Sharpening Engagement With Your Social Media Content

Engaging your online connections is not always the easiest thing to accomplish. If you and your business are struggling with that, you may be asking yourself what you can do to improve the situation and to successfully get and keep other people engaged.

The approach to take to engage other people

In order to engage other people, the first thing that you need to possess is a desire to hear what those other people want to say. There are so many different ways to get people engaged. The chances are really good that you can quite easily come up with several topics that are interesting and thought-provoking. 

Here are some useful ideas that you can leverage for your particular business:

• Pose questions to your audience: Posing questions is a great way to engage other people. If your question is interesting, it will invoke a positive reaction in other people and you may be surprised at how many valuable interactions result from that one question. If you ask a question, it makes the other person feel that you value his or her opinion. That will produce really positive results and you will get some interesting responses, no doubt. Additionally, you may have thought about the fact that if you give your target audience the opportunity to voice their opinions, that feedback provides you with insight into what they want and need. It is an easy, relatively painless way to acquire that information. It is also that feedback that will drive a lot of your marketing decisions. 

• Share content that is light, interesting, and funny: Injecting a sense of humor into your content will really make your target audience stand  up and pay attention. Everyone knows that reading content that has a humorous edge is a much more interesting experience than reading content that is dry and stagnant. If you do attract your readers to your content because you have managed to make it interesting and exciting, those readers will want to come back for more, over and over again. In other words, they will become loyal to you and to your business. Having a sense of humor in life is so important. However, being able to show other people the humor in any given situation is a gift, both to them and to you. Additionally, you will live longer with a sense of humor. Humor is addictive. If you are happy and smiling, other people will be happy and smiling as well.

• Let them know who you are: At the heart of a successful relationship is the human connection. That human/emotional connection is what will make other people relate to you. If your story (it must always) resonates with the other person, you will be on your way to develop a meaningful, enduring relationship. It is not a good idea to present only your business side. People don’t relate to or trust someone like that and if they don’t relate to you or trust you, they will never buy what you are selling, whether that is a product or a service.

• Post content that will inspire:  Quotations are a great idea. Other pearls of wisdom work as well. Other people love when you give them something to think about, something that they can retain for a long time. When it comes to choosing just the right quote or other gem to share with them, remember that you should focus on giving them what they may want or need. It should always be more about them than about you.

• Try to avoid time-sensitive content: Although fresh content is a very good thing, there is no saying that you can’t recycle some of your content over time. That is why you should never (or rarely) share content that is connected to a particular event or holiday throughout the year. For example, January 1, 2016, will only work on that date. It is basically a “one-night stand.” It is far more practical and efficient (not to mention, intelligent) to share content from which you get a lot of mileage. Your content should be relevant forever. That content will engage your audience and keep people engaged.

• Don’t be afraid to use curated content to engage your audience: You should have a healthy combination of original and curated content. If you don’t feel right about using someone else’s content without any involvement of your own (besides giving the author of the content attribution), you can put in your own commentary. That should help you to feel a sense of some ownership. Keep in mind that it is perfectly appropriate and acceptable to do that.

Conclusion

There are many different ways to engage your target audience members and you can use your content effectively by trying several different approaches (as discussed here). Once you have managed to engage your target audience, it is no small challenge to keep them engaged. As long as you are committed to them, you will be successful. Make sure to always be in touch with your audience. That means that you have a good understanding of where they spend their time so that you can spend your time (or, at least, part of your time) there too. It is important to keep in mind that engaging your target audience may be different for you than it is for someone else. Before you even attempt to engage anyone, you should think carefully about how you want to approach the situation and then execute it religiously.

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