How can you encourage audience participation on social media?
Social media platforms offer a great opportunity for journalists to connect with their audiences, share their stories, and get feedback. But how can you encourage your followers to engage with your content, rather than just scroll past it? Here are some tips to boost your audience participation on social media.
One of the simplest and most effective ways to spark a conversation on social media is to ask questions. You can ask your audience about their opinions, experiences, preferences, or suggestions related to your topic. For example, if you are writing about a new policy, you can ask how it will affect them, what they think of it, or what alternatives they would propose. Questions can also help you generate ideas for future stories, as you can learn more about what your audience cares about and wants to know.
Another way to invite your audience to interact with your content is to use polls and quizzes. These can be fun and easy ways to test your audience's knowledge, challenge their assumptions, or reveal their preferences. For example, you can create a quiz about a historical event, a poll about a current issue, or a trivia question about a famous person. Polls and quizzes can also help you collect data and insights about your audience, which you can use to tailor your content and improve your reporting.
People love to see what goes on behind the scenes of journalism, as it gives them a glimpse into the process, the challenges, and the personalities of the reporters. You can share behind-the-scenes content on social media to show your audience how you work, what you learn, and what you encounter. For example, you can share photos or videos of your interviews, your research, your travels, or your editing. You can also share anecdotes, stories, or tips that relate to your topic or your profession.
User-generated content is any content that is created and shared by your audience, such as photos, videos, comments, or stories. You can encourage your audience to create and share their own content on social media, as it can help you build a community, showcase different perspectives, and increase your reach. For example, you can ask your audience to share their photos or videos of an event, their stories or testimonials of an issue, or their feedback or reviews of a product. You can also feature some of the best user-generated content on your own platform, as a way to reward and acknowledge your audience.
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The potential for news brands to leverage UGC really took off in the mid-aughts. In 2005 BBC rolled out their UGC hub, and then we saw CNN's iReport the next year, both encouraged UGC news reporting with the added layer of verification from the BBC and CNN news teams. Those were early, owned news roducts that were quickly replaced by UGC across social platforms which is where most news brands solicit UGC today. While these assets aren't owned and ROI can be impacted by an algo shift, news brands like NYT, WaPo, and others see good audience engagement through UGC campaigns like WaPo's past election coverage aimed at younger audiences on TikTok and their behind-the-scenes newsroom insights.
Finally, one of the most important ways to encourage audience participation on social media is to respond and interact with your audience. You can show your appreciation, interest, and respect by replying to their comments, answering their questions, thanking them for their feedback, or acknowledging their contributions. You can also ask them follow-up questions, invite them to share more, or direct them to more resources. By responding and interacting with your audience, you can build trust, loyalty, and rapport, as well as learn more about them and their needs.
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If a post is getting "sticky," meaning you are getting back-and-forth engagement, feed the beast. Stick with it. I posted a pretty basic post on a topic that engenders a lot of passion. Had I not stuck with the comments, responding and keeping the conversation going, it would have maybe reached 200-300 people. Instead it took off, garnering nearly 100 comments and reaching close to 6,000 impressions. It's a single example and not a terribly large pool of eyes, relatively speaking, but extrapolate that to a larger topic with a larger following to work with and you can imagine the numbers.
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Pick a topic that excites and infuriates but don't let it get into adhomenim territory. Like calling somebody a fascist, racist or any other "buzzwords". Try not to get your ego involved in defending or attacking another persons position. Ask questions to clarify what they mean when they say.... hard to do.
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All the 5 ways to improve engagement given here are important. In addition, consider the oft-repeated saying about social media audience that their intention span is very limited. So, you need a hook early on in your post so that they are encouraged to spend at least some [critical] time on it. Once they do, there is a big chance that they will make an opinion and comment. Even if they don't comment, they would do a 'like' or 'share'. Now I will request you to please see the titles of the 5 ways given above. You will agree with me that none of them would succeed if people do not stay with you for that critical small duration.
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