Creating content that doesn’t just live on the internet but piques your audience's interests is arguably one of the most important elements of SEO and content marketing.
Maybe you're producing regular content and even tackling the right topics, but if it’s not leaving users wanting more, it may be time to refresh your content marketing strategy.
If you’re finding that your content is lacking in views or interactivity, you’ve come to the right place. Let's learn what content engagement is and pro tips for improving engagement across your brand’s platforms.
What Is Content Engagement?
Content engagement is a term used to define a user’s actions when they are in front of a piece of content. These interactions can help brands identify if their content is successfully reaching their target audience and the likelihood of leading them further down the marketing funnel.
There are many ways that a user could engage with your content, including:
- Clicking on or viewing a page
- Spending time on the page
- Liking a post
- Dropping a comment
- Sharing with their network
- Signing up for a service, trial, or demo
- Continued scrolling
- Completing a transaction
- Exiting the page
Why Is Content Engagement Important?
So, why isn’t just creating the right content enough? Engagements are a sign that your brand’s content is not only being seen but valued.
Focusing on content engagements can improve brand loyalty, help reach a larger audience, and build relationships — not to mention, it works. In a recent survey done by the Content Marketing Institute, marketers revealed that engagement was the most insightful metric for their brands in 2022.
Understanding what types of content engages your audiences and what falls short can help you curate the most effective content engagement strategy to produce optimal performance for your business.
7 Ways to Maximize Content Engagement in 2023
You’re here to improve your content engagement strategy and brand performance, right? Well, let's get into it. These content engagement tips will help you not just create content but prioritize the content that’s going to have the most impact on brand visibility, leads, and, ultimately, increase your sales pipeline.
1. Lean Into Content That's Doing Well
As we mentioned above, paying attention to engagements can help you understand what’s working and what's not for your brand. Once you know what interests your target audience, you can create similar content formats.
Get creative! There are all different types of content formats you can explore. Experiment with different types until you find the ones that your audience responds the best to.
You can do this by monitoring traffic, page views, likes, or comments across your content pages and filtering by highest to lowest performance. Formats or topics that consistently perform well are probably the sweet spot for your content engagement strategy and business.
Data pulled from Ahrefs
2. Have a Captivating Introduction
Don’t underestimate the power of a good introduction to your content. Whether it’s the initial image that draws them in, the first few words of a video, or the first paragraph of copy on a web page, an introduction helps set the tone of the piece a user is about to consume.
In a world where it’s so easy to click from one thing to the next, be the brand that makes the user eager to learn more. Here are a few ways to level up your intros:
- Ask a question
- Appeal to your target audience
- Include a call to action
- Add an interesting statistic
- Tell a story
- Be relatable
- Explain why the content is useful
3. Establish Brand Trust
Establishing trust with your audience can do a lot when it comes to engagement and brand loyalty. Many users will look to content to help educate them about a brand or product before making a purchasing decision, so make sure the content is reliable, credible, and adds value.
How do you establish trust through content? Introduce industry experts on videos or webinars, provide proprietary data from previous sales, testimonials, and surveys, or share an author bio with their credentials for writing a blog post. These simple methods can help establish expertise, brand authority, and trust.
4. Provide the Very Best User Experience
Picture this. You’re looking for quick information on the best dog food for your pet, and the webpage you click on first is a total mess. There are pop-ups, formatting issues, images won’t load, and it’s becoming a full-time job to find the information you need. You can’t bounce off the page and look for the next result fast enough. We’ve all been there.
Best-in-class user experience is a key ingredient for maintaining or improving engagements. With so much content readily available for consumers, they have options and will likely opt for content that is easy to navigate and provides low time to value. Elements like healthy core web vitals, clear CTAs, easy navigation, and a clearly laid out page with headers and images can help engage your users and keep them from bouncing off your site.
5. Leverage Unique Content Formats
Content, especially for high-interest topics, is competitive. So find ways to make your content stand out amongst the rest. Every industry is different and may require different ways to distill information. For example, those looking for information on how to change a brake pad on their car may prefer a video tutorial rather than a blog post.
Remember, content is not one size fits all. Depending on the audience or topic, certain formats will work better or attract different audiences. Part of your strategy to boost engagements should be identifying what they are.
6. Increase Sharability
Videos, images, and graphics not only make a piece of content attention-grabbing and appealing, but it encourages sharability. Investing time in creating unique and aesthetically pleasing pieces of content can increase the likelihood of someone sharing, linking to, or repurposing that information.
Adding social share buttons on your images can make it easy for users to share your content with their network. What does that mean for you? Increased engagements and a wider audience.
7. Encourage Community Participation
One of the simplest ways to boost engagement, especially on social media, is to encourage online participation within your community. Opening the floor to your customers to get involved can help increase awareness of new audiences, build brand loyalty and trust, and improve customer service.
Engaging with your community by asking a question, incentivizing users to like/comment on a piece of content through a giveaway, or having a Q&A are all great ways to improve online engagements and for brands to connect with their customers.
In fact, 59% percent of Americans with a social media account agree that customer service via social media makes it easier to get questions and concerns answered.
Step Up Your Content Engagement With First Page Strategy
At First Page Strategy, content and growth marketing is our bread and butter. With years of experience and our first-class team of experts, we're dedicated to delivering effective results for your brand.
