Audience Engagement Secrets

Online marketers ENGAGEMENT is “are online-customers interested to read, respond or forward your content?” everyone is Fascinated by this word and are Desperate to know the success formula for it.

Audience Engagement is transforming to a tangible asset playing a vital role in marketing and branding. Today ENGAGEMENT is used in reference to online parlance for likes, comments, clicks, page views, time spent on page, followers, retweets and variety of other online activities termed as your "POST"

Audience-Engagement  is more like finding the gap, filling it with valuable content and insight. People come to our site(online Property) in mostly two cases:

1. You are answering their question.
2. You have an insight into something they are interested in.

VALUE: Everything revolves around value. If  the online Visitor(online-audience) Benefits Reading your content, it adds Value to him, thereby  keeping your audience engaged. This value gets extended to visitors coming back often, staying longer & also tell friends  about things they Like in on your site/page. 

This extended value ultimately can also lead to buying a product or participating in a conversation. The success of audience engagement varies depending upon the goal of the brand. For instance Adobe posts on its FB page for free trial of workshop; engagement would mean clicking on link and downloading the trial. For today’s  customer-centric marketing, audience engagement is like salt in food. It’s the essential element that turns as awareness into SOLD.

The five senses engagement model clearly explains how each sense is involved to create a value for the content. There are contents required for each stage and if it non-existing, the content is useless.

We have loads of information available on internet today. It is so saturated now. The idea is just finding the gap and playing with it.

The above picture is an example of superb “AUDIENCE-ENGAGEMENT”. Australia’s high rating cooking competition reality show “My Kitchen Rules”.  The way they provide information on contestants, connecting them with audience,engage the online audience with activities(granting offers), connecting with their dream image, recipes they share, breaking news behind the scenes, gossips, videos, connecting with the visitors online etc is simply mind blowing.

So we see that audience engagement is not restricted to a specific horizon. It can be:

1.       Profit, profit and profit!

2.       Branding, branding and branding!

3.       Selling stuff

4.       Ideas, Feedback

5.       Referrals, recommendations

6.       Digital Merit Badges(Twitter)

We see it’s different for each product, brand, goals to get accomplished etc. Every form of content should be crystal clear. Be it signing newsletter, RSS feed, driving traffic to another page, providing information and many more.

Why AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT IS SO VITAL in Digital world??

Everyone likes to get engaged. Unless and until they are engaged, the productivity is never going to be cent percent.

In daily example, a parent wants to engage their child in studies, a boss wants to engage his employee in project, brand wants to engage their prospective customers in their ideas etc. So failing to create a pool of engagement ultimately leads to a failure of desired result. In the same way marketing (which always works on using consumer’s intellect) is no way untouched by its essence.

Four simple logic on “Why AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT IS SO VITAL in Digital world??”

1. Target Group changes their taste daily:

Some audience may use email, some social media channels. Identify the target audience and the networks they use daily.   The content needs to be different for different channels. The curation, creation and syndication of content should be as per the targets audience’s daily activities.

2. Fierce Competition:

Almost every company has its own online presence. The existence is of utmost importance for generating leads, sales, brand awareness, profits etc. Thus Audience Engagement is a facilitating step towards achieving long term, bigger goal.

3. Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The consumer “behavior and search patterns” is too dynamic. Audience Engagement allows to keep track and move rapidly with the changing and unpredictable pattern. For example tips on “how to cope up with summer using natural herbs” can be in demand when summer is around.

4. “Jo dikhta ha wo bikta hai (What is seen is sold)”

Audience Engagement tool can go very well with it. It’s a perfect example where people share their experiences and trigger the engagement behavior of the customers and prospects too. 

Marketing today is not tact or a trick but simply an experience.

e.g. Fab Furnish, a leading online store for furniture uses this tool to generated thousands followers, likes, mentions.

Few techniques on “How to measure AUDIENCE-ENGAGEMENT??”

55% of readers spend less than 15 seconds actively on page (Chartbeat, March 2014). Many companies are still busy in growing lists, fans, followers but ignore Audience Engagement which can actually lift your brand by 300% Its always important to value quality of audience over quantity. The success can be easily measured by engagement.

1. Content Engagement: A thoughtful and goal oriented content is always effective. It should be strategically placed. Content should lead readers on a journey; be it textual, visual or a video content The result can be easily measured by the comments on blogs, landing page, article etc. This can hardly boost ROI but at the same time it is also important for stronger campaigning.

2. Social-Media Platform Engagement: The “making it go viral” feature of social media ranks it higher in audience engagement. The shares, comments, like, etc has the ability to amplify the content reach ultimately leading to success.

a.  Facebook and Google Plus: They provide a very convenient platform for online audience to follow or make a community and engage with variety of contents. The results can be measured by likes, comments, replies, etc which amplify the contents reach very quickly.

b.  Instagram: A mobile app which has brought revolution in the social media world has a great potential in engaging customers. The tools used for photography with special effects makes the user more comfortable in sharing the thoughts, ideas and thus invoking the desired emotions.   The growth in number of followers, fan base itself gives an idea about the quality and quantity of content reach.

c.   Twitter: The “shortness and sweetness” of twitter is easily digestible. The message gets actually fleeted here within seconds. The tweets, retweets, formal connections etc determine the audience engagement level.

3. Email and Newsletter Engagement: Email Engagement is usually measured through open and click through rates. The social media links in email helps in drawing reader’s attention to the next level.

The video below shows how various social media channels are allowing the marketers to use their channel for “Audience Engagement” conveniently. This is an example of “Audience Engagement on YouTube” 

Each type of engagement has its own peculiar characteristics. Its importance vary from campaign to campaign. The online-audience has diverse taste.

Google Analytics Video Explaining How to Measure Engagement

For website, G+ Page, Youtube Videos and Blogs its Google Analytics or Omniture, for Facebook, Linkedin pages its their Insights.

Audience Engagement is more like “Not one size fits all”. It depends upon brand and circumstances. The need of an hour should be known and if this is explored audience engagement can be used as a very successful tool for any online business.