Driving Audience Engagement

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Driving Audience Engagement

 

It sounds elusive at the offset, doesn’t it? Where do you go and how do you create or source the kind of content that might spark multiple love affairs with the market you’re in? Despite the staggering odds (we’re in the mood for a little drama today!), the forecast looks favorable. Because it’s clearly achievable, since brands out there who aren’t Lady Gaga have managed to swing it.

Beyond alluring and high-quality pictures lie a few principles that are a little more fundamental and time-tested, at least as far as communicating with your audience is concerned. Because, let’s not forget, a large part of the current audience demographic still lives away from social media or any other form of electronic engagement. Some people still prefer to communicate in an “old-fashioned” medium and we need to bring them into the conversation as well.

How though? Glad you asked.

1. Engage the Senses. All of them. When you’re trying to grab attention sans the hard sell, use your message to engage all the senses with your viewers and target audience. The objective is to provide them with an immersive experience that’s hopefully memorable. The conversation should follow along organically.

2. Make Participation an Option, but do this encouragingly. With a myriad of technologies with usability ease at our fingertips, building a virtual community is now much easier. Bear in mind that these tools can be used to augment the impact of a physical experience as well. Between webinars, videos, texting and surveys, as long as you give people the ability to opt in or out, you could be seeing some terrific numbers with audience engagement.

 

3. Test the Content on yourself and your coworkers/employees. If the creators of the message aren’t able to engage or critically analyze the message being disseminated, what are the chances of the audience being able to stay engaged with it? Most adults have a 20-minute attention span, beyond which focus and retention begin to dwindle. If your message extends far beyond the 20-minute window, start looking for ways to keep people around through questions, content variety and ice-breakers (conference settings).