Engage Your Audience. But what the hell does that mean?
September 27 2011, 12:48 PM
Filed in: Indie Advice
I see and hear those words everywhere. And admittedly, I almost always use those same words myself when consulting with clients.
Engage Your Audience.
Its become one of the most overused phrases in online marketing. Yet despite its overuse it remains the most succinct way to summarize the concept of how to successfully market your brand (or band) using social media.
But how many of you actually understand what this marketing lingo actually means? To help you out I've brainstormed a few tips on how you can put the word Engage to use in your everyday social media status updates.
Definition: en·gage
1. Occupy, attract, or involve (someone's interest or attention)
2. Cause someone to become involved in (a conversation or discussion)
15 Tips To Engage Your Audience
- Entertain your audience.
- Appeal to their emotions. Make them laugh. Make them think. Make them cry. Punch them in the face (Ok, don't do that last one… just checking to see if you're still paying attention).
- Ask powerful questions. Ask for opinions. Create a quiz.
- Brainstorm with your audience. Ask for ideas.
- Ask your audience to help create something with you or for you (ie. design contests).
- Speak with your audience, not to your audience.
- Share something personal with them (ex. I'm scared of worms).
- Acknowledge your audience or certain members within it. (ex. "Thanks to Jenny for the awesome photo she snapped!")
- Speak to them when they're listening (not at 3am when they're asleep).
- Converse with your audience. Reply to their comments. Answer their questions… and in a timely manner.
- Be intriguing. (Hmm, I wonder what little surprise we have in store for everyone this coming Friday…")
- Share something tangible for free, without asking for anything in return.
- Be human. Be yourself. Don't speak like a robot marketing man or a used car salesman.
- Create content that elicits the desire to share with friends.
- Use multimedia to appeal to all of a person's sensory inputs. Words (tell a story, write a blog, share your thoughts, poems, lyrics, quotes), photos, videos, music, art.
— Brian Thompson
