6 Tips on how to engage your audience with your content in 2021

There has never been a better time to start storytelling to explain your policy, program, service or regulation.

As the world continues to deal with COVID-19, people are looking for useful, relevant, consistent content about matters of interest to them. They are paying attention.

Now is the time to think about what your audience needs from you and think about new and interesting ways to deliver it to them.

With many of the traditional barriers out of the way, it’s time to put the foot to the floor and get on with it. The factors of media production and distribution have been democratised and its time to become your own media.

Our mission at contentgroup is ‘to help government strengthen communities’ and improve the well-being of citizens through effective content communication”.

We do that by assisting public sector communicators to create and distribute valuable, relevant and consistent content to a clearly defined audience.

Here are six tips to get you started.

1. Whatever you decide to do, be consistent.

Make sure that in distributing your content you are booking an appointment with your audience at a particular time each day, week or month.

In this crowded, noisy world the only way we will get our story through is if we keep telling it consistently. Consistent branding, consistent content and consistent values will result in a consistent audience.

2. Pick a niche. Don’t try to be everything to everyone and don’t try and be everywhere

Pick an audience. The narrower the better. And be in service of them every day. There is so much choice. Try and resist being everywhere. Choose the channels that will get the best results and work them hard.

Potential to be distracted is great. But if you are going to open a channel, have a plan and participate. It is better to publish great and regular content on two platforms than thin and irrelevant content on five.

3. Make the content valuable.

Low value content is poison. Know what your audience values and give it to them in the form and channel they prefer. Make them smile with the value you create.

Before you hit publish, ask yourself, ‘’Is this content going to add value to my audience’? If it’s not a ‘hell yeah’’, it’s a no. Bin it and start again. Make sure to include visual content to bring the story to life. Work hard at delighting your audience.

4. Use your team

Government departments, agencies, not for profits, and national associations are all content factories. There are stories everywhere and great personalities to tell them. Go way beyond the communication department to find your best storytellers and give them a platform to explain what they are doing and why.

You might run the publishing calendar, but you need help to populate it.

5. Build your capability

Encourage your colleagues where you work to write, draw, film and photograph their days. Ask people to create content.

And give them skills. LinkedIn learning is a treasure trove.

6. Measure your content

Once you have thought deeply about your audience and decided what content you are going to create and distribute, it always pays to see how the audience responds. Find the qualitative and quantitative signals that will give you the insight you need as to how successful your plan has been. Test and learn. Experiment. But always be looking to improve.

Understanding how effectively your content is performing lets you make informed decisions on future content to create.

Look at social media insights, google analytics, and word press to see how many people are engaging with your content. Don’t be shy to implement a trial and error system to experiment with timing and content, and track how your engagement is progressing.

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