Whether you’re an influencer, a freelancer, or a small business owner, you have an audience. The people who follow you on social media, who’re on your email list, who come to your events (online or off); those are all your audience members. And how you engage and interact with them is a huge factor for the success of your business.
Let’s face it; we’ve all seen those companies or people who fight with their followers. Or who take their followers for granted. Our audiences are literally the only reason we have businesses, so how you engage with them is an area you don’t want to mess around with.
Let’s Define Engagement
First things first; what do we mean by engagement? It’s a word that’s thrown around a lot today. For this article, we mean any purposeful interaction with your audience. Posting on Instagram with a call to action? That’s you trying to drive engagement. Endlessly refreshing Twitter to see if you got new followers? That’s not engagement.
If you’re going to be speaking directly and intentionally to your audience, HOW you do that matters enormously. There are many ways you can speak to your audience- you can send an email, post to Instagram stories, or host a Facebook live. But how you approach any platform matters more than the platform you’re on.
How to Engage With Your Customers
There are three simple rules to have effective and impactful engagement with your audience.
1- Start with respect.
Once again; your audience is a huge part of the reason you get to do what you get to do. So respect that. Don’t take them for granted and don’t treat them like they’re fools. Anything you say to your audience should start from a place of respect for them being a part of your business to begin with.
2- Be clear on your goal
Whenever you engage with your customers you have to know exactly what you’re trying to say. If you want them to join your email list, link to the list. If you want them to know about a sale, mention the discount amount. It sounds basic, but in today’s content saturated world, it’s easy to feel like we simply need to post to post. But there should always be a reason behind the post.
3- Be memorable
This is a lofty but worthy goal. We are all bombarded with images and content all day long. From billboards to Instagram ads to podcast sponsorships, we are inundated with content and ads from when our day starts until it ends.
Creating memorable content is an great way to engage with your customers. Think about the Kit-Kat jingle. We all know the words to that. The Super Bowl is famously a time when companies pour millions of dollars into creating ads that will stick in viewers brains. use your best content to engage with your audience and they will grow even more loyal to you.
Engagement is crucial to business success, so take a well researched and measured approach. Don’t take your customers for granted, and they’ll be your customers for ever.
