3 simple steps to creating content that encourages engagement

It’s all good if you can produce a lot of content for your social media and digital marketing campaign, but “any” type of content doesn’t work that good anymore. You can produce “good content” that will most likely help you with your organic rankings, but you need “magnetic content” aimed at your target audience that encourages engagement if you want to leave a lasting impression with them. Magnetic content can also help with increasing your sales and leads.

Creating magnetic content doesn’t mean that you should steer away from your core business goals such as increasing brand awareness and targeted traffic, but magnetic content marketing is so much more than that. By focusing all of your efforts when creating content to encourage engagement with your audience, you can really make the best out of your social media and digital marketing campaigns.
After all, engagement is key with social media.

Here are a few simple tips to help you spark engagement with your content.

Write thought-provoking content
A great way to encourage engagement with your target audience is to write thought-provoking content on a topic. Of course by all means you should avoid being open to offence such as with religious content, but never be afraid to try out new content ideas. An easy way to start with this is if you use a current trending topic or news story and putting your own take on it. Look at Twitter and what is trending at the moment. If you can get your take on the trending topic out quickly, you can definitely expect an increase in shares, likes, and retweets.

Provocative content can hep you generate traffic to your website or blog, so once they arrive on your site, how are you going to keep them interested? Make a point of also using magnetic content on your site so that you can push your visitors through your sales funnel, such as free downloads, contact forms or newsletter registrations. It really doesn’t matter if you don’t convert your visitors straight away, because they will know that your website is very helpful and they will come back for more thought-provoking content.

Ask questions in your content
Another great way to spark engagement from your audience is when you ask them a question. Be clever and ask the question in the body of your content. This could motivate your audience with their own views on the topic. Also, you can create a piece of content involving the viewpoints of many people with different opinions. This can make your audience agree or disagree with certain opinions or they can submit their own viewpoint.

If you have a wide demographic you are targeting, don’t get too technical with asking questions. Don’t ask your questions that requires long answers. If your audience can respond in a couple of words, the better.

Use social media’s viral nature
It goes beyond saying, but start promoting your content. Get the “magnetic content” in front of your audience. Use the right social media channels to distribute the content on. If Twitter doesn’t work that well for, then use Google+, and Facebook. You can also ask influencers in your industry to help you promote your content. That way they can help you spread the word on your magnetic content.

When your target audience engages with you and shares your content, acknowledge and thank them. Nurture your audience. When you are getting a response from your target audience it increases the overall reach of your brand online. All the feedback and comments you receive from your target audience should be used so that you can create better content. Get your readers involved and start creating content with a magnetic effect.