How to Increase Audience Engagement: Faith, trust and a little bit of pixie dust
Engagement. It’s one of those holistic and glorified terms that every marketer bombards you with. Audience engagement has been proved to significantly raise your ROI. But what is it and how can it be used? This article will demystify the magic of its true meaning and how it can be boosted to optimise the ROI of your marketing videos.
Firstly, within a marketing context “engagement” means nothing more than attracting your audience’s attention and having them respond to your content. It’s about getting them interested in who you are and what you do. So how do you accomplish this? With faith, trust and a little bit of pixie dust.
All jokes aside, we’ve summarised how to increase audience engagement in five easy steps!
1. Personalise with Insights
A great first step to increase the engagement with your audience is through detailed segmentation based on demographics, behaviour and needs. The more specific the analytics, the better you can target posts and tailor content to your audience’s interests. This will not only optimise direct engagement but also trigger indirect conversations and sales.
So, get to know your audience! Find out where to reach them, what social media platforms they use, how to talk to them and what images and culture will tap into their emotions. Being specific in your tone will only help you build your audience and sustain engagement. The effectiveness of your reach can only be improved by understanding your target audience better.
2. Search for Topics
Once you’ve decided how to reach your audience, you need to determine what to reach them with. Carefully monitor analytics on your posts and see which ones are the most successful in terms of reach, likes, comments and views. Try to emulate similar posts to keep engagement high. Deepen research on your audience behaviour by looking out for their interests or hobbies. Use metrics to find out whether people have been talking about you, sharing your content etc. See who your audience are following and analyse your competitors. See what they’re posting, how often their posting and track their level of engagement. This data will only help to influence your social media campaign.
3. Go Interactive
In a world where customers are seeking immersive experiences, interactive content is key. Generate content that will allow the audience to respond or reply. This helps create a more inclusive social media presence that will boost engagement. Getting your audience to generate content is also a fantastic way of increasing your reach. 85 percent of consumers indicate that watching user-generated content has more influence on their purchase than brand-created content. The reason for this is reliability. It comes full circle, the more you show that you value your audience’s opinion, the more that the audience will value yours. So, go for draggable 360-degree video, polls, quizzes and include user-generated content to create a really dynamic presence. But don’t forget to provide them with a clear call to action, so your customers know what you expect from them.
4. Increase Your Accessibility
As we’re living in a “content-flooded” society, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd and pop up when being searched for. Therefore, video accessibility matters. Reinforce your message with a voice-over that carefully explains what is happening on the screen and use captions, subtitles and other (motion) graphics to increase the accessibility of your videos. The latter will not only affect the accessibility of your video but also significantly contribute to your SEO. The more material Google can scan the more likely your videos will be found and consumed!
5. Think Events
Want to give your audience that immersive experience? Invite them to your event video. Event videos, if done well, are one of the quickest assets to turn your local reach into global brand awareness. Think about all the events you couldn’t attend – maybe they’re sold out, too expensive or too far away. Now think of all the events, performances and speeches you’ve watched online. Even just short clips. It’s a lot, right? Content like this is a sure-fire way to boost reach and engagement. So, what are you waiting for? Next time you have an event, don’t worry about multi-camera set up and editing crews, just place your tripods and lights strategically and get sharing!
How to Increase Audience Engagement
Engaging videos start with having great content. But understanding your audience will only help to boost your reach and meet your targets. Spend some time getting to know your audience, find out what they want to see, what they’ve been engaging with and what they haven’t. Data like this will be invaluable as you increase your video content. It will be trial and error, but over time this combination of strategies will help you achieve the “unachievable” and reach your ROI goals for 2020.