The proof?  Over 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook each day.  Photo posts actually generate 120% more engagement than the average post.

You may have been too frustrated with Facebook implementing the timeline feature, to really see the strategy behind the shift. The social media platform is taking sharing to an entirely new level by focusing on visual elements to tell our story. By adding the new cover photo to profile pages, Facebook is making an even bigger shift by allowing each user to make a unique representation of themselves through adding a photo. See the pattern? It’s time to pay attention and adapt our social media strategies to become social media stories!

So, what does that mean exactly? We like to think about the engaged visitor, as we start to conceptualize a website, with our will they be engaged for 7 seconds, move on to content to stay on the site for 7 minutes, and then build a reason for them to come back to the site 7 days later. Seems simple enough, yet many people fail to see that simply posting content relevant will not necessarily engage an audience and get them interested in clicking further on your website. One great blog post, or throwing up a YouTube video will no ensure engagement when you are also competing with a vast ocean of viral videos and blogs posts that are already crowing everyone’s social media feeds.

So now we have your attention, how should you go about achieving online engagement?

1. Do What You Do Best

One very simple strategy for engaging online is to simply do what you do best. You and your organization know best about what your value systems are – don’t deviate! Engaging in an authentic way requires you to let your credibility rise to the top. Engage in the ways that you are intrinsically made to shine, and there’s enough social tools out there to get the news and content out to the masses.

2. Always Choose the Simplest Forms

There are tons of options out there with how you engage with your audience and our temptation often is to choose a style that creates more options! But, the key is to keep things simple and no overwhelm your visitor to have to “work.” Take Twitter for example – a platform that has changed an entire generation of engagement online and yet it’s limited to 140 characters per message!

3. Fish Where the Fish Are

The idea requires research. Where is your audience? What do they like? What don’t they like? Are there certain forums, blogs or platforms that they tend to use? This is not a notion of “follow the leader,” but the idea of not fishing where you know you aren’t going to bring home dinner. It’s homework time!

4. Start a Conversation

No one wants to connect with at spam bot, or with something that seems one dimensional. ALl content should be written from a voice and make the audience feel like they are experience a human connection. The majority of people on Twitter follow individual people over projects anyways. So, it’s time to start keeping it real!

5. Most of all, make sure to have fun! If you are having fun, than your audience will too.

We have to admit it, webinars are popular!  They are fast becoming the most exciting and and sought-after training experience on the internet.  With the high cost of travel, not to mention the hassles and time involved, why not use technology to your advantage?

At ORANGE STATIC our goal is to create the unthinkable.  So, when Cloud Townsend Resources came to us to create a custom webinar application, we jumped at the chance.  The result?  A turn-key solution that works directly with an e-commerce, online store that embeds the webinar directly on a website with your own unique branding.  No more utilizing a cookie cutter, third part app that doesn’t fit the message and virtual environment of your clients.  Yet, with the system we built, we also took it one step further with implementing the bells and whistles that engages the visitor in a dialogue with your presenters, asking questions online and taking polls with results presented in real-time.

At ORANGE STATIC we recognize the power of webinars to deliver your message in a personal but powerful way.
After all, we are all about bringing your more business and helping take things to the next level.