We don’t have an attention shortage; we have an attention shortage. Seth certainly has nailed this statement, hasn’t he? With the amount of information doubling every two years, the amount of competition for your thoughts is enormous. So, if you are a blogger like me or a media expert, you quickly recognize you need to build community engagement.
Check out our thoughts on customer focus.
Why does some people’s work draw great attention while your work stays persistently underrated? You may be missing the most powerful user attractions of all – an engaging headline and an awesome lead-in paragraph.
Related: Improve Telling Stories by Employing These Remarkable Examples
Interesting information, well presented, showing emotion, always grabs and holds attention, yes? Keep in mind that people don’t watch ads … they watch what interests them. Your messages must be interesting to your target communities.
“Ever read a testimonial on a website and wonder if the person actually said that? The most powerful video we have ever published has been a video testimonial from one of our customers. Seeing is believing, and having a testimonial on camera makes it that much more credible and personal. Our video was planned, filmed and edited by a professional firm. It was worth every penny.” ~ Andrew Hoeft, Pinpoint Software, Inc.
Here are some awesome ways to make it easier to attract and build a community:
Community engagement … get emotional
Don’t be afraid to talk about your feelings. Feelings are the energy of your material, and if you don’t use them, your article can’t move forward. People can relate to a feeling while they don’t necessary relate to a number, statistic, or even logic. Emotions are the connecting threads of all humans regardless of the arena, use them. If you are struggling to find the emotion behind your story, then you aren’t telling the right story.
There are no better means of influence or persuasion than emotion. Hands down the best, in our opinion. The higher degree of emotion creates the more differentiation and makes it easier for your brand to project uniqueness and its word of mouth messages. Emotion is the secret language of the brain … many brands know that working on emotion will improve their persuasion or influence.
Images and multimedia
A photo can often mean the difference between your work being popular vs. being just so-so. A photo helps explain the story and can draw the eye of those scanning the page.
Make sure your multimedia is high-quality; always provide digital photos in high resolution (300 dpi) and, if possible, have them shot by a professional. A bad photo will reflect on the quality of your work.
Community engagement examples … surprise
Surprises in headlines or lead-in paragraphs work because human brains like a novelty. Compared to expected pleasant events, unpredicted pleasant things “turn on” the pleasure centers in our brains even more.
Thus, surprises prove to be far more stimulating and grab our attention much quicker than things we know well and even really like. This explains why people can subconsciously prefer an unexpected experience over something they want.
Personalize … talk to each person
You have to talk directly to someone in order for them to commit their attention. You can’t craft your message for the masses; craft it for one person and the masses will respond. I had told the story before about how I used to hate to write. I hated it because I thought there are all these rules. When I forgot about the rules and just wrote as if I was talking to someone, I found my love of writing.
And people began to respond. In fact, many of my blog posts come from conversations I have with clients. Just write like you are talking to a customer and talk to your customer’s like they are the only one that matters. Because they are.
Referencing your community means using “you” in your writing. Seeing it, the reader immediately feels known and named. The construction gains attention because our brains are focused on solving problems. Actively searching for solutions to problems is part of our survival instinct. That’s why when a reader is in the precise target community, he thinks, “That’s for me!”
This tip also feeds into people’s self-interest. In other words, when you speak to your readers’ needs, desires, and emotions, you answer the main question in their minds: “What’s in it for me?”
Questions
Questions that prime our curiosity are powerful brain influencers. Whereas, if we already know from the headline what we are getting next, our curiosity may be over before it begins.
The best questions are about something readers can relate to or want to know about.
Community engagement marketing … use stories and storytelling
Stories are the connecting threads of all humans regardless of the arena, so put them to good use. If you are struggling to find the emotion behind your story, then you aren’t telling the right story.
The ability to influence is very difficult without a contextual story. Don’t tell facts to influence, tell stories. The more you improve storytelling, the more your influence … it is as simple as that.
Stories make it easier for people to understand. They are the best way, by far, to spread your ideas and ability to influence.
Research lead by Melanie Green and Timothy Brock reveals that trying to persuade people by telling them stories works extremely well. While we are all often resistant to the idea of being told what to do, we are very susceptible to agreeing with the ‘moral of the story’ and its influence due to how it is presented to us. Great stories and storytelling can do this for us all.
Bring the community into the story
Your community has to see themselves in the story. They have to imagine themselves using your product, your service, or your advice. If they can’t picture that, then you aren’t telling your story to them. Tell the story and make them the hero.
Your job is to get them to believe they are Rocky at the top of the steps pumping their fists in the air. Remember how that made you feel when you watched the movie? You can hear the music, right?
Try to give that feeling to your audience with your stories.
Curiosity
There’s a psychological phenomenon you can use effectively called the curiosity gap. This is the gap between something a person knows and something he or she wants to know. People start to feel a kind of deprivation when they notice a gap in their knowledge.
It’s possible to provoke that feeling by providing just a bit of information. Once a person knows a little, they will want to find out more and fill in the missing information so they can feel better.
With this in mind, try to “prime the pump” by giving readers some intriguing (though incomplete) information in your headline, telling them enough to spark their curiosity but not so much that you give your story away.
Attract an engaging community … simple messages
Superb messages and visuals need to be so simple that you quickly grasp them and don’t lose interest. Keep in mind that pictures are far more valuable than words. And often the use of music has a way to keep the community tied in. Creating customer interest does get any simpler than this, does it?
Avoid sameness at all costs
People want to join a community for a variety of reasons. But one of the most important reasons is the originality of thought within the community. They will avoid being a part of a community of sameness. So work ever so hard at creating new and original thinking. And remember all new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom.
Community engagement examples … using quotes
A quote can lend authority to an article, introduce an expert, and further advance the story. Most important, quotes can introduce personal feelings, comments, and opinion, so this is where you want to use superlatives and emotive language (without sounding like hype). Be sure quotes are in a conversational style, and don’t merely cite facts or figures–no real person speaks only in data.
Community engagement strategies … specificity
Quantifiable concrete facts, especially those that form images in our heads, can create intense interest. Figures imply research and add to the writer’s legitimacy. Any specificity works: digits, names, examples, projections, descriptions, titles, results, etc. Specificity in the headline demonstrates your article is in-depth.
Also, when you are specific, it provides clarity and assurance to readers about what they will be getting into if they click.
Conclusion
When employing these ways to attract and build a community, you may find that one technique works well for a while but then starts delivering diminishing returns. Don’t worry. Just try another, and keep looking for new ways to engage your community. Be experimental and playful toward what you are writing and ruthless about testing.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on social media marketing and advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Improve Telling Stories by Employing These Remarkable Examples
Find your Content Marketing Creative Ideas
Creative Ideas Can Add to Publix Social Media Marketing
Social Media Campaigns to Stimulate Learning
Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.
