Photo credits: www.mysafetylabels.com
Your content is only as good as how wide it is read and how well it is received. Content that is not compelling serves to defeat your own personal or business brand, so all the more reason you should always be striving for content that engages and grabs your reader’s interest. Here are four simple steps to cultivating compelling content.
Step 1: Your Audience Comes First
Far too often, content that’s created for the web, be it for social channels or otherwise, is expressed in a manner that is very self-centered and self-serving. Reversing this is one of the easiest and quickest ways to immediately improve the effectiveness of your content. Simply consider who is listening to what you have to say as a brand. Speak directly to that person, that audience member, and with him or her in mind. How does your brand or business help him or her out? How does your brand or business serve this audience? Simply let your products and services, features and benefits, come alive or come out in explaining how your brand serves and helps your target audience.
Step 2: Headlines that Turn Heads
The headline not only makes the first impression, but it also serves as the gatekeeper. If your audience likes your headline they will let you in, but if they don’t, it will not go any further. The goal of your headline is always to catch your audience interested in finding out more. With this, it follows that headlines should create curiosity and get the reader interested in reading more.
Step 3: Rich Media to Enrich the User Experience
Make your content stand out by creating a rich media experience. By this, I simply mean add in the types of media that your audience likes to interact with. People love photos, so leveraging photos in your content marketing is a smart move. People also love video and will spend a significant amount of time consuming video if it’s something that they’re interested in and want to find out more about. Copy, also known as text, will always work if well-written, but it doesn’t get the immediate attention that photos and video do. That said, photos and video will get more attention in the age of information overload that we live in.
Step 4: Tell a Story
Lastly, there was a reason that much of early civilization’s traditions were passed on through stories. It is simply that there was no other platform or medium that would stand the test of time for the stories to be passed on. Stories are lasting and it is simply human nature to have interest in stories. Consider utilizing storytelling in your content. People love to relate to experiences through stories, and this makes for powerful content.
Related articles
