Ask HN: How to engage users?

This can be a tough one.

I've seen several types of advice. Unfortunately so far I haven't seen an effective one.

- One would be to put calls to action that would encourage participation. This servers as a nudge and a frame for the type of engagement you want to stimulate.

- Another would be to ... create fake engagement to show the users that others do it, thus to lead the flock.

Of course, in my experience, neither of those two worked.

--- related story; can skip it ---

With my team we built a digital marketing advice website on the local web. We take the topics really deep and get controversial on many mainstream topics. Our approach is pretty much unseen in our local market.

Of course, we deliver. The site is on 1st and 2nd places for various keywords on google (this means at times, above wikipedia) and we are even over some local web companies, for keywords for services, that they provide.

Basically we kick ass on local.

YET, people don't comment on our site. So far we have tried few different approaches and none brough definitive result.

And the engagement is high i.e. people read; metrics show people spend time, read, scroll and share. And they share like crazy. We have articles that have almost 1:1 share:read ratio! We rechecked that 12312 times, to be sure that we didn't mess the counters of the share buttons. Not the case. External tools report the same stuff.

And people still don't comment.

It's like a curse. They read, share and do not comment.

So sometimes it is your audience that is tough to engage in specific way. But one must find a way! For his product. For his sanity. For science!

--- end of story ---

My advice is to lead with some fake engagement and then create some sort for gratification for the people to see that is cool to post links and others like it.

But if you find better advice ignore this one. While I gave it to you I still feel sceptical about it's efficiency.

First and foremost you need to familiarize yourself with Dave McClure's Startup metrics: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/09/startup-metrics....

If you then look at your analytics, you will then find that you likely have either an Activation problem or a Retention problem or both. That then tells you the areas of focus in terms of the problem to correct.

Also read: http://www.socialmediamodels.net/social-media-overview-model... http://www.slideshare.net/startuplessonslearned/eric-ries-en... http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/12/engagement-loop... http://andreehuk.com/post/67267407194/gradual-engagement-a-g... http://sixteenventures.com/saas-customer-success-quick-wins

Customer engagement is an issue that causes sleepless nights to so many entrepreneurs. There is no fullproof way that works for all the customers so the only way out is to conduct a trial of various strategies and then evaluate which works for your customer base.

Here is a New Free WordPress plugin 'ICEGRAM' that helps to solve the issue of Customer Engagement. It provides 4 tools that have proven beneficial for increasing customer activity on a website and they are : Popups, Messengers, Notifications, Header/Footer messages.

I would suggest try them out and see what works best for your audience..

You could have a detailed look at Icegram at http://www.icegram.com/

Apologies, but I read that as, "How to enrage users?" What a difference a letter makes and probably another good question for Ask HN!