Good content can do wonders: help build up an audience, boost sales, turn visitors into loyal customers, and so on. However, crafting a content that can help you achieve these results becomes even more difficult with time.
Why does this happen? Because people are overloaded with information these days. They see too much different data every day – articles, social media posts, emails, and so on. If every person actually paid attention to each piece of information they stumble upon online, they simply wouldn’t have time for anything else. So it’s no wonder that people become picky and click only content that seems appealing enough.
That’s why if you want your content marketing strategy to be truly successful, you need to make your content not simply good but also appealing to the readers so they would actually click on it and read it. Doing so isn’t easy – it’s all about attracting the readers’ attention and holding it until the end. Yet it’s possible.
Here are 7 strategies that could help you make your content more clickable and appealing.
1. Focus on your audience and on what you can offer them.
Every website has its target audience: people, who are interested in the products or services this website can offer. However, sometimes it’s not the people who visit this website most often.
It might be surprising but sometimes an inability to tailor your content to the target audience can result in attracting wrong people to your website. That’s why it’s always important to identify your target audience before creating a proper content marketing strategy. It’s also important to do a quick research from time to time, ensuring that your target audience didn’t change.
Once you do that, think of what your target audience is the most interested in. Maybe they look for new information. Maybe they want to learn how to do something. Maybe they want to keep up with trends.
Identifying their most urgent needs at the moment can help you come up with a content that is most relevant to your target audience right now.
2. Work on your headlines.
When a person scrolls their social media feeds, all they usually see is headlines, images, and short descriptions. They notice the images first but it’s the headlines that can make them decide whether to click on your content to read it or not. That’s why coming up with strong headlines is crucial.
There are different types of headlines: the ones that clearly state what you’re going to offer to your readers, the ones that make people curious about the content of the article, and the clickbaiting ones. The last are the worse: sure, you might use a headline that does attract attention but has nothing to do with the rest of the text, but this will disappoint the readers and might lead to you losing a noticeable part of your audience. Moreover, clickbaits might work once but they won’t work twice as long as people remember you’ve been using them already.
That’s why it’s always better to come up with strong, specific headlines that look appealing and give the readers clear understanding or what they’ll find in your article.
3. Make the content as interesting as possible.
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Curiosity is what’s often drives the readers to your content – and curiosity is what makes them keep reading your content. That’s why try to keep your audience curious when it’s possible.
In order to do so, start with an introduction. Make it catchy by asking a thought-provoking question, stating a fact that a few people know or saying something controversial to most common beliefs. Be sure to do this only if you can support the information in the intro later in your article – otherwise, this can be seen as clickbait too.
Work on your article, trying to make it interesting. Make sure that all the facts you use are really useful and new. If they aren’t new, make them interesting to read at least – for example, by adding some personal examples or stories to the article.
4. Make sure that the content is easy to scan.
No matter how sad it might sound, the reality is pretty harsh: these days people often scan the articles instead of reading them thoroughly. While you should focus on making your article interesting enough for people to consider reading its whole, you still shouldn’t forget that many people probably won’t do so.
However, you are still able to benefit from that if you make your article not only easy to read but also easy to scan.
How can you do so? By choosing simple words and avoiding complex terminology when it’s not necessary to use it. By making sentences shorter and by dividing the text into paragraphs that are also short and easy enough to process.
5. Use images.
As we’ve already mentioned above, images attract the readers’ attention very well. That’s why you are able to make your content more appealing by using images in it.
There are few rules to remember if you want to make this even more effective:
- Mind the copyrights: use image stocks, paid or free ones, or credit the authors of the images;
- Make sure that the images you use are appropriate and relevant to the contents of your article;
- Creating and using your own images (photos or infographics) are always much better than using someone else’s;
- Do not use too many images: otherwise, you might risk distracting your readers from your content.
6. Include a CTA.
Most likely your content has a certain purpose, whether it’s to make people purchase your products or services, to subscribe to your blog or to leave comments. However, even if this purpose seems obvious to you, writing a CTA definitely won’t harm your content.
Sometimes all that needed to turn your visitors into customers is one small push. Sometimes a visitor might doubt whether they want to perform a certain action or not – and one CTA is able to persuade them to do this. That’s why don’t forget to include a CTA in your content and make it as appealing as possible.
7. Don’t forget to add social media buttons.
It’s good when your website’s design allows placing social media buttons at the end of an article. It’s even better when the visitors see these buttons when they scroll through your article – this way they’ll be able to share your content anytime they want.
Sharing is common these days but you still need to make this sharing as easy as possible if you want to achieve significant results. Noticeable social media buttons can help with that, as well as words of encouragement you might use to persuade your audience in sharing your content.
It doesn’t matter if you are a writer working for essay writing services and creating a content about how to write a literature review or a fashion blogger writing about latest trends just because you enjoy it. Either way, you’ll be able to make your content more clickable with the help of these tips.
Do you have your own tips on how to make your content more clickable and shareable? If you do, please share them with us in the comments below!