7 Tips for Engaging Your Audience Online
So you’ve attracted an online audience, but now you wonder how you are going to keep their interest. Keeping them engaged is tough when you have to reach out through the internet. So how do you do it? Read on to learn some great tips for boosting your audience’s engagement online.
Punctuality
Punctuality is the true King. Make sure you post material when promised, as promised. Your readers and followers expect it, and if they look and it isn’t there, that erodes their confidence in you. Keep them coming back for more by supplying more when you say you will. Never miss a post and you’ll never lose a reader unnecessarily.
Communication
When was the last time you chatted directly with someone visiting your site? Responded to a comment? Posted back and forth on a social media site? Actually replying to comments and questions creates a great sense of engagement because you are having a conversation.
This is no longer you shouting from the mountaintop down to the people below. This is talking back and forth to someone on their level, like a normal person. People like talking to other people. People don’t like talking to prophets shouting from the mountain, or being talked at by them.
Stay on Topic
Do you know what your audience wants? This should be an easy one, but maybe you haven’t thought about it yet. They are there because of what you offer, what you are knowledgeable about, what your site is about. So make sure that’s what you are delivering to them. Stay on target and stay focused on delivering things of value to your audience. If you blog about pet food and have affiliate links to pet food retailers, talk about pet nutrition, not about obedience training. Talk about quality ingredients or allergies, not about pet carriers, or worse yet, minivans. Your audience is there to satisfy their desires, help them out.
Be One-of-a-Kind
Stand out from the crowd. Do something no one else does. You want your followers coming back to you because you are the only one who offers what you do and how you do it. Distinguish yourself from the competition. Be unique. If you are the sole source, there really is no alternative.
Use Unique Images and Videos to Convey a Message
While text is great for communicating ideas and information, pictures, and now video, are very arresting. You’ve probably noticed the rise in the infographic where text and pictures are combined to convey information or tell a story. While language is deep in our brains, visual information in the forms of pictures or motion hits even deeper in the human psyche. Even audio, like podcasts, have an extra layer of meaning that words alone don’t have.
Human brains process so much more than simple text, such as inflection and emotion in the voice, expression and body language in still pictures and much more when viewing videos and infographics. Try offering blog posts in both text and podcast format. Do video tutorials to demonstrate things and instruct people how to do a task.
Offer Value
Is your website actually interesting to your users? People grow and change, so even if you’re experiencing success now you’ll inevitably need to grow and change to offer your web visitors value.
If you’re running a blog with 500 active readers and that number begins to drop, you need to reinvent your strategy. Use tools like BuzzSumo and Ahrefs Content Explorer to find new and exciting topics for your blogs. Take note of what your competitors are doing and do your best to identify patterns as they appear. Make sure your website is easy to use. Take some time and compare WordPress membership plugins to find which offer the best login platform for your users. Make sure you user’s data is safe and secure. Ask them how you can improve the site.
Connect on a Personal Level
People like funny. They also like empathy. Show your human side. Let your audience connect to you on a personal level. Share a personal story related to topic. Cracking a joke, or writing a funny blog post is an easy way to break out of the corporate mold. Know your audience, keep it light, in theme and relatable.
Staying engaged is a journey, not a destination. You need to keep working on these skills at all times, or you run the risk of losing your audience’s attention.
