Last friday night’s Singapore Social Concert featured 3 artistes - the refreshing Blush, cute Carly Rate and phenomenal Psy.

Each artiste’s appearance met with different levels of enthusiastic response. Each did several different things to captivate the audience. Each method worked to varying degrees.

Surely by now, you would have heard of Gangnam Style.

Imagine that you are Carly Rae or Blush. Majority of the crowd came to watch Psy perform his latest hits Mother Father Gentleman. How would you charm an audience that had come to watch someone else perform, bearing in mind that this group of audience loves music? They could very well become part of your valuable fan base.

Here are 4 things they each did to garner support and response from the audience, which you should definitely use in social media marketing.

1. “I can’t hear you!” - Blush

Despite the artiste’s high energy, the crowd was visibly less enthusiastic during Blush’s performance. After all, Blush is not well-known by many in Singapore.

Eventually one of them resorted to the age-old “Let me hear you shout ABC…(Crowd cheers)…I can’t hear you!” That seemed to get some parts of the crowd going.

If your brand is less visible and unknown, asking your audience to do something directly might work for you. Take note that this analogy assumes you are exposed to a huge group of relevant audience that belongs to someone else. Without exposure to them, no matter how direct your method is, it is not going to work.

Seth mentioned it a few days ago as well, and he probably put it in a better way than I did.

“It doesn’t matter at all how hard the DVD player was trying to put on a show. It is irrelevant how good the show on cable was. If it’s not getting through, no one sees it.” - Seth Godin

In other words, you need to reach them on social media (or on other channels) before you can engage them and make them fall in love with your brand.

2. Simply provide something good

This is age-old. Everyone knows this. But not everyone is doing it.

It is straightforward. How to do content marketing? Simply offer good content. Good content is:

1. Social
2. Meaningful & fascinating

Does your content meet the criteria in 1 and 2? Do you want to raise your content marketing by another level? Check out (and commit to reading) this series of insightful guides from Copyblogger. Your audience deserves better content before they turn into your customers.

3. Give them opportunities to participate

Frankly speaking, I didn’t know who Carly Rae was when she first appeared. Neither did my group of friends nor the group of strangers around me. But Carly sang like a superstar.

A superstar is not defined by how good she is. A superstar is defined by the size and engagement level of her fan base. Carly made sure that the audience could participate somehow, even if we did not know her songs.

She did mini-introductions for a few songs, teaching the audience how to hum or sing certain tunes like the famous tune in Coca Cola’s FIFA World Cup 2010 Mix. She gave the audience opportunities to participate and the audience rewarded her with thunderous cheers and enthusiastic participation.

Whether it is in your social media marketing, content marketing or traditional marketing, create opportunities for your audience to participate. Let them take the lead if needed. Let them feel part of your brand even before they become your customers. That’s how sales are driven today.

4. Reward them with something they want

Carly Rae wanted the audience to take out their phones, switch on the camera flashlight and waved them in unison. She also wanted them to take photos of her and the crowd and upload them. Do these sound demanding?

But Carly went on to promise that she would retweet every single one of their photos if they tagged her on Twitter. A retweet from a celebrity? To the average audience, that’s certainly worth the trouble!

So how do you increase your audience’s engagement rates with your brand? Reward them for a certain behaviour you want to encourage with something they want. If you’re a sports academy asking your audience to sign up for your introductory talk, don’t promise them goodie bags. Promise them a free trial lesson or one-time access to in-house sports facilities. If you’re a budget airline offering no-frills service and low-cost airfares, don’t bug your audience with the latest deals. Give them tips on flying comfortably with your airline and tell them where they could get cheap snacks before boarding your plane. You might sacrifice the potential income from on-flight snacks, but you will also become more loved as a brand, and you will find more and more of your audience becoming your customers when they are ready to buy.

What about you?

What methods are you using to engage your audience right now? Is it working? How do you know? Share with us below and we can work on your idea even further.