Interactive content invites your audience to collaborate with you and engage with your brand or product. The more engaged a person is, the more likely they are to buy from you, eventually!
In this post, I’m looking at how you can use interactive content to engage your audience and turn them into super fans!
What Is Interactive Content?
Interactive content is very simply, digital content that invites the person viewing to engage with the content in some way, rather than passively consuming it (like they would if just watching a video or reading a blog post).
With interactive content your intention is clear right from the start – you want the reader or viewer to do something.
Technically, all social media posts are interactive content because followers can comment and react! If you have comments on your blog switched on, readers can interact there too.
Why Is Engagement Important?
Isn’t it good enough that people view or read your content? Why do you need them to engage with it too?
Well, if your content doesn’t invite engagement, you might be missing out on anyone ever seeing it to start with. People prefer content they can engage with and with all your competitors shouting out for their attention, you need to be making your content more eye-catching and interactive than what they’re doing over there!
From an SEO perspective, engagement is a positive – the algorithm overlords will see that your content is gaining attention and engagement, and therefore, must be highly relevant…this in turn, can lead to your content being shown to even more people!
How Can I Measure The Engagement Of My Interactive Content?
Interactive content can be on your website, social media platforms, or any other space where your business has a presence – such as an app.
If you want to measure how successful your interactive content is, you need to look at engagement metrics. More engagement = better.
On social media platforms, you will want to look at metrics such as likes (and other reactions on Facebook), comments, shares, saves, and any traffic through links your post may have. The more of all these you have, the better! Remember, some actions have more value than others though – comments are even better than likes, for example. It’s easy for someone doom scrolling to ‘like’ a post, but a comment or even share has a higher value as it shows the person is much more engaged with the post.
On a web page, you can look at metrics such as session time, sign-ups or enquiries, conversions, bounce rate, and even whether anyone is linking back to your page. If the content is on your blog and you allow comments, you can check those too.
Types Of Interactive Content & Where To Use Them
- Quizzes
Who doesn’t love a quiz? You’re telling me, you’ve never clicked on a quiz at 3 am, inviting you to find out what type of pasta you are?! Okay, your quiz might not be that silly, but people love engaging with quizzes. Just don’t make quizzes too long or people will lose interest. You can use quizzes on your socials or your website.
- Calculators or other tools
The ultimate in interaction! If you can create some sort of useful calculator or tool for your website, you can sit back and watch engagement metrics rise. People really like using tools that make their lives easy, so do some research before building your calculator or tool – is this really something people need? Does it take a task or decision and make it easier for a person? If your competitor has a similar tool…don’t worry, just make yours even better!
- Interactive Infographics
Infographics are already more engaging than plain old written content – people like pretty pictures! But take yours to the next level by making them pop on the page and add animations, moving parts, or sections that require people to click to move on or reveal more information.
- Games
If you have the resources, games are fantastic for engagement and can really help your brand stand out. They don’t have to be really elaborate either. Simple guess the right answer or catch a moving target games are simple to create and help people stay on pages for longer.
- Live Videos Or Q&As
Do you ever go live on your social media platforms? People like interacting with live videos because it’s still a bit of a novelty that you can make a comment and get a real-time response! The option to go live is available on almost all platforms now but one of the most popular options is TikTok. It’s best to have a good reason to go live – do people want to ask you questions? Or do you have knowledge to share?
- Polls
Polls can be created on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. They can be as simple as asking yes-no questions and are useful for two reasons – they boost engagement, and you get to learn about your audience. You can also add polls to your website. People like answering polls because they’re fast and easy, plus people like to give their opinion.
- Let Your Audience Rate You & Add Reviews
Be brave! Add a widget to your content, such as a blog post that lets people rate it! Even if they hate it…they’re going to let you know and engagement is engagement! You can also let people add reviews to your website…such user-generated content, although risky, adds authenticity and credibility to your brand.
- Giveaways
One of the oldest and easiest ways to boost your engagement on social media is to do a giveaway. Maximise the reach of your giveaway by rewarding people with more entries if they share your post with a friend. Just make sure your prize is worth winning and is something your audience would want to win!
There we have it – just a few ways to create interactive content and boost engagement. Don’t forget to measure your activities, you can try one or several of the above at a time and work out what worked for you and what didn’t.
Struggling With Interactive Content Or Engagement?
If you’re struggling to produce interactive content of any type, or are worried about engagement with your audience, don’t hesitate to contact us. GrowTraffic can help with all types of content marketing, from social media polls to setting you up with your first live video.
