The recipe for good engagement is to provide compelling content to your audience and then ask them timely, well-placed questions that engage them and provide another level of participation and experience. In this article, we’ll explore some of the pitfalls to avoid and the strategies to pursue. For illustrative purposes, we’ll assume we’re in the widgeting business. Our product is the X-Widget and it improves widgeting dramatically.
First and foremost, be very careful when asking questions that represent the ultimate outcome of a conversation you would like to have with someone engaging with you. Even though your content may provide a wealth of information, imagine how effective it would be to have a chance meeting with someone, give them an excellent overview of what you do and then follow up with, “Can I sell you an X-Widget?” That’s an example of asking the questions that represents the ultimate outcome you seek too early in the process.
The better approach mirrors what a good conversation would be like if it were face-to-face. You may start a conversation with a quick overview of the business you’re in, but you would quickly want to pivot to discussing more general topics. This serves to both establish your knowledge on topic and to garner more valuable information from your audience in the long run.
In pursuing this approach, try to look at the content you’re sharing in terms that go “beyond the widget.” Your product or service lives in an industry, fills a need, solves a problem, makes something easy, etc. Start with that as the base topic and ask your audience questions like these:
- What’s your opinion on widgeting?
- How does widgeting affect you or your business?
- Do you agree with the position that widgeting is / eventually heading towards …?
These types of questions ask the audience to engage with the topic as a peer expert. Understanding their opinions, thoughts, and feelings on topic is far more valuable than asking them if they want an X-Widget today.
Two additional items of importance to consider are the number and placement of engagement questions in the content. Generally, two or three questions work well, especially if they mirror themes or sub-topics in the content. That also speaks to placement. Some content can succinctly cover multiple sub-topics, such as a newsletter where sub-topics may be unrelated but presented in summary form, or a longer article, where sub-topics are woven together to form the greater narrative. Other content is essentially a single presentation of a topic, image, or video, but may still lend itself to multiple points of interest. The form and function of your content will dictate how many questions are appropriate and whether they can be placed proximately to the section to which they relate. The placement and number of questions is an important point to consider when designing engagement for your content.
Another strategy to pursue is to decide which of the questions will garner a stronger reaction and phrase your responses accordingly. For example, consider the difference between these two questions:
- In your opinion, how does widgeting affect an operation?
- Good widgeting can make an operation stronger, but it’s not a make-or-break component.
- I don’t believe it makes a difference one way or the other.
- Bad widgeting can make an operation weaker, but it isn’t a differentiator.
…versus…
- In your opinion, how does widgeting affect an operation?
- Widgeting is the difference between mediocre operations and outstanding operations.
- Widgeting makes no difference whatsoever.
- Bad widgeting will bring down an operation faster than a scandal that hits cable news.
In this contrived example, the difference between the reaction you expect and the answers that you craft to capture that reaction is drastic. Consider the expected reaction to questions you ask and phrase your responses accordingly. On a related note, if all of your questions are expected to garner the same type of reaction, consider varying this. Engagement that is entirely high emotion or entirely low emotion will lead to less valuable data.
As a final point to consider, vary the response format of the questions. Using only single-answer multiple-choice questions is not as engaging for a respondent as using a mix of questions with a single answer, “select all that apply” variants, ranking questions, free text entry answers, and having some multiple-choice questions include an “other” box. INgageHub supports these variations in response format.
In conclusion, the difference between content that just speak versus content that also listens is what engagement is all about. The answers to which your content listens are of paramount importance. Following the strategies outlined herein and avoiding pitfalls will help you engage your audience effectively and provide a wealth of data that are far more valuable than whether or not they want to buy an X-Widget today.
To read more about how engagement fits into an overall contact strategy, check out Creating Engaging Content: INgageHub's Content 360 Philosophy
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