How To Grow Your Following And Increase Engagement In 2015

Every brand would like to increase its reach online; however, many marketers get too caught up in the numbers and don’t focus enough on engagement. Just creating blog posts, articles, images, videos and ads isn’t enough; your content needs to speak to the needs of your audience and add value to increase shareability and user interaction.

Step up your engagement with five ways to increase your exposure this year.

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Analyze the Data

The best way to understand which content has worked and which has not is to examine the historical data of your brand. Google Analytics is a great place to start gathering information by looking at page views of top content, time on site, bounce rates and referrals. Additionally, download and examine your reports from paid campaigns and social platforms to look at which content performed the best, how often content is shared and where it is distributed.

These insights will help you understand what content users are interested in, how users are getting to your content and how users engage. Analyze reports monthly and quarterly to stay on top of trends and keep your content valuable.

Step Up Your Content Plan

Often times, marketers don’t stick to their content marketing plans and allow timelines to slack and platforms to run unattended. Inevitably there are opportunities that slip through the cracks, but covering the gaps and implementing new procedures can improve the consistency and reliability of your content marketing plan.

This year, it’s time to bring your blog back to life or increase your social media presence on a platform that’s losing engagement. Creating a content calendar will help get you organized by setting measurable goals and holding teams accountable for their work.

To increase content development and leverage a diverse array of expertise, utilize guest bloggers and additional team members. This new content can then be shared through your own channels or by leveraging syndication to help further increase visibility.

Try Different Content

Another way to expand your brands reach is by exploring new types of content and different platforms for distribution. Once you understand what your audience expects from your brand and how they behave online, you may want to branch into new markets.

Try creating imagery, infographics, podcasts or video to capture new users and keep your advocates interacting with you brand. Test new styles, focuses and delivery of your content to see what generates the best results. This could also be the time to jump into that social network you’ve been thinking about.

Have Conversations

The best way to keep your users engaged is not to talk to them, but to talk with them. Good content should be a two-way road that invokes communication from your users. Before you develop and share your content, ask yourself if it is interesting, solves a need and encourages others to chime in and contribute.

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Optimize for Maximum Visibility

To stay visible to both search engines and users, optimize your content to be found for the phrases your audience is searching for. Develop keyword research to discover what phrases provide the biggest opportunities with the lowest barrier to entry.

Then, integrate those keywords into written content to naturally focus on user interests. Optimize social postings with hashtags to group your content with similar topics and increase your opportunity for being found.

To optimize your images, website, and other content from the backend, include key phrases in tags, meta descriptions, URLs and categories.

Conclusion

Setting goals and taking a fresh look at your digital strategy can help increase engagement in 2015. Focus on user needs and interaction to position your brand amongst competitors. Try new approaches in new places to see what tactics works best. By creating and promoting focused content, your brand can increase engagement and grow its following online.