Engaging with your audience should always be a priority, but it’s a high priority at the end of the year. Whether you’re a brand, a service provider, or a storyteller, the ability to resonate with your audience, foster genuine interactions, and build a community is not just a goal but a necessity. As we continue discussing public relations tips for the end of the year, I’d like to talk about engaging with your audience, particularly during this last quarter.
Engaging with Your Audience: Social Campaigns
As we all know, the holidays are the perfect time to give back to those who have supported you throughout the year or previous years. One way to do this is with an interactive social media campaign, like hosting a challenge with prizes. Social media challenges encourage users to participate, create content, and share their experiences on social media. While these challenges can be highly effective in fostering engagement and virality, they can be somewhat difficult for those who are unfamiliar with them.
So, say you are a fitness or wellness coach. You may host a health-focused challenge so that your followers can finish the year on a healthy note, but also so that your followers will get to talking about you and viewing your account more frequently for updates. You would start by sharing an announcement post on your account. Then, you could post different fitness workouts, healthy recipes, mindfulness exercises, and other tips daily to educate your followers and get them involved. You can ask them to post something like a reply to your video and use a specific hashtag that you created solely for the challenge. Depending on your guidelines, the winners of the challenge can get a prize. These can be small prizes, or if you are feeling spicy, you can give away branded merchandise or let the winner be the first to try your latest product or service.
Virtual Roundtable
Another option for a service-based business, but of a different kind—let’s say, a marketing agency—can host a virtual roundtable. You could then incorporate experts, thought leaders, and successful current and past clients. You all could discuss strategies that led to your success. Your audience can send in questions for a Q&A before the event. Note: Sis, I’m strongly considering doing this one in the new year because I don’t want to rush it. Let me know if you would be interested in speaking by shooting me an email. 😉
Tangible Gifts and Physical Events
For brick-and-mortar and/or product-based businesses, you can distribute personalized thank-you notes with discount codes to your customers. You can also do things like social media shout-outs or customer appreciation events. You all have a unique advantage because you can do so much more, but the goal is to get your people active.
Engaging with Your Audience: UGC Campaigns
If you have tangible products, then another way to engage your audience is user-generated content (UGC). This is content that supporters of your brand create and share and that you reshare. These are good for a number of reasons: credibility, visibility, social proof, and more. It leverages the power of user voices to create a more engaging and relatable brand experience. Let’s talk about how to get started.
You already have your goal, so now it’s time to think about your audience and what might interest them. Next, decide which platforms you will use. It’s really at your discretion; you could post on all of them, or you may want to post on the one where your followers are most engaged, or you can choose to go with the one where your followers are least engaged to help boost engagement. Then create a custom hashtag and guidelines for the submissions you will accept.
Following all of the above, it is now time to promote the campaign. Of course, you know the announcement post needs to be a big to-do! As the submissions come in, be sure to thank your supporters. Also, engage with your audience as they like, comment, and share, because the goal is to get them to do more of that.
Here’s a video with examples of UGC campaigns that were actually made into ads.
So, there you have it. As we embark on the new year, the strategies discussed here provide a roadmap for sustained audience engagement. Whether through social media campaigns, virtual roundtables, tangible gestures, or UGC initiatives, the key lies in fostering meaningful connections with your audience. By prioritizing engagement, you not only strengthen your brand’s presence but also lay the foundation for a community that will continue to grow and thrive in 2024!
We’ve got this, sis! Don’t forget that this article is part of my 3-part series about end-of-year public relations tips. Click the link to read part one, which is about reflecting.
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