Delight Your Audience: How to Create Content That Excites and Entertains

Creating content is not for the faint-hearted. It takes guts and a keen understanding of what people want to be effective in driving traffic to your business.

All content creators have asked themselves the same question more than once: How will I engage my audience, so they keep coming back for more? If you haven’t asked yourself this question at least once, you aren’t taking your job seriously!

It isn’t easy to create great content that excites and entertains. A report by SEMRush found that 45% of marketers struggle to attract quality leads with content while 38% cite finding the resources and producing larger amounts of content quicker as a challenge. 

However, we have some great tips to help you create content that will appeal to your target audience.

1) Know Your Channels

Many companies make the mistake of focusing too much on one content channel. In fact, you need to take a number of channels into account to drive brand awareness and attract customers. Figure out which ones suit your needs and create content that works across (or can be adapted) for all of them.

Your basic content channels include:

• Blogging: Blogging is essential because it helps with your search engine optimization efforts especially if you use SEO writing techniques while providing important information that you can share across other channels, especially social media.

• Social media: You need to use social media networks because it can help create a community of followers where comments can actually lead to further content ideas. Also, the all-important ‘social share’ enables you to find more followers and helps improve your SEO at the same time as a bonus. 

• Video: Video marketing can put a face to your brand. It can also drive awareness and generate sales leads by offering a personal way to engage with potential customers. Plus you can be creative with your videos to attract new audiences and inject personality. 

• Ebooks and resources: Providing more in-depth informational content works in two ways. First, it helps showcase your expertise. Second, you can use it as a lead generation tool with a call to action (CTA) to contact you to receive a free ebook or whitepaper. Here's an example of a simple image used on one of our blogs to encourage people to download an ebook. 

2) Stay Curious

You should have a number of things in common with your audience. One of the most important things is curiosity. Obviously, the reason people are seeking out information is to learn, and this learning is often driven by curiosity.

As a content creator, you have to remain curious about not only what is happening in the industry but what is happening to your audience. We live in a far more dynamic world where opinions change at the drop of a hat.

Also, social issues continue to be brought to the forefront of the business world. Consider the impact of the #MeToo movement and the challenges that companies face to remain socially and environmentally responsible.

You have to continue to research and read every day, so you don’t miss out on any opportunities that might present an idea to create a unique spin on a tired old story your competitors are telling.

Subscribe to industry newsletters, follow thought leaders on LinkedIn, and pursue other leads that will provide you with inspiration for the content you create. Staying curious keeps your content fresh, organic, and unique.

3) Choose Champions & Track Competitors

Finding inspiration should always be on your daily list of to-dos. Getting to know the thought leaders in your industry helps you understand what content will attract people. You can also go beyond your industry and look for companies that are in general doing things right.

When it comes to blogging, you can ask others to help you build your online presence. Guest blogging can prove to be an excellent way to keep content interesting by introducing a new voice and perspective occasionally.

Buffer, a social media management company, has been gaining new audiences using guest bloggers. It also features blogs about success stories for clients, industry updates, and tips. And it is active on social media with more than one million followers across all of its channels.

With content, it's wise to focus on quality over quantity to provide visitors with useful and in-depth information. Look at competitors to see what content they are offering to see if it would suit your user base or drive leads. 

People doing it well also have shortcuts that save themselves time. For example, Glossier leverages user-generated content from its followers and customers on its social media pages. By posting comments about its company on its social media pages, Glossier looks good, makes the customers who are featured happy (like this example below), and reduces the need to write its own content.

4) Consider Influencers

Influencers in your industry and community can boost your social media efforts, especially on Instagram and TikTok. Because these platforms are built around like-minded people, you can leverage relationships with followers.

Influencer marketing has seen a boom in recent years and it's not only celebrities that can be useful to brands, micro and nano influencers can help extend a company's reach in a niche sector or area if chosen properly. The right influencer can draw people to your brand and communicate your values or ethos in a way that wasn't achievable through your own content efforts. 

If you feel you have created a winning piece of noteworthy content, look for influencers who are likely to share that sentiment. There are lots of platforms out there to help find the right influencers that share content similar to yours and have a good-sized audience following content like yours.

Tip: Here's an influencer marketing brief template to help you approach an influencer and give them an idea of what you're looking to achieve. 

5) Use Visual Content

Images are essential in your content marketing across all channels as they attract attention and have been proven to increase views, shares, and engagement. According to HubSpot's State of Marketing 2023 report, content that delivers the greatest ROI is videos at 25% and images at 12 %. This means that half of marketers surveyed are using video in their content while 47% use imagery. 

Social media posts with an image or video have more chance of being shared and favorited. So get creative with your visual content and look for images that might amuse, inspire, or excite viewers.

Just think about how brands like GoPro and Patagonia leverage images of their product in action in nature to see how impactful a visual can be.

Top Killer-Content Tips

Creating unique content that thrills and entertains is hard enough, but don’t forget about your business goals. Here are some general tips that will keep you creating cutting-edge content, without losing focus:

• Stay the course: Make sure everything you write is first and foremost focused on your business goals, and then give it some personality. Humor goes a long way to keeping things interesting while remaining relevant. Personality makes your business human and relatable.

• Become a teacher: If your content is entertaining but not educational, it really will miss the mark. Make sure that what you say provides useful information that is accessible while also allowing your expertize to shine through.

• Keep up with your customers: Constantly learn about your customers, so you don't lose them. As mentioned, we live in a dynamic society with changing moods, views, and technology influencing your audience every day.

• Expand your channels: By using different channels, you can speak to your audience in the way they prefer. Some like video while others just need a quick image and some text. Leverage your blogs by posting links on your social media pages with clever insights to encourage further reading. Video is often overlooked because not everyone wants to be a YouTube star. However, nothing allows you to bring your business to life more than a chatty video offering genuine personality and a face to your brand.

• Get disruptive: Sometimes you have to go against the grain to get conversions. By challenging common thoughts and perceptions, you can start conversations and get people thinking about new ways of doing things.

• Include interviews: Don't get stuck in a rut! Use your creativity to dig deep and find a story to tell, even if it's about HVAC repair. Interview customers or your cleaning team to add more human elements to your blogs.

• Mine jump-off content: Look back at your own blogs and find information that might be outdated. Mine this content to bring new thoughts while encouraging readership of older material.

Remember, creativity is at the core of good content! Creativity does not just mean finding the right words for your content but using channels in unique ways and unique ways to take advantage of all the resources at your disposal.

Updated 2023

Use Content to Drive Awareness & Leads

Content marketing is an effective way to attract and influence prospects and customers. DMI's short Content Marketing certification covers the key areas in content marketing to help you develop a voice and build a brand. You will learn about personas and SEO strategy, creativity and storytelling, channel promotion and collaboration, how to measure performance and much more. Enroll today to become a content guru. 

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