Introduction

Your goal as a creator is to achieve success in attracting, retaining, and growing your audience. Growth is key, as you will need new viewers to replace the natural attrition of viewers over time. Here are several tips on how to achieve growth by increasing audience engagement, which is the deliberate action of converting passive viewers into active participants. A high level of engagement will cause social media algorithms to flag your content as interesting and relevant, which will refer your content to new viewers. 

Your video content

The first consideration is the content itself. Is the content focused? Because viewers come to a particular creator in pursuit of a particular interest, staying focused will continue to feed this interest, thereby creating loyal viewers. Also, consistency is key to maintaining an engaged audience. Viewers appreciate a regular schedule of when they can expect the latest content, whether daily at a particular time, or weekly on a particular day. Of course, quality is more important than quality, and your most recent output sets the tone of your audience’s impression. In a competitive market with limited attention spans, you want to put on your best performance while there are spectators. A small quantity of higher-quality content is going to create a better impression than a plethora of low or medium-quality content. Finally, given limited attention spans, shorter videos tend to generate more views than longer videos. So, consider making videos that are as concise and to the point as possible. This will respect the viewer's limited time and attention. 

Your active engagement

The second consideration is the act of audience engagement itself. Are you speaking directly with your audience? Do they have an active role in your content? A viewer that likes, shares, or comments on your video is putting in extra effort to help you. Rewarding your viewers with contests, raffles, and giveaways thank your viewers for their loyalty. Recognition also goes a long way as well, such as comment highlighting or in-video shout-outs or mentions, to make viewers feel valued. Soliciting audience opinions is helpful, such as voting polls, especially if their input is featured or implemented in the next video. Also, audiences pay attention to when you interact with them, so replying to comments and posts on a regular basis will help increase engagement. You don’t have to reply to every post but replying to a few lets audiences know that you care and encourages participation. This may even spark discussion between audience members, creating the beginnings of an autonomous community. Finally, consider a call to action at the start or end of your video encouraging your audience to like, comment, share, and subscribe.  

Recap

Hopefully this has been helpful in stimulating ideas on how to engage your audience. It starts from focused quality content and proceeds into active engagement with the audience. Consistency and a regular schedule are critical in both content creation and audience engagement. Your active participation is the kindling for a viewer community which will further help retain and grow your viewership.