Content is what helps drive visitors to your website or blog, converts prospects into loyal customers and is often relied upon to make purchasing decisions. Of course, in order to succeed, you don’t want to just create content for the sake of it. You need to make sure you are creating content that will purposefully drive engagement.
Engaging content can be used to educate customers and move them through the sales cycle. It should speak to their interests, their problems, concerns and needs. It should not be an overt sales pitch, but rather add value to the shopping experience, to encourage customers to return.
We take a look at some of the things you can do to create content that will help you to engage with your customers.
Create a Plan
It is easy enough to say you are going to create great content, but we all know how easy it is for life to get in the way. If you want to accomplish your content marketing goals, you need to start out with a plan.
Creating a content calendar will help you to stay on top of your long term goals and stop you from getting distracted by all the other things going on in your life and your business.
Loyal readers will be coming back for more, but you need to be able to deliver your content on time, or they may turn elsewhere. Be sure to schedule in time that will allow you to focus on your content and always make sure you put quality over quantity.
Create Consistency
This is particularly important if you have a team of writers working on your content. You need to make sure that the content you put out there is consistent with your brand, right from the copy down to the design. Maintaining a consistent feel throughout your online and print materials will help to establish trust between you and your customers.
Create a connection
To really engage with your customers, you want to create a connection. Shoppers are more likely to buy from a company when they experience an emotional or personal connection. You can help to bring your brand alive by sharing your story on your About Us page.
Tell audiences your story in a way they can relate to and think about what would appeal to your target audience. You can even include staff profiles that you feel shoppers may identify with. Putting a face to your brand makes the shopping experience more personal and helps to create a valuable connection that can foster long-term relationships.
Create Appealing Content
These days, there is so much content out there that you need to make an extra effort to stand out from the crowd. People tend to have a short attention span, so you don’t want to make your content a challenge to read.
Make your content more appealing by using compelling images, breaking your writing up into short paragraphs, and making sure your site employs a responsive design, so it is readable across all platforms.
These may seem like simple steps to take, but visual elements can make a huge difference to your content by helping to break up large chunks of text, and giving your readers visual context to your writing, thus increasing page visits. These small changes can make all the difference to getting your customers to engage with your content.
Include a Call to Action
Calls-to-action (CTAs) help to encourage your customers to take a particular action or user journey and are key for generating sales. You should always make sure you include a call to action in all of your content, whether you’re sending out emails, posting a press release or updating your social media.
Before you post your content, take the time to consider the audience engagement that should follow. You should think about what stage of the buying cycle your reader would be in by the time they reach your content. This will have a big impact on the type of call-to-action you should use. The more relevant the CTA, the more likely you can turn them into a paying customer.
Try to create a compelling CTA by using snappy language. That means staying away from standard phrases such as ‘submit’ or ‘click here.’ Set yourself apart from your competitors and use copy that will grab your reader’s attention. Just remember, you reader’s attention span will be limited, so try to keep your CTA short and sweet.
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