Content engagement is a broad term referring to actions users take when interacting with your content. It’s a way for you to know your content was relevant to your visitors in one way or another.
If your content piques their interest, helps them solve a problem or leaves a general positive impression, users are likely to “engage” with it, whether by sharing the article, leaving a comment or liking the post. The best part is that users who enjoy interacting with your content tend to stick around for more until they’re ready to turn into customers.
This is why improving content engagement through engaging content is crucial to achieving content marketing success.
What Is Engaging Content, Anyway?
You’re competing for people’s attention, so you need engaging content to draw audiences away from your competitors and toward you. You must also build a solid content engagement strategy to boost interactions across all your platforms.
But before anything else, what is engaging content? Is there a secret recipe on how to create engaging content?
To answer the first question, there’s no textbook definition for the term. We can, however, discuss what it does rather than what it is.
Engaging content responds to its audience’s needs and appeals to their emotions, behaviors, wants and likes. And it doesn’t simply capture people’s attention – it compels them to take action, whether it’s to like and share the content, click a link or even purchase a product.
The good news is that there’s no single way to produce such content. Cracking the code on how to create engaging content or how to increase content engagement lies in your hands, and we’re here to help you out!
In the sections below, we discuss nine actionable tips you can integrate into your existing content strategy.
TIP 1: Write With Your Audience in Mind
The fundamental key to creating content that engages your audience is to make it about them – not your business. Your content engagement strategy should detail how you can provide what your audience needs. And you can’t do this without understanding who your target audience is.
You must identify their challenges and interests and the channels they’re on. These details guide you throughout your content writing process and ensure that you stay relevant to the people who matter to your brand.
Ultimately, having a solid idea of who you’re trying to reach enables you to improve digital content engagement across your platforms and see real results.
TIP 2: Do Keyword Research the Smart Way
Aside from keyword popularity and search volume, there are other metrics worth studying to develop engaging website content. The following help you find the easiest ways and most effective formats to use to reach and captivate your target audience:
• Keyword difficulty – This gives you an idea of how difficult it is to rank for top search positions and achieve better visibility.
• CPC – Short for cost-per-click, this refers to the amount you pay when users click on your pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
• SERP features – These are other elements that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) aside from the traditional organic results (e.g., People Also Ask).
On top of these, you must also take time to study user intent. What words or phrases does your target audience use when describing your product or service? Are there specific terms they use for the different stages of their buying process?
Approaching keyword research in this way helps ensure your content’s relevance to your audience’s needs. And when you deliver exactly what they want and hope to see on your website, you reduce your bounce rate (the percentage of visitors leaving your website after landing on one page) and improve your user experience.
TIP 3: Experiment With Different Formats on Your Blog
Content marketing is a tricky endeavor to take on. As a marketer, you need to find the right balance between presenting data efficiently and keeping your audience engaged. Too much of the former and your content comes across as uninteresting; too much of the latter and your content becomes too thin.
Fortunately, creating engaging website content isn’t rocket science. One tactic you can start applying now is trying out various styles other than the typical informational writeups.
Here are some formats you can explore:
• Infographics
• Listicles
• How-to guides
• Case studies
As you try other styles, remember to follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices to improve your user engagement and drive more traffic to your site at the same time.
TIP 4: Create Interactive Materials
When building content marketing strategies, it’s easy to get lost in conceptualizing informative, declarative content. But if you want to learn how to increase content engagement, you have to diversify the way you deliver information and encourage active participation.
Some interactive materials you can develop are quizzes, surveys and even live question and answer (Q&A) videos. You can run user-generated content (UGC) campaigns to encourage people to talk about your brand on their platforms.
Note that these are only some ideas to stimulate your imagination, and there’s a lot more for you to explore. Seek help from your trusted digital marketing agency to build exciting content for your business without straying too far from your brand.
TIP 5: Incorporate Videos Into Your Digital Marketing Mix
The craze over video as a crucial content marketing material isn’t a fad. This multimedia format has the power to appeal to their viewers’ emotions and keep them hooked throughout. On top of that, it’s also people’s favorite format to see on brands’ social media channels, according to Animoto.
The best part is that you can use videos on any digital platform you’re on to get great results.
Having videos on your website improves your user experience and lowers your bounce rate. According to Unbounce, including them on landing pages also improves conversion rates by as much as 80 percent. And using videos to advertise your offering on social media and other digital platforms drives your sales – eight in 10 people are compelled to make a purchase after watching a brand’s video, according to Wyzowl.
Here are some tips on how to increase content engagement with video marketing:
• Start with sharing short videos to easily keep viewers engaged from start to finish, then find the best length that works for you.
• Mention essential information at the start to capture your viewers’ attention immediately.
• Always end your video with a call to action (CTA). Let them know what you want them to do next, like sharing your video or opening a link you left in the comment section.
TIP 6: Repurpose High-Performing Content Ideas
Here’s a tip on how to create engaging content efficiently: Don’t always start from scratch.
Take a look at your high-performing content and ideas, and find ways to reimagine them in other formats and for other platforms. The goal is to get the most out of a piece of content you’ve worked hard on and expand your audience reach with it.
For example, if you have a successful blog answering your target audience’s frequently answered questions (FAQs) regarding your product, you can:
• Present the answers as a thread of tweets
• Share important insights on social media channels using images or illustrations
• Turn key points into a video
• Group similar topics and discuss them on podcasts
TIP 7: Be at Your Audience’s Service
There will be good days where you generate user engagement without much effort. But this doesn’t mean your job is done; on the contrary, this is exactly when you should work harder.
When people are commenting on your posts or leaving reviews on your page, you must be there – and you must be helpful.
As a brand, you need to respond to your customers’ queries and resolve your prospects’ doubts promptly. You must also acknowledge their reviews and monitor your online reputation regularly. In doing so, you show your prospective customers that you value them and their insights. Ultimately, you deliver a pleasant user experience that resonates with your audience and inspires them to believe in your brand.
TIP 8: Roll Out Website Design Improvements
Today’s consumers are savvier than ever. Aside from seeking out high-quality products or services, they also look for positive interactions with your brand across all platforms before deciding to become paying customers or even loyal followers.
This is why website design upgrades should also be part of your digital content engagement strategy. One particular aspect you should focus on is your site’s user experience (UX), the overall experience visitors have when using your website.
Improving your site’s mobile responsiveness, navigation and page load speed creates a pleasant place for prospective customers to interact with your brand. And when prospects enjoy using your website, they become more receptive to your nudges until they finally (hopefully!) convert.
TIP 9: Evaluate Your Content Engagement Strategy Regularly
As with any other digital marketing strategy, you need to conduct regular performance checks on your engagement efforts. This lets you know which techniques are working and which ones need some tweaking. Most importantly, this helps you determine how well your content aligns with the needs and interests of your audience.
But to do all this, you must learn how to measure user content engagement across different platforms. For your website content, Google Analytics is your go-to tool. It tracks essential user engagement metrics such as average time spent on page, pages per session, bounce rate and form completions.
As for your social media posts, you can use tools like Oktopost, Buffer and Hootsuite to measure content engagement. Twitter, YouTube and Instagram also have their own analytics features that you can use for free.
Shift Your Priorities and Generate Better Content Engagement
In this blog, we resolved essential questions on content engagement, from what is engaging content? to how to measure user content engagement. We’ve also shared actionable tips you can try to generate more positive interactions with your audience.
The bottom line is this: If you wish to create engaging website content, you must go beyond simply meeting the algorithm’s requirements. Place more importance on responding to your audience’s needs and interests instead. Remember that the more your audience enjoys your content, the more they’ll return to your channels and interact with your brand.
Here at Thrive, understanding the audience we’re speaking to is at the heart of everything we do. Our content creation process empowers businesses not only to communicate their purpose efficiently but also speak to their target audiences with ease. We also help you measure content engagement and present it in a format that makes sense to you.
If you need help revamping your content marketing and engagement strategy, give us a call! Our digital marketing experts are always ready to turn your visitors into loyal customers.
