What’s the secret behind your industry’s top-performing blogs, which attract readers in droves to them every single day? Engaging, well-targeted digital content.
People want to read what’s most relevant to them, from a source that they feel like they can trust. We’ll tell you the steps on how to craft effective and engaging digital content for your readers so you can become a powerhouse, authoritative online source in your industry.
Step 1: Know Your Audience
One of the most important aspects of creating engaging digital content is knowing who it is you are making it for. If you don’t know the demographics of your ideal audience, you won’t be able to effectively target those who you’d most like to read your content. Here are some top tips to use when you’re deciding who your ideal audience is:
- Dive into your site’s Google Analytics account (don’t have one? See our *Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a Google Analytics Account* infographic!) and analyze the traffic on your pages. Be sure to check the different bounce rates, time spent on each page, page views, and conversions to see what type of content your most dedicated readers are searching for.
- While in Analytics, also study your audience’s demographics, such as age range and location. Take into account their interests and their commonly used search keywords and phrases so you know how to best serve them what they’re looking for. Note: If your most dedicated readers aren’t part of your ideal audience (you want to target budget-conscious, college-aged millennials but most of your readers are wealthy middle-aged suburbians), you should spend some time thinking about your brand voice and marketing efforts to see what needs to be adjusted to suit what your ideal readers are searching for. Alternatively, you could re-evaluate your brand itself, and see if perhaps your “ideal audience” is really just your “wished-for audience”—and think about sticking to targeting those who are already interested in the content you are publishing.
- Don’t be afraid to ask your readers what they want! When engaging with your regular readers, subscribers, or customers on your website, reach out and ask them about the types of content they’d like to have access to. There’s no better way to please your audience than by creating customized content directly for them!
- Think about this, too: What can you offer people that your competitors don’t?
Step 2: Do Your (Topic) Research
Research is always key. You want to be seen as an authoritative and knowledgeable source on your topic, so you need to back this up with some credit.
Here are some tips on how to do so:
- Don’t expect to know all the information there is to know on a subject—doing a little bit of research for an article can help refresh what you already know (and possibly help you learn something new!)
- Publish articles with links to and mentions of where you sourced your info is a best practice—readers will trust you more if they see that your resources are real and credible.
- Mine from ideas you’ve already had and articles you’ve already written! You can repurpose content with a fresh spin or with additional research.
- Know the best sources of credible information in your industry and use them as staple resources.
- Again, know the types of information your audience is looking for or would be interested in, and research accordingly.
Step 3: Outline Your Content
You might just want to dive right in to crafting your content, but taking the time to complete this step can be the difference between good content and GREAT content.
For this step, you’ll want to:
- Make a content outline for every article/blog post/website page you write.
- Plan to include an informative and engaging title and interesting subheadings within your text—research has shown that blog posts longer than 1,500 words get more social media engagement—68% more tweets and 22% more likes than shorter posts (4).
- Having a friendlier and less formal tone in articles goes over well (unless, of course, your niche is writing online trade journals for the medical or science industry, in which case you should probably stick to more formal jargon).
- Optimize your content for SEO: make sure each article includes keywords and keyword phrases that your audience is searching for and that you include metadata on the backend of each page.
- Having a content template is great but be sure to refresh it often enough to keep up with our world’s constantly updating technology (you don’t want to have an outdated site or have outdated content or content layout on an optimized site).
Outlines are wonderfully helpful tools. When you have a roadmap for where you’re going, it makes it easier for you to get there.
Step 4: Utilize Visuals and Video
Madonna had it almost right: We are living in a visual world—and therefore, every piece of digital content you publish needs to have a visual aspect.
Here are some stats:
- Since 2017, more than 57% of blogs use more than one image per post.
- Photos of real people have 35% higher conversion rate than stock photos.
- Video content drives 50 times more organic traffic than text-content alone.
- Google Image Search gets nearly half as many shares as Google.com—which is a lot!
Think about it—you’d rather access online content that is more than just one straight slab of text. Content is more visually pleasing when text is broken apart by bolded and slightly larger subheadings, pull quotes are scattered occasionally throughout, images and charts and graphs that support what the content is saying are placed around strategically, and a video or two is available to give tired eyes a break from a bright white screen.
Step 5: Edit, Edit, Edit
Editing is an integral part of the content creation process that is often overlooked (usually because you are reaching the final product and are eager to put it out into the world)—but don’t skip it! Even the most well-researched and thoughtfully outlined articles will lose credibility if they are peppered with grammatical errors.
Here are some editing top-tips to ensure your work is mistake-free:
- If you can, take some space from your content for a day or so (several days would be ideal) to let it breathe, and come back to it with fresh eyes.
- Read over your content three separate times: the first time to get a general feel for its flow (without making any changes), the second time to make any edits you need to, and the third time to make 100% sure everything is as it needs to be.
- A good rule of thumb to remember when editing: When you think you’re finally done, read it through one more time, just to make sure.
Watch this video (by SEO guru Neil Patel) for some stellar tips on how to optimize your editing for SEO:
Bonus: Promote Your Content!
You’ve published your highly targeted, SEO-optimized, grammatically sound, and visually pleasing piece of content that’s ready for your ideal audience to find—but don’t just let it sit on your site unannounced! Now’s the time to put that content to work by giving it a little bit of promotion.
Here’s how:
- Create a content promotion strategy that includes sharing on social media platforms (namely Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram).
- Interact and engage with your readers on a regular basis.
- Reward regular visitors by hosting occasional giveaways, contests, or giving them shoutouts on your site/social platforms.
- Link to your new content within some of your previously published content (as long as the topics are similar)! Having an interweb of links within your site that connect various pieces of your content to each other is a great way of boosting readership and ensuring that all of your content is accessible.
So, there you have it! Five research-backed ways to ensure your content stands out from the crowd and appeals to those who you want to find it most. If you’d like more information on how to optimize your digital content or would like to dive deeper into social media best practices or how to get started using pay-per-click advertising, our team of digital marketing experts is here to assist you. Check us out online or give us a call, today!
About the writer:
Kayla Maneen is an SEO strategist and a continual purveyor of the written word. When she isn’t building custom landing pages or researching and writing about new digital marketing techniques, she is busy posting to her personal blog, exploring the wilderness, or trying to brew the perfect cup of Irish tea.