“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can reach 6,000.”
- Jeff Bezos
The digital age we live in has made it easier for your customers to spread the word about your brand with just a simple click.
This is why it’s really important to boost your audience’s engagement so you can figure out your customers’ pain points and expectations about your brand before anyone else.
The feedback from your customers can help you strategize new ways to improve your products and services, which help you deliver better experiences that lead to customer satisfaction and retention.
In this article, we will reveal how you can improve your customer engagement rate by expanding your content marketing strategy with seven practical ideas.
Let’s get started.
7 Content marketing ideas to level up your customer engagement rate
Below, we discuss seven ways to boost your customers’ engagement effectively for best results.
1. Add subtitles to videos
Video marketing works excellently to increase your audience’s engagement. It is proven that video content generates more shares, and 86% of customers say they would like to see more videos from brands.
However, while many brands focus on creating eye-catching videos to boost their marketing game, only a few brands actually concentrate on making their videos accessible to everyone.
For example, over 28 million Americans are deaf or hard of hearing, many people prefer to listen to videos on mute, and not everyone speaks your language.
So, if you aren’t creating a video that includes these categories of people, chances are you won’t be getting the engagement you need to grow your business.
To make your videos inclusive for everyone, use Happy Scribe’s subtitle generation software to add subtitles to your videos.
With Happy Scribe’s subtitle generation software, you can subtitle your videos in different languages to suit your unique audience preference and boost your engagement rate.
2. Create compelling infographics
According to research, people like and share infographics 3 times more than any other content on social media because they are visually compelling, biteable, and easier to understand.
It is important that you learn how to make infographics to boost your customers’ engagement. This is because infographics don’t only work to grab the attention of 65% of your customers who are visual learners, they also connect your audience to your brand through well-crafted storytelling.
With infographics, your audience isn’t seeing brightly colored graphics alone, they know the story your brand is trying to tell, and they can relate to that story.
In addition, the emotional response this generates propels your audience to react to any content your post on social media or your website.
What’s more? Infographics are also great to increase your readership rate and sustain your audience’s interest for a long period because they are more interesting.
They help you cut long, boring texts into digestible bits, making them easier to read and faster to consume. This way, you can hook your audience’s interest from start to finish and encourage them to interact better with your brand.
3. Create user-generated content
Sometimes, taking a break and letting the customers do the talking for you is a great way to shift the focus from your brand and put your customers at the center of attention.
User-generated content (UGC) is content created by customers rather than brands. They work like magic to boost your brand’s credibility and encourage your audience’s participation.
People tend to believe reviews from real users rather than the brand itself. So, if your customers come out to say positive things about your brand, your audience is more likely to believe them.
Put your customers in the spotlight by encouraging them to share their experiences with your product or service through images, videos, or text.
This way, you will encourage active participation, create a sense of community, and portray yourself as a customer-focused brand that offers real value to its users.
4. Jump on trends
While it’s perfect to dominate your content marketing strategy with evergreen content that stands the test of time, hopping on trends is great too.
Trends are hot topics gaining your audience’s attention at the moment, and hopping on trends relevant to your business can get your brand widely popular overnight.
Create creative content revolving around trends to generate enthusiastic reactions and discussions from your audience. However, it’s important to be selective about the trends to hop on as a brand because not all trends are good for business.
For example, hopping on controversial trends can instigate negative reactions from your audience. Trends with nothing to do with your business can portray you as an unserious brand chasing untargeted traffic.
So, you want to make sure to hop on trends calculatedly, considering their nature and relevance to your brand because that’s how you get the attention that is right for your business when jumping on trends.
5. Create a variety of content
Variety adds spice to your content marketing. No matter how valuable and relevant the content you produce is, it will disengage and bore your audience if you keep dishing it out in one form.
Make every content something your audience looks forward to by creating them in varying forms. For example, make infographics, make long and short videos, create podcasts, and write long and short-form blog posts.
This way, your audience never knows what form of content to expect from you. This keeps them excited and anticipated for every post you make on your social media platforms and website. If you are not able to provide high quality content, you could order it on web platforms or hire professional article writers directly.
6. Have a content calendar
Consistency is critical to achieving the best results with your content marketing efforts.
You need to constantly be present in the minds of your audience to sustain their interest in your brand.
A content calendar highlights your content topics and the schedule for posting so you are never out of ideas whenever you want to provide engaging topics for your audience.
It also keeps your content organized and enables you to produce well-thought-through content that provides value for your audience.
This means no half-baked content and no inconsistencies, so you always show up appropriately for your audience when they need you.
The result of this is consistent engagement that maintains your visibility and customers’ loyalty to your business.
So, don’t just have rough ideas about the topics you want to create for your audience in your head. Instead, write them down in a well-structured layout.
Select topics for the days you want to post and create a scheduled time. This will help you stay consistent and professional with your content strategy.
It also helps to have a specific time you post and stick to it.
For example, you can choose to post your content on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. By selecting the specific days and times you post, your audience can know when to expect your content and be ready.
You can select the days you post by observing when your audience is most active on the various platforms you post on.
Check your dashboard on social media to gain insight into when a large percentage of your audience is online so that you can post during this period. This way, you can be guaranteed active engagement because your audience will see your posts in real-time and engage.
7. Engage with your audience
A good way to get your audience to engage with you is to engage with your audience.
This is because communication goes both ways. If your audience is talking to you, they expect you to respond.
So, while you are working hard creating various content to boost your engagement, be there to see that you are responding to your audience’s feedback on the posts you make.
Apart from the fact that this single act humanizes your brand, it makes your audience feel listened to and valued.
Never leave your audience waiting to be responded to. Instead, promptly provide feedback to your audience’s questions and respond to their complaints and observations in your emails and DMs.
While this can be a lot of work for you as a business owner, it goes a long way in improving your engagement excellently.
Consider delegating the task to a customer care agent if it’s too much to handle. You can also make use of autoresponders to keep your audience engaged while you are away.
3 Things you must do before developing your content strategy
There are three critical things you must first get out of the way to get the best outcome with your content strategy. Find out below:
1. Define your target audience
This is the first step of every successful content marketing strategy. Unfortunately, no matter how improved your content marketing is, it won’t work to get the result you need if you target the wrong people.
Define your target audience by considering your type of business and identify those who need your products and services.
The people who need the value you offer are those you should channel your content marketing efforts for optimal results.
2. Create your buyer persona
Your buyer persona is your ideal customer, the specific person you want to sell to.
While your target audience is general, your buyer persona is more specific to an individual.
Create a persona by identifying your ideal customer, his wants, needs, challenges, and motivations. You can also narrow it down to age and location.
This will help you to create personalized experiences for your customers.
3. Set your goals
Before you develop your content strategy, it helps to have goals you want to reach.
This will help you stay focused and create a content marketing strategy that is channeled to helping you achieve your goals.
Conclusion
This article discussed seven content marketing ideas to generate massive engagement for your business.
These ideas include creating videos with subtitles, creating infographics, encouraging your audience to create posts, hopping on relevant trends, creating a content calendar, providing your audience with feedback, and creating different content formats.
Introduce these tips into your content marketing strategy to increase your engagement rate effectively. Thank you for taking the time to read this post.