Engagement is the glue that connects you to your fans and drives them to that “inner circle.” Here are five tips to rouse engagement with your audience:
- End your blog post or video with a question that encourages a response, like “Those are my views. What do you think? What did I miss?”
- If there are specific people you want to target for your audience, like a prospective employer, a possible donor, or somebody who has similar interests as you, go to where they are on the web and look for opportunities to engage. Comment on a LinkedIn post, congratulate them on a professional accomplishment, or mention them in a tweet or post.
- When you begin to identify specific members of your audience, include them on a Twitter List to make it easy to monitor their activities and find opportunities to comment and engage with them.
- Crowdsource answers. Are you experiencing a difficult problem? Why not ask your audience to help you and then feature their answers in your content?
- Be vulnerable. Every now and then, expose something new about yourself. Demonstrating personal courage through your writing almost always elicits an outpouring of engagement and support.
Engagement is also important because it represents a measure that you’re heading in the right direction.
– from “Known” by Mark Schaefer
