19 Nov 3 Ways to Engage Your Target Audience

Once you wade through the often-murky waters of identifying the audience most likely to benefit from your products or services, or target audience, it is important to begin meaningful engagement right away. And not just any conversation will do. You will have to create an open and honest dialogue that reaches the very core of your target audience’s thoughts and beliefs, in order to have meaningful engagement.

Here are three tips to help engage with your audience.

Know Your Target Audience

One of the biggest mishaps in addressing target audiences is not knowing who they are. Before creating content, you should take a step back and really examine who your audience is. The content you produce should embody interests, goals and plans that will intrigue your audience. In order to do this, you must know the who, what, when, where and how of your audience. A few questions to ask yourself are who is my audience (cultural background, age)? What are their likes, dislikes, interests and goals? When do they plan to achieve these goals? Where do they usually receive this type of information? How often do they want to receive information? Once you know these things, you are ready to connect.

Connect on a Personal Level

Once you know who you are communicating with, it will be easier to hold a candid conversation. Speak to them on a level they can understand and say things that will resonate with their cause. If you are blogging about the importance of education, not only would you point out statistics of education providing better chances at economic survival, you would also point out the confidence and psychological benefits of achieving this goal. Giving personal accounts from yourself or other clients can knock down the wall between yourself and your client. People want to feel that they belong. They want to relate. Once you connect on a personal level, it is more likely that you will have long-term engagement.

Be Responsive

Saying the right things to your audience is only half the battle. The second half is listening to what they have to say and responding. Let’s say you were about to launch a new product, but you were not sure your audience would like it. The simplest thing you could do before launching the product is to ask questions. This is where you must have thick skin and allow your audience to be a vested part of your decision making. Their comments on blogs and social media networks are valuable. This is the perfect opportunity to interact with them, as well. People respond and respect leaders that do not shy away from an honest and open dialogue. There could be a piece missing to your puzzle and your audience is telling you about it in their engagement. Don’t miss have responsive engagement.
Knowing your audience, connecting on a personal level and being responsive to their input are three things that will help you to improve your engagement and build a more meaningful relationship with your audience.