5 Ways to Increase Brand Engagement
1) Start small, stand tall. Technology doesn’t have to overwhelm us. Start small by choosing to connect with 5 people. Imagine if you have meaningful dialogue with 5 different people every day. Powerful!
2) Ask questions. Unless you’re doing data driven research, surveys can become so ordinary, and you know I’m all about the extraordinary! As an example, instead of sending a survey to your entire mailing list, send it to the top 10% of active subscribers. The feedback you get will be quick and genuine, and they’ll appreciate you having made the special effort.
3) Be consistent. I recently discovered that I had to take one of my favorite meetup groups off my plate because I was simply too busy to attend consistently. With my travel schedule this year I found I was only a partial presence, and because I valued the relationships so much, I decided to send an email and let the group know why I had been absent and that I’d only be able to make it out every once in a while.
An amazing thing happened… all of the members reached out to me and told me how honored they were that I considered the group such a part of my routine that I would reach out in this way. It helped them to feel more connected in my absence and it means when my schedule clears and I’m able to reconvene with them I’ll be accepted with open arms.
4) Skip the script. There’s definitely a time to script out your communication (such as when delivering a formal speech) but most of the time an unscripted communication is expressed with much more authenticity. It includes the pauses and stumbles of general conversation and that’s very inviting to us real human beings.
5) Give others a voice. Let others in your community give voice to your cause. This includes interacting with them in their space (such as blogs, forums, networks) as well as giving them contributing power in your space. In doing so you create a global trail of influence and you stand out from the millions of selfish servers out in the world.
That should be enough to get you some measurable results, do you have some? Try this exercise: Write down one way that you can fulfill the suggestions from this list every day. For instance, on Monday – comment on relevant blog; Tuesday – call or write 3 subscribers; Wednesday – record an unscripted video, etc. etc. Chart your results and observe the increase in engagement.