There was a time not too long ago when digital success was measured by numbers. The bigger the numbers, the greater the success. Fortunately, this is something that was quickly seen through as bots, click farms and the purchase of social media followers and other similar strategies quickly highlighted the sheer numbers route as a failed metric. Instead, the people who count numbers and look to give them meaning decided that engagement was a far more meaningful metric and that audience measurement was more about quality than it was about quantity. Slightly harder to measure for sure, but digital is a cunning platform and all sorts of metrics were implemented to check this. So, how do you grow a quality audience? Here are a few tips to set you on the right path.
Meaningful search engine results
The key thing with search engines is making sure that, while your website is optimized as effectively as possible to bring in the traffic, that at the same time it is relevant traffic that is coming in. if you run a small butchery with three branches in the suburbs of Sydney, then it doesn’t help if people in Perth or San Francisco are viewing your site. They are not really going to be customers and so the number that you are getting are false. They are a low-quality audience. Granted, there might be people looking to order something from afar, but it is unlikely. So, make sure that you partner with a company that is locally based and who can play to your specific needs. A quick Google search for something like ‘SEO Australia’ should yield the right results – make sure that you pick the company at the top of the search list – if your experts can’t get themselves listed first, what chance that they can get you there?
Repeat audience
Try as hard as you can to build a regular repeat audience of people who keep coming back to the site. Once you have won a user it should be much easier to retain them. The key to building a repeat and loyal audience is to offer up quality, original content that updates regularly. It is this type of user who is typically the most engaged and the most likely to share your web content with their friends and family via social media.
Viral for the win
Social media is one of the fastest and most effective ways to gain traction with the audience. If you are able to deliver a campaign that appeals, and which generates lots of shares, you will very quickly see your numbers spike. And while they will obviously drop back again after the spike, the hope is always that some of the new users will become regular users. Viral success is also great if you are writing for a specific target audience – because once it is starting to be shared and liked your key audience will share it with their people, who typically have similar interests and passions, meaning that you are attracting the right people from the outset.