Content Engagement — 10 Steps to Create Impactful Content

While it goes without saying, content is king. Gone are the days of sharing random content across digital media platforms and hoping it sticks. In today’s digital-first ecosystem, creating engaging content means constant behind-the-scenes data collection.

Content engagement measures interactions with your marketing content across various digital platforms. It offers insight into content performance and customer journey and strengthens a company’s overall brand. Popular metrics for measuring engaging content include conversion and bounce rate, social shares, and engagement rate. In turn, these metrics provide an in-depth view of user behavior and inform your content marketing strategy.

Is your content working for or against you? Read on for tips, tricks, and insights for creating impactful content.

What is Content Engagement?

Content engagement, quite literally, measures how appealing your digital marketing content is to a viewer. It accounts for engagement metrics like conversion rate, bounce rate, and social shares. They also apply to your website, social media channels, ads, and more.

In turn, this performance data informs how you create content. In fact, 60% of marketers note that content is “very or extremely” important to their overall marketing strategy. With stats like this, there is no denying brands are investing in a content marketing strategy. 

Content marketing varies greatly depending on your industry and target audience. While some similar assets exist throughout industries, the execution differs. For instance, video assets for a medspa may showcase treatments in action. Whereas a real estate video asset may be a guided tour through a property to highlight the features.

While there are several content engagement strategies, the best strategy depends on your brand goals, budget, and timeline.

What are the Benefits of Content Engagement?

The benefits of creating engaging content are tenfold. Now more than ever, content marketing and curation is a full-time job. If done effectively, content engagement produces returns for your business.

Inversely, a content strategy not optimized drains time, money, and resources. Prospective clients and customers can also see through a thrown-together marketing plan. If content is disjointed, unclear, or confusing, users may turn elsewhere. While it takes time to create engaging content, it saves you a headache and confusion in the long run.

To achieve success, it is imperative to utilize specific metrics. Important metrics to help guide your content curation include conversion rate, bounce rate, social shares, and, of course, engagement rate. These metrics should work in unison to provide a clear picture of customer engagement, interests, and activity.

Simply put, successful content engagement produces returns for your business. With clear calls to action (CTAs), high-quality and relatable content, and consistent engagement, you are set up for success.

10 Steps for Creating Engaging Website Content

Creating a successful content marketing strategy takes time. However, if done correctly—the sweat equity is well worth the time. Let’s start with website content and 10 steps to get you started.

1. Understand your Target Audience

A successful content engagement strategy includes an understanding of your target audience. This includes crafting a buyer persona. You should know your target client and their pain points.

Subaru is the perfect example of the stars aligning. It isn’t a coincidence they are the largest corporate donor to the ASPCA® and feature dogs in their commercials. They know their target audience and the content that will perform well.

2. Create High-Quality, Valuable Content

Anything you could ever want to know is just one query away. For this reason, endless competition actively works to be at the top of the search engine results. Carefully curated, consistent, and high-quality content that provides value helps you stand out from competitors.

Ready to begin creating high-quality content? Connect with a digital marketing agency with experts in content engagement.

3. Use Attention-Grabbing Headlines

Attention-grabbing headlines don’t mean clickbait. Rather, it means utilizing the data you know about your target audience to address their pain points.

For example, if you are an agent specializing in first-time home buyers. An attention-grabbing headline for a blog post may be “From Renter to Homeowner — 10 Ways to Prepare Financially.”

This attention-grabbing headline provides value and may solve a pain point for first-time home buyers—resulting in higher conversions.

4. Incorporate Visuals and Multimedia Elements

No one wants to stare at a wall of ill-formatted text. Your website is an art form and asset to deliver a cohesive brand identity. Incorporate visuals, videos, graphics, and more to intrigue the customer and deliver a differentiated experience.

See how Musha Cay utilizes animation to create a one-of-a-kind website.

5. Accurately Respond to Search Intent

Content only converts when it applies to the user’s search intent. For instance, if a user searches for medspas in their town. If you’re a dermatology practice without medspa offerings in another state, visiting your website will not solve the search intent.

Accurately responding to search intent includes in-depth keyword research. Connect with experts in content engagement to discuss what this means for your business.

6. Make Content Relatable and Shareable

Making relatable and shareable content goes hand-in-hand with understanding your target audience. By creating engaging content, you account for your target user’s interests.

Meanwhile, shareable can mean the content is on the pulse and requires little context. Shareable also means that it quite literally can easily be shared. For instance, an Instagram reel is easily shared onto stories, whereas content originating on stories is trickier.

7. Constantly Update the Content

When optimizing your website, the work doesn’t stop when the website goes live. In actuality, you should be constantly updating the content of your website. These updates could be as simple as adding a new team member or as intricate as weekly blog posts.

If weekly blog posts sound like a difficult undertaking, don’t worry. The marketing experts at the digital marketing agency Mediaboom are here to help.

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8. Implement Interactive Elements (polls, quizzes, surveys)

There is no better way to improve content engagement than with interactive elements. Incorporate weekly polls, quizzes, and surveys into your social media strategy to boost engagement. This is also a low-stakes opportunity to gain valuable user feedback.

9. Encourage User-Generated Content

Not only does user-generated content take some content creation off your plate, but it also increases credibility.

Encouraging user-generated content is especially important for eCommerce websites. For eCommerce, user-generated content showcases how customers style the product without a curated backdrop or photoshoot. It also gives a better understanding of how the product looks in different lighting and with different stylistic choices.

10. Engage with Comments and Feedback

There is nothing worse than brands not interacting with their customers. We’ve all seen it before. The dreaded negative Google review that goes unanswered. By ignoring reviews, brands may turn away prospective clients or give fuel for others to chime in.

Set aside at least 20 minutes a week to respond to comments, inquiries, and feedback. Create boilerplate responses to help streamline the process.

8 Strategies to Boost Content Engagement for Social Media

Social media is a strong part of your brand identity and requires a unique content creation strategy. While some aspects are similar to a website strategy, social media is its own unique platform. Here are seven strategies to help you stand apart from the competition.

1. Find Your Audience

You may generate the best content in the world. However, if you’re serving that content to the wrong audience, you will not see returns. Crafting a buyer persona allows you to effectively find your target audience.

In crafting a buyer persona, you can further understand your client’s behaviors and motivation.

2. Use Eye-Catching Visuals

While it may sound vain, beautiful, eye-catching visuals increase conversion rates. This is because these assets provide a cohesive brand vision.

These visuals can include both standard images and video. Over 70% of adults are more likely to convert if they’ve viewed a video explaining the product or service. For product-based businesses, you can point out features that solve consumer pain points. 

3. Keep Content Concise and Scannable

There is no denying that attention spans are on the decline. Short-form videos and easily digestible, condensed content are trending. These content forms immediately capture attention and end before the attention span lapses.

Use on-brand emojis to break up text and keep the content just the main points. Incorporate a CTA to learn more or click the link in bio for additional details.

4. Arouse Curiosity with Storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful and engaging marketing strategy. There are many ways to incorporate storytelling to boost content engagement.

Fairfield Catering Group takes social media engagement to the next level. Their expertly designed website includes a live social feed. The live social feed tells the story of past events and provides inspiration and ideas for prospective clients.

5. Leverage Trending Topics

Leverage trending topics and opportunities to drive content engagement. Consumers are more likely to reshare posts referencing trending topics. The impact of Taylor Swift and the Barbie movie is more powerful than you’d imagine.

Did you know Taylor Swift’s attendance at the Chiefs game boosted sales for Travis Kelce jerseys by nearly 400%? While this is a niche example, the impact of trending topics on user engagement does not go unnoticed.

6. Post Consistently

Consistency is key. Algorithms love consistency because it means you’re spending more time on their app. Furthermore, it keeps followers engaged because they constantly have content in which to interact.

Switch up the content with static posts, carousels, videos, and stories to increase engagement.

7. Share User-Generated Content

As with your website, showcasing user-generated content on your social media also increases customer engagement. By posting user-generated content and tagging the creator, you encourage them to reshare. In turn, this offers an opportunity to capture their audience.

As a general rule of thumb, abide by the 3:1 ratio of three brand-generated assets for every user-generated asset. This ensures your brand identity is maintained.

8. Share Behind-the-Scenes Content

Gone are the days of only showing the final cut. Now is the time to bring clients along on the journey. The best behind-the-scenes content goes all the way from ideation to execution.

An example of this in action is on Fairfield Catering Group’s websites. Their live social feed broadcasts to each of their websites. In addition to piquing curiosity, this feed offers a behind-the-scenes look at the latest events.

Metrics to Monitor Content Engagement 

There are several impact metrics to monitor for content engagement. These metrics include conversion and bounce rates, social shares, and engagement rates.

• Conversion Rate: Conversion rate measures the percentage of desired actions taken. 
• Bounce Rate: Bounce rate indicates the number of website users who leave before taking an action.
• Social Shares: Social shares refer to posting or reposting your content on social media or other digital marketing channels.
• Engagement Rates: The engagement rate tracks how active users are with your content.

All of these metrics deliver a clear picture of how to achieve success with your digital content.

Analytics Tools to Measure Content Engagement

Thankfully, there are dozens of tools out there to help effectively measure content engagement.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics specializes in website analytics to take the guesswork out of visitor behavior. The free platform provides hearty stats on both desktop and mobile web activity. Utilize these stats to understand the customer journey and improve ROI.

Facebook Insights

On the flipside, Facebook Insights gives audience insights on Facebook-specific activities. Access details like page insights, conversion rates, and overall content engagement.

Instagram Analytics

Similarly, Instagram Analytics provides an in-app professional dashboard. The easy-to-access insights include accounts reached, accounts engaged, total followers, and more valuable insights. You can also monitor Instagram stats via the Meta Business Suite.

LinkedIn Analytics

Finally, LinkedIn Analytics is another platform-specific analytics tool. LinkedIn Analytics provides in-depth details on company page performance. This includes follower demographics and various stats to measure content engagement. 

Conclusion

Ready to take your content engagement strategy to the next level? You came to the right place. Hire a digital marketing agency now.