Stephanie Donelson

Engagement is a common metric used for measuring content marketing and social media results, but it can be kind of a broad term. While many marketers focus on website traffic, clicks, and conversions as their top metrics, engagement definitely deserves its own spot.

When I measure engagement, I’m looking at:

• Pageviews
• Time on site
• Bounce rate
• Pages per session
• Comments
• Social shares
• Social reactions

All of these KPIs indicate interest and engagement. It shows people are spending time with my content and actively engaging with it. Focusing on creating engaging content compared to just straight up SEO-friendly content puts the reader first, instead of the search engine crawler.

It’s important to have optimized website content but not at the expense of your readers. You could have the most perfectly optimized page with the right keyword mix, internal and external links, alt tags on images, and so on, but it means nothing if a human doesn’t want to read or engage with your content. If you’re not providing any value to the person that you’re hoping will become a customer, optimizing for the search engines is ultimately fruitless. 

So, how do you create engaging content?

1. Audit your current content

First and foremost you’ll have to take stock of what you already have and figure out what’s working and what’s not. Maybe you have content that’s just too outdated or is missing vital pieces of information. Maybe you have two pieces of content that are doing well but need to be merged together to truly provide the answers people are looking for. 

Think about your customer journey and map out content for every stage and step of the way. Do you have content that addresses their concerns or answers their questions? Do you have content that helps explain your product or service in an engaging way? 

A content audit is a great tool for tracking all the pieces you have out on your website and seeing what your audience is engaging with and what they’re quickly exiting out of. Some things you’ll want to look at when running your content audit includes:

• URL
• Title
• Category
• Funnel stage
• Format
• Targeted keyword
• Sessions
• Average time on page
• Bounce rate
• Plan: Keep, delete, consolidate, improve

2. Create a content calendar

Now that you know what you have and a few ideas for what’s missing, it’s time to calendar out the schedule of new content. Think of the different topics and themes you want to hit with your content and how you can tell your brand’s story through these new pieces.

Sometimes you will add a piece of one-off evergreen content to your calendar but if possible, think how each new piece of content can build off the posts before it and add to the conversation.

3. Try different content formats

We all enjoy consuming content differently, some of us are readers, some of us like to listen to podcasts, and it’s important to try and meet the needs of these different customers. 

Test different content formats like text-based blogs, infographics, videos, audio files, and so on. Not only does this add some variety to your content, it opens the door for repurposing content later but also helps you learn what format works best for your audience and what topics they are actively interested in.

You can also test different formats through sponsored content opportunities where a partner may help you create a video or act as a podcast host, taking away the heavy lifting and planning.

4. Create outlines

I know, I know, it’s blog writing 101 but to save yourself hours of editing and trying to clean up a stream-of-consciousness-style post, always start with an outline. 

What customer question(s) are you answering? What are they key takeaways for this piece? What are possible headers to draw readers in? What’s the clearest way to organize your content? One easy way to do this is to follow the: Who, what, when, where, why formatting. Finally, what are they supposed to do next?

Many blogs, even this one, follow a specific format:

• Title
• Introductory paragraph
• Leading question
• Subheading 1
• Explanation
• Subheading 2
• Explanation
• Call to action

5. Ask questions

Pull your readers into your content by asking questions. It’s the same tactic commonly used in thriller novels to get readers to turn the page and start the next chapter. 

Unless it’s on social media or in the comments section, they probably won’t answer your question but it’ll get them thinking. It’ll get them to think about your brand and how it could be a part of their world. Questions can also inspire action from your audience without being directly told to do something.  

6. Use graphics or interactive elements

Pictures are worth a thousand words and can help scanners quickly get the same information from your post without reading the content fully. They can still be engaged with your content via graphic elements. Interactive content has grown in popularity, whether that’s adding a little quiz to your content or infographics that change as the user scrolls.

Think about what your audience values most and how you can help them better engage with your content by adding visual elements. 

7. Link related content

Help your reader continue their education on the topic they’re reading about by linking related content at the bottom of your blog post or webpage. Make it as easy as possible for them to find related content and stay on your website longer! 

You can also take this concept and spin it into pillar pages, where you have links to all related content from one main hub. Say I run a wedding planning service. Maybe I have a page all about wedding flowers. This page talks about some history or fun facts about wedding flowers and then links out to blogs on how to pick the right flowers, the different seasons for flowers, coordinating colors, caring for flowers after the wedding, and so on. People will know they’ll find all the information they’re looking for by finding the one pillar page on wedding flowers. 

At the end of the day, you have to remember your target audience and understand what works for them. Some of these tips will work on certain demographics and some won’t resonate with your audience at all. Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint and you’ll continually learn more about your audience and their needs as you go. 

Interested in more content marketing tips and tricks? Follow me on Twitter!