Your Content Better Be Engaging

Gone are the days when you could download a free keyword tool, pay a ghostwriter $4 per article for something barely readable, and stuff your keywords in it to make money. Search engines are now based on human conversation and quality content.
Blog posts today are becoming more shareable than ever.  Social media isn’t just about videos and animated gifs.  Now it’s something where word of mouth and opinions are able to rank your words and messages for a findability factor.
As you formulate your articles you’ll need to think less about keywords and more about getting your readers engaged.   The more they like and share your content, the quicker it will rise in the search ranks.
Audiences are drawn to several factors when searching for information:

• Is is teaching something new?
• Does it answer their most pressing questions?
• Can it solve their problems?
• Is it a story they can relate to?
• Does it include eye-catching graphics and/or video?

Social media marketing strategist and speaker, Ted Rubin, says it best in an article last year from Hubspot:

How can you create engaging content?

• Understand your target audience. If what you’re doing is choosing a niche based on keyword search volume and sales potential alone, then it will be hard for you to express enthusiasm to and generate trust with your readers. Hang out in places where your community is engaging like Quora, LinkedIn, and Facebook Groups, and learn more about the issues that are most important to them. They want someone to lead them who is not only an expert, but who actually understands the problem they’re going through and knows how to motivate them and walk them through a viable solution.

• Share a personal story. It doesn’t matter if that problem is making money online or clearing acne up off of your forehead. The goal is the same. Create empathy by sharing your own story – even if that story is just that you recognize that people are suffering and want to help. You don’t always have to have gone through an exact situation to want to help and become an expert in the topic. Willem Daniel Corne of Daan Makes Content, describes this process as “The Content Sweet Spot,” where engagement is heightened from relevance:

Convey your passion for a topic. This means that your content has to have personality. If you’re worrying about putting yourself out there in the public eye, then you have the ability to do this under a pen name – but the passion has to shine through regardless of the moniker it’s under.
Go beyond the facts. Your website pages need to address the emotions of your audience, not just the drab facts involved. Your email autoresponders should be less about hard sales tactics and more about building trust by providing valuable information and creating a connection based on interest like this example from marketing expert, Kim Garst:

Encourage engagement. The blog posts you publish better be engaging on a level that has people responding in the comments section or on social media. Whether they disagree or agree, you need to get a response out of them. This is one of the best ways to start building authentic relationships with your community.
Provide real value. Any eBook or short report you sell or give away should be thorough, and while it needs to present a soup to nuts solution, it should also be a good read – something that’s not boring. Something where they feel like you’re a friend who can help.
Marketing has been void of engaging content for the most part for far too long. The good news is that new mediums such as live video and interactive images have made it possible for brands to better reach their audience beyond their website. It’s a positive step forward that search engines will now be rewarding those sites that have messages meant to change lives and get people talking.