3 Tips to Get More Engagement on Your Content
“I had been taking it really hard when I didn’t get engagement on my posts, thinking it was a reflection of my value.” — fellow content creator.
Here are 3 things to keep in mind, for what makes content more easy to engage with: Audience, Medium, and Topic. I'll address each one in this post.
It’s Not You. It’s Them.
It makes a big difference whether the right people are seeing your content. If you’re talking to the wrong audience, it doesn’t matter how skillful a communicator you are, they won’t get it, and you won’t get any comments or worse, you’ll get bad ones. (It’s not that those people are “wrong” but simply not a good fit for what you want to say.)
Instead, if you are talking to an audience that resonates with your energy and likes the topic, you’ll get positive reactions, comments and even a few shares.
One way to test audiences is to get interviewed on different podcasts, blogs, or video channels, and see which types of people most resonate with your content.
While you’re waiting for people to get back to you about interviews, you might consider using Facebook Ads’ Detailed Targeting to reach different types of people.
Here’s how:
If you were testing 3 different audiences, then for just $15 — or $3 per day for 5 days — you should see an obvious difference in which audience is most responsive to your content.
To learn much more about audience testing and Facebook Ads strategy, consider my online course on how to do Facebook Ads effectively.
The Medium Matters.
Additionally, which medium you choose for the message can matter a lot.
I’ve noticed that for cold audiences (people who don’t know me yet), they don’t like my videos. I’ve learned to be fine with that — I don’t attract audiences only based on my looks ;-)
Instead, cold audiences respond much better to my written content.
As for images, I don’t like using them to reach cold audiences because I don’t know whether people are “liking” my content for the image… or for the message itself.
Therefore, when I advertise to cool audiences, I usually just use my Text-only posts.
Then, once they’ve engaged with my written content, they’ll recognize my name in the future and be more likely to watch my videos too.
Hot Topic?
The topic matters a lot.
No matter how brilliant (or ineffective!) of a communicator, if the topic is something your ideal audience cares a lot about, you’ll get many responses.
Therefore: test many different topics, answer different questions, delve into different issues, explore different ideas.
For example, the news media has noticed that they get a lot of clicks whenever they talk about certain politicians, so they keep focusing on them. They know what gets people excited or riled up.
In your own business, list out all the possible topics and related ideas, and in your content, just start testing as many as you can, one by one.
It’s like having your own online catalog — allow the audience to see a variety of offerings, and then notice what they go for, and then offer more things like that! And stop offering what your audience doesn’t “get”, and therefore, don’t respond to.
No matter how poorly you think you communicate, if your topic is a good one, the topic will save the day.
What about timing?
A reader asked: What about the timing of when I post things on social media?
Honestly, don’t worry about it.
The algorithms will always surface the most engaging content at the top, even if it was from days (or weeks) ago.
Notice that when you search Google on various topics, the results often prioritize articles and videos from months or even years ago.
Good topics, for the right audiences, in the right mediums, are what matter the most for being “good” content.
Remembering Your Potential
The Real You is unlimited potentiality.
How good can you get? No one knows.
How smart can you become? How effective at communicating? Much more than you are now…
…so don’t judge the current snapshot of your abilities.
If you judge your value by the quality of what you’re currently publishing, you’re reinforcing a negative mindset that blocks you from your true potential.
Be mindful: when you notice self-judgment, breathe deeply, gently release, reboot your energy, and return to the practice of creating.
In your content, aim for quantity. It will naturally lead to quality.
The real you is unlimited potential!
Think about it — the You of a year from now, if you are willing to be consistent and keep practicing is going to be far better than you are today.
It makes a big difference whether the right people are seeing your content. If you’re talking to the wrong audience, it doesn’t matter how skillful a communicator you are, they won’t get it, and you won’t get any comments or worse, you’ll get bad ones. (It’s not that those people are “wrong” but simply not a good fit for what you want to say.)
Instead, if you are talking to an audience that resonates with your energy and likes the topic, you’ll get positive reactions, comments and even a few shares.
One way to test audiences is to get interviewed on different podcasts, blogs, or video channels, and see which types of people most resonate with your content.
While you’re waiting for people to get back to you about interviews, you might consider using Facebook Ads’ Detailed Targeting to reach different types of people.
Here’s how:
- Go to the Facebook Ads Manager to create an Ad (for the Objective, try “Engagement”), and turn on the Split Test feature.
- In the next step, the variable for the Split Test should be Audiences — you will be able to test several different audiences at once.
- Each audience should be the same in terms of location, gender, age, and language, but different in the “Detailed Targeting” section.
- Choose just one interest per audience.
- For the actual Ad itself, choose “Use Existing Post” and select a post that is a good representation of your message or typical type of content.
If you were testing 3 different audiences, then for just $15 — or $3 per day for 5 days — you should see an obvious difference in which audience is most responsive to your content.
To learn much more about audience testing and Facebook Ads strategy, consider my online course on how to do Facebook Ads effectively.
The Medium Matters.
Additionally, which medium you choose for the message can matter a lot.
I’ve noticed that for cold audiences (people who don’t know me yet), they don’t like my videos. I’ve learned to be fine with that — I don’t attract audiences only based on my looks ;-)
Instead, cold audiences respond much better to my written content.
As for images, I don’t like using them to reach cold audiences because I don’t know whether people are “liking” my content for the image… or for the message itself.
Therefore, when I advertise to cool audiences, I usually just use my Text-only posts.
Then, once they’ve engaged with my written content, they’ll recognize my name in the future and be more likely to watch my videos too.
Hot Topic?
The topic matters a lot.
No matter how brilliant (or ineffective!) of a communicator, if the topic is something your ideal audience cares a lot about, you’ll get many responses.
Therefore: test many different topics, answer different questions, delve into different issues, explore different ideas.
For example, the news media has noticed that they get a lot of clicks whenever they talk about certain politicians, so they keep focusing on them. They know what gets people excited or riled up.
In your own business, list out all the possible topics and related ideas, and in your content, just start testing as many as you can, one by one.
It’s like having your own online catalog — allow the audience to see a variety of offerings, and then notice what they go for, and then offer more things like that! And stop offering what your audience doesn’t “get”, and therefore, don’t respond to.
No matter how poorly you think you communicate, if your topic is a good one, the topic will save the day.
What about timing?
A reader asked: What about the timing of when I post things on social media?
Honestly, don’t worry about it.
The algorithms will always surface the most engaging content at the top, even if it was from days (or weeks) ago.
Notice that when you search Google on various topics, the results often prioritize articles and videos from months or even years ago.
Good topics, for the right audiences, in the right mediums, are what matter the most for being “good” content.
Remembering Your Potential
The Real You is unlimited potentiality.
How good can you get? No one knows.
How smart can you become? How effective at communicating? Much more than you are now…
…so don’t judge the current snapshot of your abilities.
If you judge your value by the quality of what you’re currently publishing, you’re reinforcing a negative mindset that blocks you from your true potential.
Be mindful: when you notice self-judgment, breathe deeply, gently release, reboot your energy, and return to the practice of creating.
In your content, aim for quantity. It will naturally lead to quality.
The real you is unlimited potential!
Think about it — the You of a year from now, if you are willing to be consistent and keep practicing is going to be far better than you are today.