7 Simple Yet Effective Ways to Create More Engaging Content

The competition for attention from consumers is fierce. Through all industries, marketers are working to improve their content to garner more attention and shares. Unfortunately, factors such as quite a bit of competition and the shortened human attention span have been working against even the best efforts.

Today, your brand needs much more than just amazing content to engage your audience. While you may decide to create a blog and even use resources such as GoStartABlog, if you don’t go the “extra mile,” you may find these efforts fall flat.

If you want to be successful in the blogging universe, then you need to take advantage of every single millisecond of attention you receive and engage your readers at a one on one level. The challenge with this is likely your marketing budget. If you are like most companies, you have to make a lot out of a very little budget.

The good news is that even with a limited budget and the shortened attention span of your readers there are effective ways you can reach people. Learn a few tips here.

  1. Embed Videos into Your Content

According to statistics, content with videos will attract three times more links than a plain text post. The next time you are writing a blog, try to think of ways that you could integrate videos. You don’t have to produce the videos, but instead, try to curate examples of favorites that you have found. Creating a sort of “roundup” will resonate with your readers and keep them engaged longer.

The fact is, you don’t need a huge production budget to create a compelling video for your blogs. You can even utilize homemade videos; the key is to give your viewers something to do besides reading the text.

  1. Get the Community Involved

You should try to make your readers a part of your overall content strategy. The process may be as easy as inviting your audience to make contributions to your blog or by integrating “tweetable” quotes or snippets to encourage others to participate in the conversation.

  1. Respond to Any Comments Made on Your Blog

Remember, if you want your content marketing efforts to be successful, then it has to be a two-way conversation. You should encourage your audience to take part in the discussion – or even engage in a friendly debate – by responding to any follow-up questions, counterpoints, and comments that are left.

Are you unsure of how you can get a conversation going? Then a great way to fix this is by asking your readers to participate. Not only will this spark a conversation, but it is also a great way to let your audience know that you care about and value their opinion.

  1. Engage Your Audience Across all Your Channels

Blogging is just a single part of the bigger content marketing equation. While creating great material is one part of the equation, you also have to find and recruit an audience.

One of the biggest challenges with content marketing is that most readers are busy, and it isn’t very likely that they are going to commit to visiting your blog regularly. This is why you need to ensure that your marketing team offers guidance by reaching your most loyal followers across several channels.

The best place to begin is with the “low hanging fruit,” such as your social media presences and email marketing list. You can take the blog you write and then share it all over the place. This ensures that even if a customer doesn’t visit your website every day, they are still getting to see the valuable content you are producing.

  1. Write as Though You are Speaking to Your Friends

If you are like most people, you probably struggle to get your ideas down on paper. This is because writing often feels unnatural. You have so many lessons about how to write, what not to do and more, that you may be over-critical or even feel as though you are back in your high school English class.

If this is the case, then you are overthinking the process. Blogging is all about developing connections with your audience. As a result, you need to write the same way you would speak to a friend. Not only will this make it easier for you to create great content, but your readers will also appreciate the tone and the writing will flow more naturally, making it easier to consume.

  1. Use Amazing Photos

It is quite common for businesses to try and cut corners by not using images. They try to post blogs without any compelling visual aspect. This is a huge mistake.

People are visually driven. In fact, it is estimated that approximately 46 percent of people state that the design of a website is the top criteria for determining the credibility of a company. Additionally, 40 percent of people are going to respond better to visual content than just blocks of plain text.

Regardless of if you are creating blog posts or content for social media, you need to make sure that you find great images to accompany it. There is a high ROI in visuals.

  1. Don’t Try To Sell 100% of the Time

While you may have the ultimate goal of making a sale, this doesn’t mean that every single blog you post should be a new sales pitch. Not only is this going to be ineffective, but it may also turn your readers off, causing them to abandon your blog – forever.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t ever post a sales pitch; however, the key is to provide interesting, engaging and helpful information that will resonate with your audience.

When you use the tips and information here, you will be able to create blog posts that help you garner the desired results. While the phrase “content is king” is still true today, not all content is created equal, and if you want great results, you have to put in great effort.