In our current inter-connected and digital world, savvy consumers are looking for more when it comes to how they interact with business. Here are 5 key ways you can create better user engagement with digital marketing. Without it, you risk having your brand left behind and forgotten. Get People Talking It's not enough to join a conversation anymore, you have to be the one to get it started. There are more than 600,000 branded pages on Facebook, and yet only 57,000 of those can boast having more than 1,000 fans. Generally, people aren't that interested in making "friends" with a brand. So if people aren't going to come to you, you need to go to them. Provide experiences worth talking about. Give Users Control Not complete control, but offer up a way for your potential customers to get involved and have their say. It's not a new idea (America's Funniest Home Videos is a classic example), but it still works well for getting buzz going. Promote opportunities for people to generate content, such as Youtube videos, that puts your brand in a positive spotlight. Doritos had a promotion like this, offering a million dollars for the best Super Bowl commercial produced by the viewers. It cost them $1 million in the payout, yet raked in $36 million's worth of publicity that carried on beyond the actual big game. All About Show Business Stop thinking about your product, and focus on the bigger story around it. Tell a tale about the problems your product or service solves, how it can improve lives and what value it has. It's not solely about entertainment though. Create POSitive experiences, focusing on P ersonable, O wnable and S hareable content. A product alone isn't enough to capture the imagination, so create a wider story around what you have to offer. Start with the Customers Creating new innovation is pointless if you're not looking to what your viewers, readers and customers are after. You have to begin with genuine insight by researching your base learning how they interact the best with up-and-coming technology. What do they want? Only then can you build on your ideas for cutting-edge digital applications. Having a brilliant idea that is not likely going to resonate with your customers isn't worth the time or the money to produce. Discover Something New There is a lot more to online branding than posting a video on Youtube and hoping it gets shared around the world. There are no limits to what can be created through a digital medium, and there needs to be new combinations of multiple platforms to get people excited, engaged and talking about your brand. Don't just stick with the usual television-based approach. An excellent example of using multimedia to its fullest is the Voyeur Project by HBO. Video episodes of the characters are enhanced by interconnected web presences that include social media pages for the individual characters, related photo albums, YouTube channels, and a mix of fictional web sites. Are you a small business looking for assistance with your DIGITAL MARKETING? We LOVE to help! Please feel welcome to contact us.