8 Ways to Make Your Content More Engaging

26 Nov 8 Ways to Make Your Content More Engaging

Logic, emotion, credibility–these are three proven methods to reach and connect with your audiences online.  Here are some ideas for improving the chances your content will be noticed and shared.

1. Earn credibility through third-party ratings for your product or service, like this one at right. Starred reviews (from Google+ Local and Yelp, for examples) stand out in search results.  When you do get reviews, make sure they originate from a domain other than your brand’s.  Yelp tracks the IP addresses of reviewers and penalizes reviews coming from identical addresses.
2. Make it visual.  People love to share video, photos, infographics, motion graphics and memes that are clever or strike a chord.
3. Make it brief.  One word, lest you doubt the trend toward shortened attention spans: Vine.  Yes, the attention span of your audience has been reduced to a six-second Twitter video loop.  So mourn, but then get on with stirring your stakeholders through storytelling that honors brevity.
4. State your case through white papers, how-to videos, or data portrayed through simple visuals.  Bloggers love to back-link to meaty items that are useful or informative.
5. Newsjack: riff on how big stories are impacting your organization.  It’s OK for the TV show Deadliest Catch to blog about being angry at Congress for the recent government shutdown because they can’t get fishing licenses.  But don’t try to capitalize on tragedy.
6. Participate in forums, and share links that could be back-linked by participants.  As Bing search evangelist @DuaneForrester puts it, share and share alike:
7. Provide Tweet-length quotations in press releases and blog posts.
8. Make sharing your content the call to action.

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