How to Engage Your Audience With Interactive Content

Internet marketing can be a powerful and profitable means in which to convey your message and sell your brand. It differs from traditional marketing mediums such as TV, radio, and print because Internet marketing can be interactive and IN YOUR FACE,  whereas TV, radio, and print are more passive.

Your audience is online to consume content and learn. However, because many websites have fallen victim to merely presenting content in a fairly passive manner, your business needs to create a way to capture and hold your audience’s attention in the midst of all the content it could be looking at. How do you do this? With interactive content.

Interactive content allows your team to break your message down into small, digestible chunks, making it easier for your audience to consume. Additionally, interactive content lets you break up the walls of text on your pages with visually engaging information. This benefits your company because users are more likely to engage and consume your content when it is presented in fun and interesting ways.

Interactive Content Example 1

Quizzes

The idea of your business creating a quiz to share with your audience may spark moans and “are you serious?” remarks from your team. But the fact is, quizzes work, and people do take them—especially if they want to know who their best friends on Facebook are.

Interactive Content Example 2

GIFs or Memes

They make you laugh and smile, and you love that. Anytime you can make someone feel better is better for your business. Making people feel good makes them want to recreate that feeling, meaning they will return to your website to interact with your brand.

Interactive Content Example 3

Videos

I’m sure you already know this, but videos keep people on your site longer. They help simplify and convey complex messages. They help grow your audience and grow your business. Videos can also be used in most stages of the buying cycle—to generate awareness, during research, and right before a conversion occurs. Additionally, you can add an interactive touch to make videos more engaging. (The Web Enabled Tree)

Rules to Follow When Making Interactive Content

Make Sure It Is Attention Grabbing

There is too much content on the web fighting for your audience’s attention, but that is the nature of the beast and it shouldn’t stop you from creating content, but better content.

Your content needs to be attention grabbing, causing your audience to stumble on its journey and say, “Oh, what’s this?” and then begin exploring.

Interactive content can capture your audience’s attention and allow it to click around to explore activating the parts of their brain that enjoy puzzles, problem-solving, and analysis. This takes the audience from being talked to and reluctant to believe to being talked with and open to ideas.

Interactive Content Example 4

Contests

There are many different contests you can create for your brand. (Does anyone remember “Best Xmas Ever: Movie Edition”?) Your business can create a contest that is brand focused or a contest that may piggyback off of popular events, such as betting on NCAA March Madness. Interactive Content allows your audience members to invest themselves into content, and if they win, they are likely to share that content.

Interactive Content Example 5

Games

Everyone loves games, and your business can benefit from a game. Games can help people stay on your site longer to engage with your brand and can promote free thought on ways they can work with your brand. For example, Siemens Power Matrix.

Interactive Content Example 6

Ratings

Ratings are a great way to engage with your audience and collect feedback. You can add ratings to the bottom of your pages by simply asking, “Was this content useful?” This gives power to your audience members, and the tools simple enough for them to interact with. Follow that up with a “please provide more information” and a lead capture, and you’ve started a conversation.

Make Sure It Holds Your Audience’s Attention

Grabbing your audience’s attention is great, but all it takes is a louder scream for someone to look away.The human attention span has dropped to around eight seconds. No joke: some researchers in Canada conducted a study and found that since the year 2000, the average attention span of an adult dropped from twelve to eight seconds. That is less than the attention span of goldfish. That means that you’re likely not even reading this post anymore. . .Tweet at me if you are —@blondejoev —after you read the post though. Please?

Anyways, we digress.

The content your team creates needs to capture and hold your audience’s attention. This allows time for your audience to build greater trust in your brand and increases the chances of your audience’s clicking on a call-to-action. But capturing and holding your audience’s attention isn’t all your interactive content needs to do

Interactive Content Example 7

Assessments

Assessments are another great way to collect information about your audience while creating an easy way for users to interact with your content. Perhaps you can guide your audience through a series of questions to provide it with a more specific answer. This type of segmentation is easier for the reader to digest, while also benefiting your business with useful data about its prospects.

Interactive Content Example 8

Data Visualizations/Infographics

Although this information may not be interactive in the sense that the user is clicking more links on your site, it still excites the part of the brain for analysis and problem-solving, making your audience more connected to your content.

Interactive Content Example 9

Tabbed Content

Tabbed content can be boring and on clunky on mobile if not designed well. However, tabbed content still breaks up content into smaller chunks and lets the user explore your content.

Interactive Content Example 10

Carousels

In the same vein as tabbed content, carousels seem boring and overused, but if you are reading this point right now, then carousels inspire your audience to interact with your content.

Make Sure It Is Easy to Interact With

Or provide directions on how to interact with it. Your website may not be built with enough flexibility to easily create interactive content so sometimes you might need to make do with what you have. That is OK. I’m a firm believer in trying even if the cards are stacked against you, but you need to be smart about it.

If you feel there is something that may hinder your audience from interacting with your interactive content, provide it with some instructions that are presented in short easy-to-read sentences.

Any action the users take with your content makes them feel more comfortable with interacting with your brand.

In Conclusion

There are many ways to create interactive content, these are just a few ways. Make sure when you create interactive content that you combine it with attention grabbing headlines so the content it holds your audience’s attention and it’s easy to interact with. Taking a look back at some of the interactive content we’ve created (Web Enabled Tree, Movie Edition, Holiday Letter) We can’t wait to create some more.