Engaging your readers is critical to your online business and brand promotion.
You could be writing many blogs / articles on a daily basis and posting them on various sites hoping, to have bigger business footprints.
But, if your prospects and readers are not spending time on your pages and checking them thoroughly, you won't be able to achieve your goals.
As per a report, in 2016, while content marketing was up 300%, engagement was up just 5%.
What does it mean?
It means the common visitors aren't spending much time and leaving your pages speedily.
What's more disheartening is that even those who are spending some time checking the pages aren't spending more than 37-odd seconds.
Perhaps, the huge volume of content available nowadays is motivating them to leave your pages to check other sources. Maybe, their exposure to other media tools simultaneously is also behind the high bounce rate.
Whatever could be the reason, it's important to understand your prospects and readers well and engage them.
But how to do it? How to write engaging content?
Well, follow these 4 tips for improved engagement and better business.
1. Know our prospects & readers: Find out what they want and what their likes and dislikes are. Study their behavioral patterns. A good source of information on your prospects and readers could be the different social media sites that they could be using.
2. Have relevant supporting images: Images– besides being good text breakers – also have the ability to convey your message in a more powerful manner. Relevant images carry your story forward and engage your readers and prospects in a nearly guaranteed way. Your brain process images faster than it processes the words. So, have supporting images on your pages for better connections with your prospects & readers.
3. Have the right supporting videos: Videos could be a powerful tool to attract and engage the viewers. Having them on your pages – especially when you are planning to do instructional blog posts – could do wonders. And, hook your prospects and lead to better engagement. It will be a great idea, if, instead of having infographics, you use videos to convey your message and reach your target viewers. The good news: now with smartphones, you have a handy and inexpensive tool to shoot decent videos for your pages.
4. Use appropriate quotes by well-known personalities: Quotes are wonderful text breakers. They also lend credibility to your story, and carry it forward. People trust you when you support your content with a relevant quote, by a famous & respected figure. So, use appropriate quotes that support what you are saying. Using them in italics will help. It will make your text more professional and engaging.
5. Highlight tips: People generally visit sites to get help and relief from a problem they could be suffering from. So, share useful tips – in bullet form – to better engage them and inspire them to consume your content – right from beginning to end. It will naturally result in them spending more time on your pages, and resultantly, doing what you may want them to do.
Wrapping-up, it pays to engage your readers and prospects. Have supporting and relevant images and videos to engage them in a better manner. Also, use quotes and highlight useful tips so that while the bounce rate of your web pages drops, readers' engagement balloons.
