User engagement, or the response a person has to a digital product or experience, is an important factor for companies to be aware of. It plays a large role in the success of a product over time. Increasing user engagement can feel like a tough objective to conquer, but with time, patience, and best practices, high user engagement rates can be achieved.
Understand the Consumer and Their Journey
Before beginning the process of developing strategies to increase user engagement, you have to understand your user. This can be done in a variety of ways. Creating personas for your target audience can help designers understand the goals, needs, and frustrations of their consumers before beginning to develop a product. The product can then be developed to meet the needs of the user, increasing user engagement. Users are much more likely to interact with a product that easily allows them to reach their goals. Sometimes, taking the time to dissect the target audience via personas allows brands to refamiliarize themselves with their users.
Another way designers might gain an understanding of their audience is through the creation of a user journey map. These maps are created to discover all of the possible paths a user could take through a digital product. Determining these routes helps a designer implement certain calls to action throughout the design that will encourage more user engagement. It also ensures the design is effective for the completion of any user’s goals.
Personalize Information
Creating personalized content is more likely to receive engagement from users than content that is generalizable. This is partially because users feel a greater sense of connection to a brand that targets them directly. One way to do this is through targeted advertising on social media. Social media allows companies to pick certain demographics of users to see their advertising. Companies can then create ads that relate directly to the target group of users in which their marketing will be aimed towards.
Personalized information can be found directly on a company’s website and be considered in the original user journey maps. For instance, an e-commerce website might provide users with a list of products they might want to buy based on a previous purchase. This makes the consumer feel like they are being catered to directly.
Companies can use personalization when curating their support channels as well. Utilizing a consumer’s name when contacting them to provide support allows the user to feel like they are being taken care of on an individual level. Another way to cater to a human-focused level is providing images of the support team for a company that can allow the user to connect a name with a face, making any interactions with them seem more warm and special. Ensuring your company follows up with any consumers looking for help can also build brand trust and increase the likelihood that consumers will interact with the brand in the future.
Utilize Social Media
User engagement starts with the work that a company is putting in. This means creating engaging content for social media that will drive viewers to share. Content that connects with users is more likely to be shared and therefore viewed by more consumers. One way to do this is by following trends on social media while giving them your own creative spin. This takes something that is already popular and enhances it, making it more likely to be shared.
By engaging with your followers, you are more likely to see them sharing the content you create. This can be done by reposting users’ posts when they tag your brand. Companies can also comment back to people that comment on their posts. Finally, commenting on users’ posts that talk about a similar product can be useful in gaining new user engagement.
The Best Forms of User Engagement
User engagement strategies work best when a company meets its users where they are. This might mean creating more content on social media that will easily populate users’ feeds. This could also mean advertising on a billboard that is seen by thousands of commuters on their drive to work every day. The end goal of user engagement is to advertise in a way that gets people to share news about the company, increasing the number of people who engage with the brand. Increasing user engagement leads to numerous benefits for the company.