8 Influential Ways to Develop Engaging Content: #6 Will Make You Speechless!

“One of the best ways to sabotage your content is to not tie it to your goals. Know why you’re creating content.” – Ellen Gomes, Marketo

Before you brainstorm the idea of SEO copywriting, know your audience and the purpose of creating it. Without knowing the answers to these questions, your content strategy will be ineffective and hence, content.

Now you know your audience and ready with the topic. What is next? How search engines notice your content and how people talk about your brand on social media matters. People share and like interesting and helpful content only. For this, your content quality should be great and include trustworthy sources, prominent information, and engaging visuals.

Let us now see the eight significant ways to create strong and appealing content.

Ann Handley rightly quoted, “Be specific enough to be believable and specific enough to be relevant.”

This means you do not have to write too many contents. Rather make in-depth and crisp content that has created value and people love to read it. It is smart to follow a 5^th grader’s reading level. Why not? People like reading shorter sentences that stick to their mind for longer hours. The war is about generating quality content and not focusing on quantity with junk words.

The long article wraps information in detail that is impossible to cover with shorter articles. Hence, it makes an opinion of superior quality. Moreover, readers feel like they have read something like a marathon when they leave. It creates satisfaction, which short articles cannot offer.

According to Buzzsumo’s report, the contents with more than 1000 words are more shared and linked, compared to the contents with below 1000 words. Of course, back your content with credible sources, videos, high-quality images, infographics, quotes, etc. to get true value and engage readers.

It is well said, “Create content that reaches out to your audience’s Audience.”

Neil Patel shares some actionable tips that will make your SEO copywriting journey successful.

Let us now see the secret to handle the content writing challenges:

• Make a Viral Headline: A racy headline will make a 500% difference to the website traffic as stated in one of the studies. Create headline that tickle funny bones, make emotional appeal, show a trend, produce curiosity, offer tips and ways, and much more. A case study of Buzzfeed reveals that it has all the elements of creating amazing yet powerful headlines. This has made them stay above in the Internet Marketing.
• Strong Introduction: An engaging opener will land the audience on your page. A perfect opening paragraph can be created by telling a story, a glimpse of secret you will be sharing in the write-up, ask questions, catchy quote or just kickstart with humor.
• Create Focused Content: Choose one topic and stick around it. Do not make a mess out of it. Readers like to read the content that provides solutions to their problems. This will not only represent you as an expert but build your brand.
• Appealing Writing: This is the most challenging task to persuade people to read your content. With few principles like arousing emotions of people, stating logics, giving a traditional approach, providing valuable and statistically strong data to attract your audience.

If you truly want to engage people, then tell them a real and appealing story. Stories are a great way to convey your opinions, make an impact on people, and build a human connection with your readers.

Creating the stories or including real-time examples is another easy way to make an engaging content and grab your reader’s attention. Interesting as well as suspenseful stories can keep the readers hooked on your page. Thus, understand what your audience wants to hear and engage them with personal stories or of any famous person or events. In addition, the stories in visuals create more curiosity. 37% of the marketers state that visual marketing creates an impact, but your visuals need to tell a story nowadays.

“Be so good they can’t ignore you” - Steve Martin

Provide appropriate facts to your immediate audience. A credible source or statistics from the verified and high-end sites, research universities, and market-research businesses help people to trust your information. The authentic data needs to be stated if you are particularly giving any marketing statistics, something about the government work, economy, etc.

A credibility boost can be provided to your SEO copywriting if you include any Podcasts, expert’s interviews, providing references from the sources your target market is already aware of, and much more. The inclusion of statistics from the reputed sources, journals, and research papers provides a great perspective to your content. Professional content writers use this method to establish the authenticity of their provided data.

Keywords are not only used for SEO copywriting purpose, but it has a whole lot of more work nowadays. The inserting right keyword in your content will land right audiences on your page. It makes the readers choose a particular content. It helps in keeping them focused.

Moreover, Google has already provided the theory on the use of “Keyword Density.” If there is a website page with Keyword Density of 2%, then it will outrank pages having density lesser than that. So, it becomes necessary to follow the right keyword phrases and tools to choose the keywords. This will also help in improving the ranking of your website page.

This following video rightly updates about how to find the perfect keywords.

Jamie Turner rightly says, “The only way to win at content marketing is for the reader to say - This was written specifically for me.”

It is necessary to understand your reader’s persona and involve them when you do SEO copywriting. They must feel you are talking to them through your blog or article posts. People must feel that you understand their problem and give the best solutions for them. This can be greatly done with a conversational tone in your article. Obviously, you cannot get up from your desk and say a personal Hello!

Your audiences must feel that you really understand their mindset. Your article must not depict that you are just fond of selling your product, creating a big E-mail subscription list, and making them feel alienated. A short survey, quizzes, comments go a long way in engaging your audience with an expressive write-up.

One of the examples that can be quoted perfectly here is of Coca-Cola. The company launched “Share A Coke” campaign in 2014 to reach teenagers and young aged 13-34. Through this campaign, the company launched 250 ml bottles with around 800 conventional names of this generation. Offering a personalized product to the young audience, the company showed fast raise in sales after 2000.

Do not stick to just one medium to communicate with your readers. If you are writing only text-based contents, diversify your style using images, quotes, infographics, videos, and more.

A perfect example of content diversification is of Ahrefs.com. You can find the style of content in its heading itself.

Research indicates that 51% of the marketers stated video as the best ROI generating tool.

It means you need to stimulate the sensory nerves of your audience to make them identify your brand. The visuals play a vital role in attracting the majority of audiences. They quickly recognize your brand name if mixed with a catchy tagline. The compelling images with high-quality resolution make up most of your websites. The improved use of graphics or animated GIFs also helps in creating a great impact on the audiences.

Moreover, the use of Infographics is moving at a fast pace and 41.5% of the marketers are using it. It represents the data in a more comprehensive and eye-catchy form with visuals. The Infographics is stated to stay in the trend from the year 2018 and beyond. With great graphics designing tools, it has become easier to design them.

Now, it’s time for generating the leads. You have already written engaging content and solved reader’s problems. The purpose of the call to action statement is – letting readers know what to do next and motivate them to do so.

Begin your CTA statement with the desired act like

• Wish to promote newsletter? Start with “Subscribe” or “Download”
• If you are selling products, then start CTA with “Order”, “Buy”, “Shop”
• If you wish to get more information, then go with “Fill out the contact us form…” or “Call us..” statements.

Moreover, focus emotions and enthusiasm to draw a strong response from the customers. Letting your audience know the reason to take a decision or being creative will also help to generate leads.

Creating engaging content is not easy. Becoming a master of storyteller and connecting the readers may be tough. Initially, there may be some hurdles in developing the engaging content. However, once you write the content with your passion and start connecting your audience, it will be simple to shine through your content and relate your readers.

Always understand your readers’ need and their pain points. This will help you to develop the content they wish to explore. As a content marketer, you need to find what readers want and present them effectively. A right trigger may help you to engage with them and get more people to share your piece of content.