Driving engagement and meaningful interactions with readers, fans, and followers via a multifaceted online platform is of the utmost important for brands, publishers, enterprises, and bloggers alike in the digital age. There is no place for mediocrity on the web. If you fail to deliver content that your readers care about, then it will be difficult to keep them engaged, which can impact on your visibility in search engine listings and other business functions. Fortunately, the digital revolution has given web developers and content marketers a vast array of tools to reach more people, across more platforms than ever before.
Content Marketing
“Content is King” is a popular phrase for a reason. Creating awareness of your brand through authoritative, distinct, and entertaining content is the best means to boost engagement on an online platform. Video is the latest frontier for marketers as the format is easy to digest, offers unlimited creative potential, and ties into social sharing. Video is set to account for more than two-thirds of consumer internet traffic by next year, according to Cisco, so it is important that you jump on board now and optimize your video campaigns to make your platform as engaging as possible for readers and prospective customers.
User-Generated Content
Video is just one of the ways to enable readers and users to interact and engage with an online platform. Enabling more consumers to write a review on a particular product is central to the growing importance of user-generated content. A study by Reevoo shows that 70 percent of consumers place a greater emphasis on recommendations from peers and fellow readers, so giving them an outlet to be more expressive about their opinions is critical. Building a sense of community through an effective content marketing campaign and creating opportunities for conversation can pay dividends and ensure that readers visit a platform on a daily basis.
Blog Posts
When creating written content, you must make sure that it is answering questions that your target audience is asking. You don’t always have to adhere to a strict daily schedule if there is nothing worth saying. Always be a step ahead of your readership and deliver content that you know they want. There are sites on the web that deploy effective content marketing to engage readers on a daily basis, mixing official breaking stories, real news, entertainment, and opinion pieces to broaden their reach. You could also convert your blog posts into podcasts by using free tools such as iSpeech. Figures show that 40 percent of Americans listen to podcasts, so take advantage of this.
Social
You can’t ignore social if you want your platform to be a success. Think of social as the life source for your platform; you will need to use its vast networking potential to drive people to your website. For example, if you publish a blog post, make sure to post on Facebook, Twitter, and other channels with a link to the piece. You can also run competitions and contests on these platforms as an interesting way to boost engagement.
Web Design
Engaging content must also be supported by creative web design and effective web development. A website that is built with a focus on end-user experience can help to generate more relevant leads, customer traffic, and increase conversions. This means that your online platform should be fast to load, easy to navigate, and rich with images and videos. You should try to use clear calls to action so that visitors know where to buy products or how to sign up for a newsletter. You can gain trust by creating a clean, engaging website, so prioritize design elements that will get readers to the information they need in the simplest, most effective manner.
Mobile
An attractive webpage is important, but you will need to do more to keep visitors engaged. More people are now browsing online platforms on their smartphones and tablets – 80 percent of web searches are now made on mobile – so make sure that your webpage is mobile-friendly. Google recently launched its own Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, which aims to make it easier for publishers to produce content that is geared towards mobile. The tech giant also updated its search engine algorithm to favor mobile pages so that they will appear more prominently in SERPs.
Leveraging all the marketing and web design tools available to you is key to generating long-term engagement. Entertaining videos, news pieces, music snippets, and other content must be supplemented by effective web design elements to ensure that readers visit your online platform on a regular basis.
