to connect with you, share your content and jump into the conversation. However, they won’t do any of the above if you make it difficult for them to do so. Try to make the process as seamless as possible or even consider incentivizing your audience for sharing your material with others.

Spending too much time on the content creation side of things makes it easy to forget what life is like on the content consumption side. Avoid this pitfall by empathizing with your audience. Understand what they see as visitors to your site and make their user experience easy and hassle-free.

7. Be Consistent And Reliable

Once you’ve got your audience’s attention, it is now crucial that you are consistent. Is there anything worse than getting hooked on a weekly blog only for the author to go on an unexplained hiatus for 3 weeks? In a world where everything is just one click away, it’s unlikely that an audience is going to remain loyal to you for long if they think you have nothing new to say or post.

If you’re consistent in your delivery of valuable and insightful content, your audience will consistently return to consume it. Similarly, knowing what time to post content is crucial so you know when your audience is willing to engage with you and is eager for new material.

8. Offer Your Readers Something Helpful For Free

For a lot of websites, around 75% of visitors will never return. What can you do about this? The most effective solution is to offer a free download in exchange for joining your email list. or blowing a new visitor away with your content. The most valuable asset you have in getting someone to return is a way to contact them.

Mailing lists have become extremely popular and it allows you to lure your user back to your website on a regular basis. You can often times give a free download such as an ebook, template, checklist, discount code or something else in exchange for their email address. Exactly what you choose will entirely depend on your blog, your offering and ultimately your niche.

Conclusions

Engagement is not about growing the audience, but taking care of the one you already have. That’s how small audiences turn into loyal armies. In this post, I shared with you 8 ways to increase engagement with your audience.