It is easy to get overwhelmed by all of the content on the internet today.
With all the blogs, vlogs, Tweets, Instagram posts, and podcasts, you may wonder how you can create engaging content that stands out. Here are 10 tips to help you create more engaging content right now.
Top 10 Smart Ways to Create More Engaging Content
1. Create a Content Marketing Plan.
If you don’t already have a content marketing plan, what are you waiting on?
You need a plan that will help you match your content to your business goals. You want to plan out content that will be valuable to your audience and also help you to achieve goals.
You may want to try creating a calendar to manage all your content. Make sure you leave some days open for any news that might be relevant or ideas you may have after creating your calendar.
2. Find Micro-Influencers in Your Niche.
Influencer marketing is huge, but that doesn’t mean you can only get Taylor Swift or the top Instagram models to promote your content.
Find the influencers within your niche, and ask them to promote your content. Their audiences are more likely to care about your content, and influencer marketing is a great way to reach a large audience by targeting one person (the influencer).
You may even have people in your own company who have followings on Instagram or Twitter.
3. Use More Video and Audio.
According to Social Media Today, 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day. 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook, and there are 1200 percent more shares of video content than content with just text.
There is also so much you can do with the video. You can share it on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. You can create Instagram or Facebook stories. You can stream live events.
But you want to use video or audio in a unique way that makes sense for your business.
4. Tell the Story of Your Brand.
Brand storytelling is also huge, but many marketers misunderstand it. They think it is just a chance to talk more about themselves or what their company is doing, but this isn’t the case.
Brand storytelling is really about who you are, what you are doing, and why you are doing it. It is about connecting with your audience in an emotional way.
Tell the story of any obstacles you’ve had to overcome in your business. Be open, honest, and vulnerable, and your audience will appreciate it.
5. Be Original and Unique.
It is hard to be completely original in this day and age. If you are writing a blog about something, chances are that someone somewhere has also written a blog about that topic. But you can put your unique spin on it.
What do you have to offer on this topic that has not been written before? Use your individual voice to stand out, and be honest. People are drawn to authenticity.
6. Include Data to Back Up Anything You Say.
It is easy to write a blog post full of opinions, but it makes it so much stronger when you can back up your opinions with evidence.
Link to studies from trusted sources. Find data to back up your claims and include it with your content.
Not only will this help you to strengthen your content, but a piece tends to do much better when it links to authoritative websites.
7. Use Infographics and Images.
According to Impact, 56 percent of online marketers in 2018 stated that they used visuals in their content almost 100 percent of the time.
Images are a great way to capture an audience’s attention. The brain can process images 60,000 times faster than text so it is easy to see why content with a lot of images is going to be more compelling than content without images.
Try taking some original photos. These days, everyone walks around with professional cameras in their pockets. Cameras on cell phones are producing better pictures than ever before.
8. All Your Content Shouldn’t Be the Same.
You want to switch it up. Create new kinds of content. If you are doing a lot of blog posts, maybe try doing a video or a podcast.
If you have a podcast, maybe try writing a blog post. The possibilities are endless. You want to keep your audience on their toes so they’ll get excited about your content.
In addition to switching up the type of content, you should also switch up what the content is about. It could be a case study one day, a story the next, and the promotion of a product the next day.
9. Create More Targeted Content.
Develop buyer personas and create detailed profiles of those personas.
If you target all of your content towards this person, it will speak to many more people that are like him or her. The more detailed you can make these profiles, the better.
The more you understand your target audience, the more engaging content you can create specifically for them. There is a sea of content on the internet so it’s better to niche down and focus on your core customers.
10. Be Consistent.
The biggest tip I can give you about engaging content creation is to be consistent. No one wants to follow someone on Instagram who only posts once a month.
No one will keep up with your blog if you never post in it. Create a content calendar or a schedule and then stick to it. If you decide you are going to put out a video every Friday, make sure it is something you can actually stick with.
Your audience will come to expect videos from you on Fridays, and you don’t want to disappoint them. With all the content out there, it can be easy to feel like no one wants to engage with your content. But that just isn’t true.
You have something to offer that no one else does. Your business is unique, even if you are selling the same products or services as other businesses.
No one else will do it exactly like you. To create the best engaging content, you want to find what makes you unique and embrace that. That is what is going to help you stand out from all the noise.
Sara Crawford is a digital content specialist for WT Digital Agency and an author from Atlanta, Georgia. She has written novels, produced her own plays, and performed as a singer/songwriter. She is passionate about the act of creation, and she adores the written word.
