If you’ve ever been to an event where the speakers inspired you so much that you couldn’t wait to try out their ideas, you know firsthand how critical audience engagement is to accomplish your goals. We feel that way every time we go to Content Marketing World’s annual event.
You can create the same kind of audience vibe with your content. Make your next video or blog post as exciting as your favorite event with these tips.
Create a Mood
Take a tip from the Castle Group’s event staging pro, Andrea Rhoads, and engage your audience with an energetic vibe that holds their attention from beginning to end. Whether it’s upbeat mood music in your videos or attention-grabbing visuals in your blog posts, keep your audience focused on your theme with sensory stimuli that drive your point home.
Make Your Content a Comfort Zone
While you can’t furnish your audience with plush seating and perfect lighting, you can make it easier for them to grasp your points by lowering the understandability level. Whether it’s using readability tools to make your blog posts easier to digest or scrubbing the technical jargon from your videos, don’t make your content seem like work – even if your company is primarily a B2B enterprise.
Instead, use bullet points, tables, infographics, headings, and subheadings to guide your audience’s eyes when introducing material you want to drive home. In videos, restate your most important points near the end since they won’t have a written text or visual to refer to afterward.
Hook Them with Your Headline
When people search for information about the types of products you make, the first thing they’ll see in the search results will be your headline. Make sure that yours is the one that catches their attention.
Make sure that the headline targets a problem they face or an issue they’re curious about, as Allie Decker advises. Include your main keyword in the title, the meta description, and your first paragraph, so they’ll know that you’re serious about tackling the problems they face. It’s a win-win tactic since your keywords will also attract search engines’ attention.
Catch Their Attention in the First Few Seconds
There’s a reason why TV shows and movies often begin with an attention-grabbing scene. Your content should, too.
Video content should capture its audience in the first eight seconds, while blog posts have about 15 seconds to hook their audience. As Tested Media’s Victor Smushkevich points out, keep their interest going with curiosity, using suspense to drive their attention to the end.
Encourage Social Sharing
You know you’ve connected with your audience when your content is so helpful that they want to share it with their colleagues and friends. Strive to provide your audience with information they can use to better their lives and businesses, and then invite them to share it with others who might need it.
Remember That Less Is (Usually) More
Take it from fashion grande dame Coco Chanel. With her famous quote, “L’élégance, c’est refuser,” (Elegance: it’s ‘to refuse’) she defined not only great style in clothing but communication in general.
Elegant writing – writing that knocks the socks off your audience – refuses to tack on wordy phrases just to hit a specific word count. Concise language makes what you say memorable, while wordiness bores.
Don’t bore your readers and listeners. Give them just enough to engage their curiosity.
Get Active
Nothing turns your audience off like speaking and writing in the passive voice. It’s a snoozefest for the senses.
Even academic editors prefer active voice verbs. Probably so they don’t fall asleep while reviewing the latest round of submissions.
I mean, who would want to read, “The serial killer was chased into a dark alley by Detective Dan” in a crime thriller when “Detective Dan chased the serial killer into the dark alley” puts the reader right in the middle of the action.
So, put your audience in the middle of your story with active voice verbs and watch engagement soar.
Talk to Your Target
Here’s where all that research you did on your buyer personas pays off in spades. With nearly three-fourths of today’s audiences demanding personalized content, it pays to create content that speaks to the needs of each specific market segment.
You want your content to seem like a conversation with an expert consultant, minus the jargon, of course. The more your content solves your audience’s specific problems, the more valuable it will be to that segment.
That’s especially true for your email list. How many times have you clicked “unsubscribe” on emails from companies that send you emails irrelevant to your specific concerns?
Your audience likely feels the same way. Segment your email recipients by their interests and needs, and they’ll likely hang on to your emails for future reference, building trust with every valuable piece of advice you provide.
Tell Them a (Brand) Story
Research tells us that a good story lights up our brains with feel-good emotions. Since people – even veteran B2B buyers – base their buying decisions on emotion, it simply makes sense to flood their minds with good vibes about your company.
Even better, when you put your prospects and customers on center stage as your brand story’s hero, it allows them to envision the success your advice and products can bring them. It’s a powerful strategy that builds affinity with your brand.
Cite Industry Experts for Your Facts
Build your own authority in your niche by standing on the shoulders of industry greats. Always support your conclusions with solid evidence, providing your audience with the links to that information so that they can check it out for themselves.
Again, using trusted sources positions your content in better stead with the major search engines. If your content uses proven sources of truth to substantiate your evidence, it builds confidence in it in both your human and bot audiences.
Always End with an Ask
Don’t be shy when it comes to your call to action. Whether you’re trying to convince them to sign up for your email list or a free trial for your software, people can’t read your mind. Ask them to take the next step.
If It Works, Increase Its Reach
When you look at your content analytics and find a great-performing piece of content, make sure to promote it on social media, in your email newsletter, and with sidebars from related posts. Prioritizing your engagement metrics will help you quickly identify which pieces connect with your audience.
That’s not all you can do with that content!
Put all that research to work again by repurposing it in a new form. Take that viral video and turn the information into a white paper for your bottom-of-the-funnel prospects. Use your top-converting blog post as the springboard for a video, webinar, or podcast.
With DivvyHQ’s content marketing platform in hand, you can easily repurpose older content in a new form. With a dedicated content ideation area and the ability to produce your new content right on the platform, your content teams can collaborate with the original content’s creator to share ideas and take your content – and new audiences’ engagement – to the next level.
But don’t take our word for it. You can see the difference it makes for yourself when you take advantage of our no-obligation 14-day free trial. Start yours today!