How To Write Effective & Engaging Content

If you’re a digital marketer, you’re well aware that your business needs a well-functioning, modern website to survive in today’s digital world. You know your website needs to describe who you are, what you sell/provide, and how you set yourself apart from the competition.

To accomplish this successfully, marketers should always be looking for creative ways to broadcast those messages in diverse, eye-catching ways throughout their website and social media.

Writing effective and engaging content is often a challenge for marketers. Engaging web content for your website should proudly display your aesthetic, mission statement, and products, but there’s more to it than that!

There are many different ways you can create content that’ll enhance your brand. Effective and engaging content will keep your potential customers hooked and show your core values in a captivating way.

Why is content necessary?

A well-optimized, well-written content marketing strategy will draw in folks who have never heard of you and keep the ones who already know you. We’re not just talking about the basic “Hey, check us out!” stuff, we mean the scroll-stopping content that shows both your personality and your intelligence.

Done right, your content should inspire, influence, and engage while working in tandem to promote your mission.

Let’s say that your commitment to being fair-trade and sustainable is core to your company’s branding. Your “About Us” and homepage probably explain that you care about staying green, but your content is where you really drive it home with your passion for the planet.

Examples of that meaningful content would be a blog post featuring several well-written, search engine optimized articles on the importance of sustainability and how the average person can do their part.

You could feature statistics on your social media about how much waste businesses can produce further amplify your social activism statements conveyed on your website. To add more of a visual element, you could produce an infographic showcasing the staggering details of deforestation that can then be pushed on all social media platforms.

Producing this myriad of content will position your company as a resource for information rather than just a place for products. It’ll make it useful for more than what you sell. All other components of your website (design, visuals, videos, etc.) provide a secondary support role.

Of course, the design of the website is essential in making a good first impression on your visitors and should celebrate your personality in a visual way. But it’s your content marketing strategy that amplifies that branding.

Remember, what buyers are looking for are answers or solutions to their problems, needs, desires, and wants. Provide the answers and they will return again and again, especially if your personality is one that can admire.

A well-optimized, well-written content marketing strategy will draw in folks who have never heard of you and keep the ones who already know you sticking around.

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Type of Content Important for Websites

 BLOG CONTENT

Out of the different types of content marketing strategies, blogs tend to be the most essential. Your blog is your opportunity to flex expertise in your field. With no limits on how much or how little you can write, you’re free to explore all corners of your brand. If you’re a fashion brand, write about your favorite high-quality fabrics.

Be educational without being meticulous. Try to sound more friendly than angry, no matter how passionately you believe in your points or how much better you believe you are than your competition. People want to believe in you, not be pushed by you.

While the rest of your website and your marketing materials can show your opinions and purpose, this is where you can elaborate. Show your personality and build an authentic connection with others who have shared values. Don’t bore people with too much sales talk. Let the power of human connection do the selling.

Blog posts also provide an excellent opportunity to boost your organic search rankings. For example, someone simply curious about the difference between cotton or polyester socks could stumble upon your article opining on the matter as they’re digging for answers online. This is a great way for them to discover your brand without any in-person traffic or social media.

In order to make that happen, you should be focusing on SEO. If your article is awesome, do the groundwork to make sure it’ll be seen.

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES CONTENT

It’s important to provide enough explanation of your products or services to generate interest and compel your audience to take action. But again, be careful not to overwhelm your audience with information overload.

If you sell your products online, you probably have some basic descriptions such as color, size, and weight. Take these descriptions up a notch and appeal to the consumer! Write some catchy, dynamic product descriptions that not only describe the product’s basic functionality but its short and long-term benefits.

Use adjectives that describe the bigger picture, not just each tangible component. Don’t be afraid to use some flair or add some puns. Mention what situations your product would be perfect for.

Write what reactions you’ll think buyers would get using the product. Connecting to your audience’s psyche is how you’ll capture returning clients. After all, people love what a product or service makes them feel just as much as they love how easy it makes their life.

NEWS AND TIMELY CONTENT

This is where you flex how modern and on-trend you are. Keep updating your content to show your audience that you are keeping up with the times. No matter what you’ve accomplished, growth never stops there. Make a blog and social media post for every award you win or when someone influential uses your product.

Post about news related to your field, such as innovations in high-quality fabric from the past year. This shows you’re actively monitoring your progress. You’re actively trying to elevate your brand as well as the minds of your readers.

By taking these steps, you will become a relevant thought leader in your industry. This can push word-of-mouth marketing, as you can be the source of “Did you hear about the horrible things some fashion companies do for profit?” Your article can be linked-to in blog posts (boosting SEO) or just thrown in as a backup in a casual conversation in someone’s Instagram DMs.

Keep monitoring the news and you’ll likely land on something interesting to share. Just beware of making your headlines overly clickbaity and refrain from posting outdated news.

 SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

This is where your content marketing takes on a more visual format. With how much time people are spending on social media these days, you’ll need solid social media profiles. Content posted on social allows more convenient sharing, which means an easier way for hundreds of eyes to spot your work!

With limits on how large your images can be and how much text you can write, you can’t be as wordy as say in your blog writing. This is your chance to continuously make visual statements. Use infographics to illustrate statistics proving the importance of your mission statement. Provide some educational material.

Create funny memes or ads optimized for social media. Keep the consumer’s curious mind glued on your page with facts about geography, history, pop culture or whatever you feel is relevant to your brand.

For example, the restaurant search and discovery app Zomato made several infographics educating followers about various cities where the app is used in its country of origin, India. Content like this can be used for Instagram and Pinterest.

These infographics are well-designed with a clean, modern aesthetic and are easy to read. They’re not too overwhelming for image-centric Instagram but still provide some fun facts.

Keep your sentences short and use plenty of bolding to make numbers and other important figures stand out. For social media marketing, you’ll want to have a copywriter skilled at short-form copywriting on hand.

Although it’s not optimal to be writing entire essays on your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn posts, it’s a great idea to post links to articles every now and then. The magic lies in figuring out how to summarize those articles in a few sentences for your caption.

Using an awesome quote, as pictured below, can also be a way to rope social media users into reading a ton of text. Just a few sentences are needed. Whatever method you use, the point is to make the content stand out and appeal quickly.

Social media is also more ideal for user-generated content. Showcase the happiness you bring to your buyers by featuring their social media posts (with their permission, of course) on your page. This form of effective and engaging content adds authenticity through your own satisfied customers.

It’ll also give real-world examples of how your product can be used and the effect it will have. 93% of consumers find UGC helpful when moving along the buyer’s journey, so start reaching out to your customers on social media.

Why is having all this content so important to your brand and site?

1. The content educates and provides more in-depth information.

This in-depth information isn’t just about what you sell. It’s information on what you stand for and what your brand voice is like. For example, the content on TOMS Shoes’s official website implies its passion for social activism. If you click on some of these articles, you’ll see that the company has donated plenty of money to nonprofits.

2. They attract search engines to your site.

If you’re ready to push out content, you should also be ready to ramp up your SEO! Search engines look for keywords, key phrases, titles and descriptions to rankings in search results. Having plenty of content on your site gives you more opportunities to distribute your keywords and ultimately get picked up by search engines.

After all, there are only so many times you can stuff keywords into a few pages and have your writing still appear… natural. Search engines now operate at a higher octane, being able to pick up on what content is ideal for particular consumers rather than the search engine itself. Your content marketing writer should understand the fundamentals of SEO so they don’t fall prey to unethical strategies.

Once you’ve got a few well-written, informative articles posted, organic traffic will come. How? Through consumers searching for information that your unique content answers!

3. They add value to your visuals.

One important part of SEO strategy is adding alt text to photos so search engines can pick up on it. You’ll be more likely to show up on Google Images that way. Your word descriptions of your pictures would get rankings on the search engines, rather than the pictures themselves, or graphic text rendered in Flash.

To sum things up, content is KING. A diverse arsenal of effective and engaging web content will not only draw consumers who are curious about what you have to say, but it will also position your brand as a top-tier resource within your field. In order to retain passionate customers, you must prove how passionate you are about things relevant to your company or industry.

If your content marketing efforts need some help, don’t hesitate to reach out to us! Our talented writers would be happy to produce compelling stories for your brand to make a powerful impression. Whether it’s for your blog or social media, we specialize in illuminating and elevating a brand’s personality.

*This article first appeared on our blog.