How I Consistently Get High Audience Engagement as a Newbie
Here are 3 helpful tips for building audience engagement
This article is inspired by my Medium friend, Sajjad Choudhury’s comment on a recent article of mine and it goes like this “..to see you getting thousands of claps and 50+ comments on a single article is soooo good.”
Well, that made me do a little research and guess who is the Top Writer in the Audience Engagement tag? Yup, it’s your girl right here 😁
So what is audience engagement?
Engagement is a great way to measure whether the content you’re creating is actually resonating with your audience and basically means this 👇
Reading my articles + Posting in Comments Section + Mentions + Saves + Sharing with friends on Social Media
So without further ado, here’s my secret sauce:
3 Reasons Why My Audience Engagement is High
1. Relatability👐: The most common comment I receive is of readers saying how well they can relate to my writing😊
For example, I recently wrote an article about how I experienced corporal punishment as a student published in the reputed pub, Age of Awareness. I was surprised by the responses I received from readers who experienced the same from a myriad of different countries like South Africa, India, Pakistan, Jamaica, Ghana, Nigeria, the U.K, Canada, and yes, the US.
I don’t use fancy language. Heck, my English may be more in line with your average 6–8th grader, and let’s not even get into sentence structure, grammar, and all that good sh*t.
But guess what, it works for me. I’m not here to please one or two people who get their knickers in a twist because I missed an effing comma. And to them I say I wish you the best with your perfectly perfect essays!
If you check out Ryan McCready’s article “What makes an article popular on Medium? We analyzed 10,000+ data points to find out,” you will notice some interesting trends like this one “Writing for a 6th-grade level was found to be the most effective by far. An article that could be read by a 6th-grader or below received 20% more recommends, on average.”
2. Reciprocity🤝: A strong community is not a one-way street. I always make time to read, engage and promote other writers. My biggest article thus far, in terms of virality (internal views), earnings, and audience engagement (8000 plus claps &124 comments) is all about reciprocation and co-elevating each other. That’s also the reason why I am part of Winston’s team at the Coffee Times pub.
3. Recognizing Frequent Commenters🥳: This is my core audience and I make sure I recognize them with shout-outs, mentioning their articles and quoting them in my posts.
What I don’t get is why would you ignore frequent commenters and run the risk of losing their valuable contributions/goodwill? And yet I see this happen time and time again especially among new writers😲
Tip 1💡: However busy you may be, carve out some time to acknowledge/respond to your readers who have made the time for you.
Tip 2: As a newbie, I have benefitted from popular/established writers reading and commenting on my articles. It sparks curiosity and thoughts along these lines “If so and so loves her work, then there must be something to it. Best to check it out and see what the hoopla is all about.”
“Without engagement, social media is just media……People don’t use social networks for a one-way experience. They’re seeking connections — with people and with brands” — Mike Eckstein (Team Buffer)
Barring overnight success, you have to be ready to self-promote📡 in order for your readers to find you. By overnight success I mean virality. And here’s the deal: Most stories on Medium do not go viral — Sarene B Arias
Sarene goes on to explain how you get more exposure for your non-viral stories:
- building a base of true followers
- gaining acceptance to wide-distribution publications, and
- building your personal distribution list and social media following.
While audience engagement is not a necessity, it is a wonderful feeling as a writer to have readers comment on your work✍️and engage in a lively dialogue✅ not only with me (the author) but other readers/writers in the comments. It goes a long way in building relationships, community, and the fact that it is a form of social proof🏅
What are your thoughts about audience engagement?
