Interactive Content: 10 Types To Engage Your Audience via @sejournal, @JuliaGeekPack
With people online more than ever before, interactive content marketing is your best bet to boost engagement and grow your audience.
Many savvy businesses have a content marketing strategy, so it’s important to think of ways to make your content stand out from your competitors.
Let’s explore different ways you can turn static content into interactive posts and pages that will encourage your audience to stay engaged.
But first, let’s understand a bit more about interactive content and why it is so important.
What Is Interactive Content Marketing?
Interactive content means content that prompts your audience to participate in some way, rather than simply consuming the information passively.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be anything fancy, it could be as simple as clicking a button, or answering a poll.
This type of content can make the experience more fun for your audience, and therefore make you and your brand more memorable.
Plus, it’s also a great way to get to know your audience better and collect important data.
Here’s a recent example we’ve implemented in my business.
For about one year, I’ve been asking my community what new skills they would like to learn. I’ve done that in different ways and in different platforms – on our private Facebook group, on Instagram Stories, on social posts, and on YouTube.
Those questions have both generated more engagement and given me solid data to decide what to do next.
Why Is Engaging Your Audience Important?
From the content they consume to the products they buy, people have more options (and more information) than ever before – and this can make gaining their attention quite difficult.
With a highly competitive market, it’s more important than ever to learn the best ways to engage an audience and keep them connected with your brand.
Interactive content marketing is more effective than other types of content not only because it boosts engagement (which we know all algorithms love), but also because it keeps people’s eyes on your brand for longer.
How Do You Measure Interactive Posts
You may be wondering what makes a post successful.
When you start testing different types of content, it’s important to keep an eye on these metrics:
Social Media Metrics
- Comments.
- Saves.
- Shares.
- Direct messages.
- Likes.
- Traffic to links.
Most social platforms provide business and creator accounts access to analytics, and you’ll find some of this information there.
If you’re running a promotional campaign or giving your audience a link to click on, it may be useful to leverage link tracking so you know where your traffic comes from.
You can use Google Analytics to track those links, and we also use the WordPress plugin, Pretty Links, to make them less overwhelming.
Web Page Metrics
- Session time.
- Sign-ups & leads.
- Conversion rate.
- Backlinks.
10 Different Types Of Content To Boost Engagement
There are different ways to create interactive content, and my best advice for you is to pick a couple and start testing.
Try different things until you have enough data to decide which type of content your audience responds best to – and then keep creating more of that.
1. Live Videos And Q&As
Videos are truly taking over the internet – which has made it one of the most effective types of marketing.
Live video content can be scary at first, especially if you’re an introvert like me. But it does get easier with time, and it’s totally worth it!
Live content allows you to hang out with your community, get to know them better, and help them get to know you and your brand!
This personal element and interaction can make a huge difference.
2. Create Polls, Multiple Choice Questions, And Quizzes
Polls and multiple-choice questions are super easy for people to interact with, and are super easy to create.
They’re also incredibly engaging. Why? Because people love to share their own thoughts and opinions on topics, and contribute to the conversation!
You can use polls and questions on Instagram Stories and Facebook groups, or if you have a YouTube channel with more than 500 subscribers, you can also create polls on your YouTube Community tab.
People also love quizzes! They’re an effective way to spark interest and get people’s attention.
They are also shareable, so they can become a great lead-generation tool. You can use online tools such as Typeform or Paperform to create your quiz.
3. Let Your Audience Rate Your Content
Another great way to engage your audience with your content is to allow them to rate your content. You can add rating widgets to your blog posts and/or website pages.
Showing the rating results on your website can increase your credibility and help you create content that people are interested in.
4. User-Generated Content (UGC)
Testimonials and reviews are so important for a reason. Let your clients or customers speak for you!
Word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools in marketing, and even though it may happen naturally, there’s no reason why you can’t incentivize your audience to get involved.
For example, you can create shareable content (such as a meme) and have a call to action to share, tag, or send to a friend who can relate.
You can also give your current customers an incentive to share about you and your brand with a customizable story template or a giveaway, for example.
5. Gamification
Who doesn’t love a good game?
From simple word searches to sophisticated online games – gamification is a great way to engage your audience.
Big companies have had great success with such campaigns, and there’s no reason why you can’t scale them down and make them work for your audience.
6. Animations
Animations go a long way to catch people’s attention – so try adding some movement to your content!
You can do that with GIFs, hover effects, or even dynamic scrolling (where items move as the user scrolls through the page).
Especially on sales pages, when you usually have a lot of information to include, animations can help keep people interested – and maybe even improve your conversion rate.
And now, building HTML/CSS animations is even easier with ChatGPT – you can simply ask it to build one for you!
For example, you can run the below prompt and use the codes generated.
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7. Infographics
Big chunks of text can often look overwhelming and this might be a turn-off for readers.
If you have a lot you want to communicate, the best way to do this is by creating an infographic.
They combine aesthetically pleasing design with important information – and often, people are more likely to read them than generic text.
8. Giveaways
Giveaways are a great marketing technique, as they pique people’s attention and encourage them to engage with your brand.
You can offer incentives for people to share the content, tag friends, or even encourage your audience to show up to live events.
If you can generate more shares of your content, this can also become a great lead generation tool, as you’ll reach more people who may not have heard of your brand.
And the prize could be a product or service you offer, or even gift cards from Amazon and Starbucks, for example.
9. Tabs & Carousels
Another way to break up text-heavy content is by using tabs and carousels.
Giving users an option to choose what they want to see. It also helps keep the content organized and easy to find.
Instead of having to scroll through long pages, they can easily click and find what they’re looking for.
It also adds more interactivity to your content, which can be far more interesting than just reading big blocks of text.
10. Repurposed Content
Creating content is very time-consuming and can be exhausting. So don’t be afraid of repurposing content.
Marketing is about repetition, it’s about finding different ways to transmit your message and reach the right people.
If you have a post that received tons of engagement, think of different ways you can share that again. Maybe you can create a quiz related to the topic, or even make some tweaks and share it again on a different platform.
Not only will you save time, but you’ll also create content more effectively, as you’ll be repurposing content you already know resonates with your audience.
Think YouTube videos, blog posts, and podcasts – longer forms of content can easily be repurposed into several small pieces of content.
Final Thoughts
As usual with marketing, there’s no one-size-fits-all recipe that’ll make your content stand out.
But interactivity is extremely important in the online world, and it will improve user experience.
Also important to note that your audience’s interests and expectations may change from time to time. What works well today may not be the best option one year from now.
Don’t be afraid of changing and testing as you go; that’s the best way to learn more about your target audience.
More resources:
Featured Image: Interactive Content/Shutterstock
