Branches - Stick to the Vine
A branch that does not stick to its source of nutrition, will wither away and die. Just ask anyone who has received a bouquet of beautiful flowers, just how long they really last. In the same way, as communicators we must stay connected to our audience, or we risk the chance of fading away into insignificance.
I’m no expert at this stuff, I simply want to provide my perspective. Us content creators at FirstNet are considering the same things, and trial and error is a huge part of that. Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas.
First-time visitors are great, but return visitors are your loyal following. In the argument of whether to target current audience or seek to grow more, why not stick your focus on equipping your current audience with ways and incentives to share your content. By drawing them in with excellent content, design and follow-up methods, you can turn your blog readers into action takers.
Learn more about metrics from the Digital Analytics Program (DAP): Digital Metrics Guidance and Best Practices
This is a fact that cannot be overstated. Regardless of platform (blog, social media, etc) As we look to build our audience, we must consider several factors to keep the current audience engaged, and interested in why they began paying attention to us in the first place.
1. Develop a plan - Determining your target audience is goal number one in building and keeping an interested and engaged audience. Whether jumping into a brand new venture, or cleaning up someone else’s [content] mess, it’s never too late to make this plan.
2. Be Genuine - you [your agency] are who you are. What’s the value in jumping onto every trending hashtag, just for a few potential views? (honest question each agency should ask themselves, I realize there could/and should be two sides to this).
What is Content?
Content these days takes the form of many shapes. As government communicators, the type of content you share is closely related to what you are offering as an agency - the types of services you provide. In other words, you educate people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to hear your message and take action.
3. Be a risk taker - with the above in mind, we still want to be spontaneous - the Internet can often just sound like LOUD NOISES ...
with everyone mindlessly scrolling through their social feeds - don’t be afraid to say the message you wanted to say a different way. The National Weather Service (NWS) did a great job of this (pun intended):
as did the Department of Energy (DOE). To spur greater public dialogue about the future of solar energy, DOE, “remixed their content”, displaying their projects on an interactive map as part of SunShot initiative.
4. Have a short memory - Getting stuck on the first mistake can deter future successes. Keep looking ahead, and remember to stick to the plan - with tweaks here and there based on your results - you’ve laid out for connecting with your audience. (football reference below, at the risk of turning off many readers - good NFL cornerbacks are said to have short memories so they can move on after a bad play - like this guy)
5. Stay focused - as Haley Van Dyck from US Digital Service said at a recent TEDTalk: "We care about making government work better, because it’s the only one we’ve got.“ – every piece of content we create, should be working towards this goal, improving services for our audience. At first glance, visitors may not be 100 percent on board with your content. However, they might come back if they are offered something in return
6. Be inclusive - we all get frustrated when we experience slow load times or don’t find the content we expect when clicking on a link. But what if you were blind and you click on a link from your favorite social media channel, only to find out the landing page full of images are not readable by screen readers, they’re not 508 compliant.
Implementing a few of these tips, should help as you seek to draw and keep your audience. What interesting things has your agency done to foster an environment that keeps your audience?
In a future post, I’ll discuss some strategies to keep content alive, so as the branches, and our beloved DC-area Cherry Blossoms, it doesn’t just wither and die.
