How to Attract an Audience with Creating Captivating Content
To be successful, every business has to tell its stories.
These days, such stories are usually told through posting content online in blogs, articles and social media.
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But just pushing content onto the web is meaningless if it doesn’t interest the audience. In an online world bursting with billions and billions of pages of content — with new content being added every minute.
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how do you ensure you’re creating compelling content that generates views?
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Whether it’s defining the details that will capture interest, timing your posts to grab the most views or choosing the right venue for your message, there are strategies that will help your online voice be heard.
1. Cater Content To Customers
As a printing company, our target companies are other businesses that need printed collateral, as well as individuals that have a specific need. Content about our latest printer is not effective. However, design tips or examples for wedding invitations, how-tos, or graphic design tips for other businesses will create value that organically leads to sales. Your content does not have to revolve specifically around your goods or services. Rather, cross-pollenating your content into the desired industries you would like to sell to is an effective way to create value and sales. – Brandon Stapper, Nonstop Signs
2. Choose The Best Platform For Each Message
Different channels accomplish different types of engagement. Facebook is great for showing company culture. We find images and behind-the-scenes videos get the most likes and shares. For Twitter, we’re testing tweets that are story driven; you create a thread, and each tweet links to different content that threads up around a point. This is a great way to repurpose multiple pieces of content, and it drives conversation with people commenting on tweets. Instagram is obviously image and video driven. The trick with Instagram is choosing the right hashtag to get the right visibility. If you’re looking for leads, you’ll need users to download an asset that’s useful. We’ve been doing checklists on how to do something accompanied by a case study that proves it works. – Kerry Guard, MKG Marketing
3. Write Step-By-Step Guides
I’ve noticed that some of our best content is how-to guides that show users a step-by-step process on how to implement something on their own website. This has helped gear us to becoming more of a resource-based blog where customers can find information on how to make their own sites better. Find out what guides your customers want and write a detailed, step-by-step process that will help them. You can even turn some of your most popular ones into content upgrades in exchange for email addresses. – Jared Atchison, WPForms
4. Round Up The Experts
When producing content, a helpful strategy is to include experts with relevant experience on the particular topic you are producing content around. By including these experts and their take on a specific issue, you’re providing them with a platform to share their thoughts and ideas and increasing your chances of them sharing your content with their audience — “seeding” the content with additional readers. If the content is well-received, the results will compound from there. – Brandon Pindulic, OpGen Media
5. Answer The Questions You’re Always Asked
Answering tough questions about our industry has been a boon for traffic to our site. Some of our top-performing pieces are articles on how much an app costs to build and on how much money an app can make. Think about the questions clients or potential clients ask you all the time, and then go and create blog posts to answer those questions. – Ryan D Matzner, Fueled
6. Take On Trending Topics In Your Industry
I’ve noticed that the content that tends to get the most engagement on my company’s blog and my social media channels is around topics that are disruptive to the industry. For example, in the digital marketing industry, some of my most shared and engaging content dealt with new trends, such as voice search and mobile AMP (accelerated mobile pages). The keys for greater engagement and cultivating thought leadership are to provide helpful context and actionable information that empowers your readers. Don’t be a journalist, be a thought leader instead! – Kristopher Brian Jones, LSEO.com
7. Pitch Solutions, Not Products
No one wants to hear your sales pitch. No one is as excited about your product as you are. What they want to see is someone like them who’s struggling with the same issues. Then they want to see you fix those issues. Case study marketing is the way to go. It’s organic, it’s not just about you and others want to share it. At Enlighten we spend a remarkable amount of time working with clients after the sale to follow up and document the successes. These successes become inspiration for others that see them. Case studies have people asking you for help rather than you asking them for business. – Jeremy Jacobs, Enlighten
8. Integrate Insightful Interviews
Interviews are a great way to generate traffic to your site. Find people in your industry to interview and send them a few questions. You can then post your article in a question-answer format and optimize it for SEO. The trick is to find people that your audience is interested in learning from and asking them questions the audience would like to know. You can create a poll on your site to find out who your audience would like featured on your site. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
9. Livestream For Authenticity
Content that receives the most engagement for us is livestreaming on Instagram. For instance, after I released my most recent book, I did a handful of Instagram livestreams with other entrepreneurs, and each segment received more engagement than any other type of content marketing we produced. Livestreaming is the most transparent way to showcase your knowledge and expertise without sounding scripted or rehearsed. – Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Creative Development Agency, LLC
10. Tap Into Holiday Spirit
Is there an important date or popular holiday coming up? Injecting your brand (in an authentic way) allows you to take advantage of its popularity. Posting content that taps into the interest of a given date almost always guarantees fantastic engagement. Holidays such as Christmas or Valentine’s Day are obviously days you want to take advantage of. You can also time your content to coincide with the release of a popular movie or more niche holidays, such as “National French Fry Day” or “Star Wars Day.” Timing your content to highlight special days allows for predictability. It’s simple, and you can easily track results. It also allows you to tap into niche or international audiences that you may not otherwise reach. – Shu Saito, Fact Retriever
mike stuart, 1stonline.us
