How to Create Content that Drives Engagement

One of the biggest aspirations of content creators is to create content that drives engagement, attract shares, likes and comments.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t get to happen all the time for most content creators and their content.

Most times the reason for this is because there are too many content out there and to drive engagement, your content has to be really really exceptional…

Sometimes the other reason is because some content creators do not really understand what is meant by an engaging content. And those that do, do not really pay attention to give their audience the kind of content that can possibly drive better engagement.

But why would they do that you ask? Why would content creators ignore content that will drive possible engagement over other kind of content?

Well, this is it… Creating content that will drive engagement takes real effort, research and work.

From researching the idea about the content to creating, promoting and getting it out there for your audience, these things can take a whole lot of work and time.

And rather unfortunately, a lot of creators do not have enough time to invest on these things.

So, for this reason, they just want to create content and move on to the next content so they won’t get to lag behind.

But the question is, is this really the point of getting started with content creation? I mean, why would you spend your time to even write or create that next content if you already know it’s not going to generate as much result?

To me, really, there is no point creating content that will not bring in the traffic or drive engagement. Somehow it’s a waste of time.

So, what exactly is an engaging content?

An engaging content is the kind of content that adds a new perspective to an existing discussion.

It’s that kind of content that is very interesting, brilliant, funny, sad, entertaining, controversial or something that will make you want to like, dislike, share or even comment on it.

An engaging content is the kind of content that is rather novel and interesting to your audience because they can really connect to it in one way or the other.

In the following paragraphs, I’ll be showing you the strategies you can take to create content that drives real engagement for you and your business…

Know your niche thoroughly

The first step you need to take if you want to create content that drives serious engagement is to understand your niche thoroughly. This is really critical, to the success of your content.

The following are ways you need to understand your niche…

Learn what works… You can start to learn what works in your industry by asking yourself questions like, what exactly are the most popular content in my niche?

What kind of content do people share, promote and comment on?

As soon as you find out what’s popular in your niche you want to begin to understudy that kind of content.

Learn how the content was created. Why it became so popular. Also find out, did the creator use any specific promotional strategy?

Is the strategy repeatable and is it possible for you to get your hands on it?

Know your competitors. Who are the top competitors in your niche? Find out, what content are they posting and what’s the reaction with their audience base.

Knowing this will give you an idea on what your competition is doing and how it’s working for them.

After that, go ahead and find out how connected they are with their audience. And the possible areas they have not covered which you could utilize to make your content stand out.

Know your Audience. Also, get to know your audience demographics. Who are the people consuming your content, where’s their location, what’s their age range, educational qualification etc.?

Having this data will be very useful in your content strategy sessions. For instance, if you have a largely young and urbane audience, the kind of content that will be suitable to them compared to a much older audience will be different. And you need to know this, before you can hit the buttons to create your content.

You can find this data via your Google analytics account for your blog, Facebook page analytics for Facebook and Instagram analytics also.

This information will spare you a lot of guess work when it comes to content creation. It will help you to understand the basic realities about your audience and then you can tailor your content to be more suitable for them, based on their peculiar realities.

Give them what they want

Now that you’ve come to know your audience the next thing you want to do to create engagement with your content is to give your audience what they want.

So, how do you get to know exactly what your audience wants?

There are several ways to do this… For instance, like I mentioned above, the first approach is to under study other existing brands in your niche.

Find out the kind of content they create, how it resonates with their audience and the reason it does.

The other approach is to use search tools to find out what people in your niche are actively searching for.

Coming to Google for instance you can use Google trends or Google keyword tool to find out data on popular search terms in your niche.

When you have a good feel of what’s going on in the niche, you can then work on creating such content that’s in line with the trends.

Do it better than anyone else

Now you do not just want to give your audience content that works, you want to give them something that’s far better than anyone else is giving them.

In fact that’s one of the easiest ways to create engagement. Your content has to stand out really well.

For your content to stand out, you have to put on extra effort in your research. Go all the way to create additional value with each post you make.

It will require a lot of research too. Find out important areas that’s been omitted by your competitors in their content, include that in yours.

You can go all the way out to make it even more pronounced by creating the content in different formats like videos, audio, text etc.

Although creating in different format may not apply to all kind of content, it can work for most. And it gives your audience the choice to choose what works for them.

Use Compelling Headlines

You need to know that just like the main content of your posts, your headlines plays a very important role in determining whether your content will be compelling or not.

For the fact that a potential consumer of your content will first of all see the content headline before deciding whether to read the content or not, your headline has to be attractive enough to make them click through the content first otherwise they won’t even get to know the value within the content.

So, in essence, your headline should not only capture the value of your content, it should be able to compel a potential reader to click through to your content.

There’s an art behind creating exceptional content headlines. Learn about how to create effective titles for your content here.

A lot of creators hide great content behind a terrible headline, thereby reducing the potential of such content. This is not what you want to do.

Use the right Keywords

Using the right keywords is very important if you want your content to be visible to the right audience.

Here’s how it works…

When you know what the kind of audience you want to attract are actively searching for on the net, you are well positioned to optimize your content with the possible search terms they would use to search for these things.

When done well, this makes your content to be shown to them while they engage in Google search, using those keywords.

The result you get from this is that your content gets shown to the right audience.

And since you already created the content while having their needs in mind, there’s a large possibility they will connect to your content and for this reason they will want to engage with such content.

Promote your Content

Content Promotion is also a very important strategy to drive engagement for your posts.

For the fact that the more views you have on your content, the more possible it is for people to engage with it, you want to promote your content as much as possible.

To do this right, instead of promoting your content on just anywhere, to drive better result, promote it across audiences that will most likely be interested in the content.

Be very strategic about your content promotion effort. If you’re using the social media, do not target all available social media platforms.

Focus your effort on the ones that drives the best results.

Also, while using Guest Posting as a promotional strategy, make your guest posts on platforms that already have the kind of audience you want to attract or a complimentary one. It will save you time.

Finally, collaborate with other creators in your niche who have audiences that are similar to yours. It will help you. Here’s a tutorial on how to promote your content online.

Ask for Engagement

Yes! Ask for comments, shares, likes, etc. There’s no shame in it.

Use your call to action effectively. You spend a lot of hours and time creating remarkable content. Asking for your viewers and readers to promote or share your content is not a terrible thing to do. It’s a way of appreciating you.

A lot of creators do not use this strategy. Personally I didn’t use it until after a very long time. That’s not right.

Some people need just a little push to get the right thing done. And asking your readers to comment on, like or share your content could be just the right thing that’ll help you.

So, going forward, don’t just wait for it, ask for engagement.

Final words

There are a lot of things you can do to drive engagement and create improved results for your content.

And one of the most important of these strategies is creating a deep connection with your audience through your content. This is very important.

If I can’t connect with your content either because it satisfies my need at that point there’s no way I’m going to share, like or comment on such content. That’s what it is.

So, above whatever strategy you’re putting out, be sure you take out time to connect with your audience through your content by really giving them what they want, the way they want it.

Also, take out time to review your content strategy at intervals and see what’s working and what’s not.

There you have it! Just like I mentioned at the opening of this post, these strategies can improve your engagement and drive traffic back to your blog.

Want to learn more about Content Marketing and creating engaging Content? Join our Smart Content Masterclass here.

So, right here, I’m asking for your engagements, shares and comments. But let’s start with this… What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to creating content that drives engagement?