13 Ways To Make More Engaging Content
08/22/24
Content Marketing
Content marketing continues to be an essential part of building and maintaining an audience. Still, it’s not enough to create just anything. For the best results, you need to make sure you are putting out engaging content.
In this simple but actionable post, we give you 13 ways to make your content more engaging. These tips will not only improve your existing content, but give you a useful guideline for everything you create in the future.
13 Ways To Make Engaging Content
1) Know Your Audience
It all starts here. Understanding who your audience is and what they care about is the first step in creating engaging content. Fail here and you’re creating content that nobody will care about. To better understand who your audience is, audience research is in order. You can also use audience personas to guide your content creation process. This will ensure that you are addressing the relevant needs, interests, and pain points of your people.
2) Craft Compelling Headlines
It doesn’t matter how great your content is. If it doesn’t first get their attention, nobody will consume it. This is relevant no matter what kind of content you create, from long-from blog posts to YouTube shorts. That’s why good headline are essential. Not only does it grab attention, but it also sets expectations and builds excitement. Make your headlines interesting, clear, and concise.
3) Use Visuals
Engaging content is all about grabbing attention. And the fact is, it’s easier to grab our attention with strong visuals. Just look at how much quicker our brain processes messages with pictures. This is where strong images come in. Consider incorporating things like photos, infographics, and videos. These can all significantly boost engagement.
4) Tell a Story
Storytelling does a number of things to your content. First, it grabs interest in a way that pure statistics can’t. It also allows you to weave your own organization into stories that mean something to your audience. Perhaps most importantly, though, storytelling allows a person to more clearly see themselves in a situation. There are many ways to incorporate storytelling into your content. Personal experience and testimonials, for example, are just two styles of stories that can contribute to more engaging content.
5) Make Your Content Interactive
Passive consumption isn’t particularly exciting. A much more engaging content type is interactive content. This includes things like quizzes, polls, and surveys. These types of content get your audience involved and invested in your content. They are also much more likely to be shared. The fact is, interactive content is naturally more engaging. Be sure to read up on best practices for creating more of it.
6) Prioritize Quality Over Quantity
There’s a lot of focus these days on pumping out as much content as possible. While quantity is important (it’s not enough to make one great piece a year), quality is what you should be prioritizing. Quality content provides legitimate value to your audience. This positions you as an authority in your field. Focus on thorough research, thoughtful analysis, and clear, concise writing to keep your audience engaged.
7) Use A Conversational Tone
Your audience will usually prefer a more casual tone in your content. This makes you relatable. It’s also a style more easily understood by the people consuming it. The trick is to use simple language and avoid complicated jargon. This tone builds a connection with your audience quicker. It also make it more likely that they meaningfully engage with your content.
8) Incorporate Data And Statistics
Statistics can be a great addition to engaging content. That’s because it’s not just your opinion, but actual fact. This makes whatever argument you are making much more persuasive. Be sure to cite your sources and present any data in a clear, easy-to-understand format. Also important: don’t be tempted to overuse statistics. Too many statistics can actually make content less engaging, as the tone becomes needlessly dry and academic.
9) Optimize For Mobile
Mobile optimization is essential for engaging content. These days, about half of your audience will likely view what you create on their phone. Here are just a few things to keep in mind when creating mobile-optimized content:
- Use a responsive design
- Optimize images for faster loading times
- Format your content to be easily readable on smaller screens
While there are many things you can do, these three points are a good place to start.
10) Ask Questions + Encourage Comments
Lack of engagement with your audience is a wasted opportunity. In fact, your content is one of the greatest chances you have to meaningfully engage with your audience. And if you do, people will be more likely to keep coming back. Encourage your audience to engage with your content by asking questions. Invite them to share their thoughts in the comments, and respond to all of them to keep the conversation going.
11) Use Strong Calls To Action (CTA’s)
What are you trying to do with your content? You should be able to answer this for each piece that you make. A compelling call to action guides your audience on what to do next. Indeed, a strong CTA can significantly boost engagement. Make sure they are clear, actionable, and aligned with your content’s goal.
12) Repurpose Content
Content creation takes time. You should do whatever you can to make sure you are getting the maximum impact from it. This is why repurposing content is so important: it allows you to reach a wider audience and keeps your content fresh. Different people prefer different content formats. Repurposing what you make keeps it engaging for everyone.
13) Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)
Lastly, user-generated content is fantastic for just about any organization. Because it’s created by your audience, UGC easily builds trust. Encourage your audience to share their own content related to your brand. These are great assets to have, and some of the most engaging content you can hope to get.
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