If you do any type of content marketing, then you probably know what it’s like when your audience starts to get a little content fatigued. You know, seeing the same content over and over (and over and over…) The symptoms: fewer likes and comments, and almost no shares or re-tweets. Keeping your audience engaged is a real challenge, after all, social media is a beast that needs to be fed by content, but it’s also a beast that rewards variety.

We’ve compiled a few ideas below to help make sure you don’t burn out your audience and keep engagement levels either steady or rising.

5 Ways To Write Content To Cure Audience Burnout

1) Make content about them, not you

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it at least half-a-dozen times, content that consistently focuses on touting your product or company exclusively isn’t fun, interesting, or engaging. Content that celebrates your audience, though, that’s golden. Take time to think about what your audience loves, and create content that caters to those passions. Is your audience made of home cooks with a gourmet flair? Create content with mouth-watering recipes. Do they like bowling? Post pictures of famous bowling alleys. Are they fashionistas? Give style tips. Cat lovers? Show them this new-fangled thing called “The Internet.” These ideas seem obvious, but you’ll notice that each of them focus on the audience. Want to amp it up? Find creative ways to incorporate your product or business.

2) Make content that’s inherently engaging

People love online news quizzes, polls, surveys, and other interactive content. Why? It gives them a little piece of entertainment that they interact with quickly, feeling fulfilled before they move on to something else. Some types of content lets them share their opinions and make participants feel heard, while others reward them with something interesting and/or meaningful feedback. The more quirky and fun the content is (like Which 80s Hairstyle Are You?), the more likely participants will share it. The key is to make it emotionally driven and rewarding (We’re The Mullet, by the way.).

3) Incentivize sharing, but don’t beg

We find clients who successfully use SocialToaster include incentives for their Superfans to share their content. Incentives can be as flashy as the “Wedding of the Century” (que dramatic music) or as ordinary (to most folks) as a hat from their favorite sports teams. The key is to tap into your audience’s passion to get them to share content. That way, you don’t have to beg them to share. They just do it because they love what they see (see the above two tasks about content types).

4) Time your asks carefully

In social media, timing is essential to success. If you continually ask (a.k.a. beg) audiences to participate in a contest or share content, they’ll eventually ignore you the same way a parent learns to ignore the “Are we there yet?” question from their kids.

We find that the most successful Social Toaster clients don’t slam their audiences with messages. Typically, we see a 2x/week ask inspires the most engagement, but every company and audience is a little different. Really, the more variety and stronger content you have, the more your audience will likely pay attention and respond to your asks.

5) Mix up content types

Variety is the spice of life, and it’s also a factor in driving engagement. Sure, your fans liked and shared that funny meme you posted last week. But this week, they’re ignoring it. Why? It’s probably because they want variety. Make sure you generate a mix of images, video and written content. That can help you ensure that your audience is always seeing something new and interesting.

Want to learn more ways to energize your audience? Give us a call at 855.628.6287 or visit us online.