There was a time when businesses relied solely on advertising. Then companies discovered the power of ‘content’. While content is a bit of a vague term, it is typically seen as the opposite of traditional advertising. Instead of interrupting customers with a message, content involves targeting consumers who are already searching for you or who are already subscribed to you. Examples of content include blog posts, videos, social media posts and emails.
While content can be effective, there is a lot of content already out there. Therefore, it is getting increasingly harder to stand out from the crowd. Many companies quickly become disillusioned when their content isn’t getting many clicks. So just how can you make your content more engaging? This post offers a few tips.
Answer your customers’ questions
In order to get relevant consumers engaging with your content, you need to consider what questions your customers are actually asking. What is it that they’re genuinely curious about?
Try to think beyond the generic questions that have already been answered. For example, if you own a real estate agency, don’t just settle for generic ‘things to do before you sell your home’ posts. Try to answer the specific questions that you are getting from clients such as ‘when is the best time of year to sell my home?’. Make sure that keywords are in titles and subject lines to grab people straight away.
Deep dive into subjects
There’s a lot of general advice out there and it’s not always easy to trust. In-depth blog posts and videos can often be more credible and useful – especially if you incorporate first hand research into them.
Yes, this content does take much longer to create. However, you could find that it gets much more people engaging with it – or at the very least generates more responses and leads.
Check out your analytics
Analytics can help show you which content is popular, who is interacting with it and in some cases how they got there (what keywords did they use/what site did they come from?). This can help you to work out what types of content to focus on and which types of content to avoid.
You may find that analytics is only really useful once you’ve published a fair amount of content. You can then really spot trends and get an accurate idea of what types of people are interacting with your content.
Take inspiration from your competitors
It’s also worth looking at what types of content your competitors are creating. If it seems to be getting lots of views and reactions, perhaps it’s time you started doing something similar?
Of course, you shouldn’t copy your competitors’ content. However, it may help you to consider topics you hadn’t thought of, which you could then put a unique spin on. It could also be worth seeing what questions consumers are asking your competitors and answering these yourself before they do.
Share content you find interesting
While you may not always want to share content created by a direct competitor, there could be content out there that is genuinely interesting and helpful to your consumers. Sharing it with your audience on social media is an easy way to deliver engaging content. It can also maintain some variety to your posts.
On top of sharing content on social media, it’s also worth interacting with others’ content via comments and likes. The more you interact with other users’ content, the more likely these users are to check out your content. You could find yourself building followers and getting more regular engagements.
Get help from the pros
Creating high quality content on a regular basis isn’t easy. Some companies find that it’s more convenient to hire a digital marketing agency to help with their content strategy.
Alternatively, you could hire individual professionals to help polish up certain aspects of your content. For example, you could pay graphic designers to help you create engaging thumbnails and infographics, or you could pay a video production company to help you shoot a series of informational videos.
Keep it consistent
People will return to your content if there is a sense of consistency to it. This includes posting on a regular basis, maintaining a consistent level of quality and using the same branding throughout your content.
A lot of content marketing strategies die because companies take long breaks from creating content or start churning out low quality content after a month of high quality videos and blog posts. All in all, you need to be willing to commit to a standard.