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You’ve seen it, heard it, and by this point understood it that content truly is the king. And there is a good reason behind the prominence of content in digital marketing. Basically, content is the text and images that appear on your website, blog, web ads, social media pages, etc. Engaging content attracts your targeted audience and eventually leads them towards generating sales.
In the past, customers had to wait on the phone to get information about a business. However, times have changed, and today, people get comprehensive details about a company within seconds on the company’s website or social media profiles. Therefore, it’s important for businesses to build content that can pique the interest of customers and tout themselves as credible and experts in the industry.
However, content creators often come across content that is important but boring. There are plenty of ways that can help you make any mundane topic interesting and keep your audience engaged. Below are a number of ways that will help you make dull topics more interesting:
1. Determine the Purpose
The way you present your content will determine whether or not you’ll be able to engage your audience. Before you begin to curate content, make sure you ask yourself and your team members what the purpose of your website or blog is and why it’s important to you people. If you don’t know what the purpose is and why it’s important, you won’t be able to tell your audience the answers to those questions either.
Make sure your ideas are based on relevant facts that will make sense to your audience. We live in a fast-paced world where people don’t have the time to invest in things that are too complex to understand. If you don’t show the reason they should listen to you within seconds on your website or blog, they’re not likely to stick around.
Whatever your topic is, you have to connect it with the interests of your audience to ensure they stay engaged throughout. The audience visits a site with a “what’s in it for me” mindset, and you have to engage them by providing the right content constantly.
2. Think about Relevance
Customers aren’t interested in you or what you have to say. They’re focused on themselves and their needs. When the audience comes across a topic that is relatable to them, then they understand it’s important and will further invest in it.
Instead of merely listing facts, ensure that readers are able to understand why that topic matters and how it influences their lives. No relatable topic is boring; it’s a matter of how you present it to the readers.
For instance, a local medical center is publishing an article about their new patient-care model. In this article, the publisher should state relevant facts about their patient-centric care along with important statistics that back up the need for this new model. They should explain what their objectives are with this new model, how it benefits society, and what measures are being taken to ensure its efficiency. Furthermore, to build a stronger connection between the business and readers, the publisher should explain how this new model has provided improved outcomes.
Proving relevant and strong information right off the bat is how you make a connection with readers and retain their interest.
3. Use the Potential of Humor
Humor is one of the most effective ways to make a boring topic fun and interesting; however, make sure you do it appropriately. For instance, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld are two of the world’s most well-known comedians who have created successful TV shows that make mundane life funny. You can dig jokes up from witty metaphors, puns, funny stories, sarcasm, etc. You can also use images, GIFs, or memes that are related to a particular topic.
When done right, humor is the best way to approach a serious topic, get the audience’s attention, and keep them engaged.
If you’re creating content for corporate communication, you can use humor to grab the attention of your team so they’re more interest in what you have to say or the information you’re offering. Take a harmless jab at the boring 9 to 5 routine or cubicle life. Share a funny cartoon store to explain your point.
Do a little research, invest some time to be creative, and you can make any topic interesting, meaningful, and funny no matter how boring it seems. In fact, the more a topic seems boring, the better are your chances to make it funny and engaging; it’s all about having a creative perspective.
4. Relate the Topic to Existing Trends or Events
As mentioned above, it’s all about providing relevant content to your audience; therefore, you should be aware of the latest events and trends that are going on around them. Do a little research and find trends or events that can be related to your specific topic.
An excellent way to build interest, as well as relevancy, is by illustrating to your readers how your business operation is connected with a popular trend, hot topic, or current event. Analyze your subject from different perspectives and be brave enough to include opposing viewpoints or spark a friendly debate.
For instance, if you prefer to keep your audience updated with regards to the latest green initiatives, leverage their interest in environmental issues in order to prompt engagement. Furthermore, in your content, you can focus on the effective measures that your company is taking to address environmental issues. Make sure to show your results to your readers so they can understand and validate the difference your efforts are making.
5. Depict a Strong Story
Instead of plainly listing the various benefits of your products or services in large chunks of text, you can say the same thing in an interesting manner via a story. People today want to hear about other people’s experiences prior to making a purchase decision. Therefore, when your content marketing efforts focus on stories, you’re more likely to grab the attention of your audience, and they’ll get more than facts and features. They’ll have a better understanding of your product and why they need it and will be ready to make a well-informed decision.
Additionally, the products and services that you offer have their own unique features; however, the thing that will help you stand apart from your competitors is your story. Along with the quality of your products and services, audiences want to know what difference you’re making, and they’re looking to make an emotional connection with the brands they associate with.
When you add a surprising twist to your content that you generate, you make an impact in the minds of the audience and they think of you whenever they need that particular product or service. While the audience is not looking to build a friendship, they certainly look for a human element in their connections with any brand.
6. GIFs
A big concern associated with marketing is that you must reach out to diverse audiences related to your niche. Therefore, you need to build content that can be easily viewed on any device. This is where GIFs prove to be highly effective.
Whether you’re browsing through a mobile app or scrolling on your social media, GIFs always act as an element of interest. GIFs offer a complete narrative – a single image tells a whole story. While they’re not massive in cost or size as compared to videos, GIFs acts as an intermediary stage between pictures and movies.
GIFs add essential content to a topic that is needed to encourage a connection with readers. If you manage to use GIFs correctly, they can tell a story in the most interesting manner.
Leveraging the potential of GIFs in content marketing works great to amp up your boring content and make it easier for people to understand the context. An important thing about GIFs is that there are more than 150 million of them on the internet, and 23 million memes are posted on Tumblr every day. You’ll never have trouble finding them.
7. Add Your Personality
Simply because your topic is boring, you, as a writer, should not be boring. On a daily basis, you get asked what you do, you engage in conversation inside and outside of your workplace, so you have many work-related and personal anecdotes to share. Often, our concept of how to formulate content and how to present it tends to carry us away from the simple goal of being engaging and interesting. It’s important for you to not restrict yourself in a particular manner of telling a story.
Let your personality come across in your content, and then you’ll be able to make a personal connection with your audience. Research your subject and you might come across a piece of information that you’ve never heard or known before. Share how you came across it with your audience. No topic is boring when you’re interesting. It’s a matter of adding your personality into the content.
For instance, you can share your personal experiences with regard to a particular situation. If it went well, you could share what you did right, and if it didn’t go well, you could suggest that your audience doesn’t repeat the same mistakes that you made.
When you’re able to make a personal connection with your audience, then they will surely stay engaged.
8. Research Your Topic Thoroughly
If you think that the topic is dull, how can you expect your audience to be interested in it? When you write without any interest, people can easily detect your lack of passion and disinterest in the topic. When you think your topic is dull, you’ill probably miss out on a major influence phenomena known as Social Curiosity Driver. This concept states that if people show interest in a topic, it will encourage other people to be curious as well.
For instance, you’re strolling to the store and you see a group of people pointing at the sky, looking completely amazed. You’ll be naturally interested in finding out what they’re looking at.
So don’t try to fake interest in a topic rather tap into the subject matter where your true interest lies, and it will automatically pique the attention of the audience. It’s important that you invest adequate time in researching your subject, and surely, you’ll come across something interesting to share with your audience.
9. Divide the Presentation Flow
Maybe the presentation of your topic is flat, dense, and uninteresting. One approach to make such boring presentations more engaging is to divide its flow.
After you feel there has been too much text in the article, you can take a break and add an image, audience poll, pull quotes, etc. to create a diversion. There are plenty of inexpensive as well as free polling tools to create an audience poll.
There should be a mix of content that can help the audience understand your topic better and stay engaged.
Tips to Keep your Content Engaging
Following are some of the interesting ways to keep your content engaging:
Identify Your Audience
You’re building a website or a blog, but who are you developing it for? You must have a well-structured niche and a clear understanding of your audience. Therefore, it’s important that you spend some time thinking about who your target audience is.
For example, if you’re building a fashion website for women, that is the audience you should focus on. The better you understand your audience; the subsequent process will become more efficient.
Understand Your Audience
Once you’ve defined your audience, then it’s time to understand them. You need to figure out what sort of data you’re looking for. This is where a keyword research tool plays a pivotal role in understanding your target audience.
Once you’ve figured out the search terms that your audience is using to look for information, you can use those terms to your advantage. When you formulate content with the relevant search term, you can efficiently attract the target audience and drive traffic to your website.
The Right Type of Content
Once you’ve gained a thorough understanding of your audience, it will be easier to develop a list of valuable content. While content ideas are imperative so is the content format that you use.
Ask your audience what kind of content they prefer; text, email newsletter, video, audio, infographics, etc. You can use any one format or mix them up effectively to create engaging content. When you begin to experience a consistent traffic flow, ensure that you ask your visitors what they would expect to see and then cater to their needs.
Importance of a Content Calendar
You need a content calendar to organize the fine details of your content creation strategy. A content calendar is important as it will help you plan the days when you should publish content, what type of content should be published, and when.
Once you’ve gathered the essential details, you’ll have a better approach towards your content creation.
Curating the Content
This is the last and the most important and difficult step in the whole process. People often believe that writing content is an easy process; however, it requires you to invest a lot of work to formulate effective content. The more detailed your content is, the more effort you’ll have to invest. You must schedule a time for this process where you can write without any distractions and get the work done without breaking consistency.
Content is a powerful tool that businesses require to attract customers. However, writing customized content that caters to the expectations of your target audience is not a simple task. It requires you to invest a considerable amount of time and effort in the process; however, the outcome will be worth it.
When it comes to making a boring topic interesting, there are always new approaches that you can try. Thanks to the internet, you have an enormous amount of data at your fingertips, and how you use it is what makes the difference. With the help you the right data and tool, you can efficiently create engaging content that can help you drive more traffic to your website.
If you’re new, getting assistance from an expert can be highly beneficial. Work with a leading digital marketing company that can help you fulfill all your marketing needs in an efficient and effective manner.
