Whether you’re communicating with colleagues or customers, it’s essential to present your message in an interesting and dynamic way. After all, effective engagement is the difference between a transactional relationship and a genuine connection with your audience.
So, how do you best present your content to engage your reader and ensure they truly take on board your message?
PageTiger’s award-winning creative team share their seven essential rules for creating engaging content, guaranteed to hook any audience. If you want even more insight, join one of PageTiger’s free workshops to learn how to make your communications even more amazing, Find out more here.
1. Use High- Vis Channels
Whether they’re designed for internal or customer-facing content, your communications need to drive conversations. That means putting them online. Online content is more accessible, easier for your audience to read and instantly more dynamic than flat printed comms. Why not add videos and interactivity for some added wow-factor?
2. Build a Community
To be truly engaging, your content needs to tell a story. Your audience will only spend time reading your comms if there’s a clear end benefit for them, so be sure to draw them in with dynamic headings and clear action points. This will drive conversations, giving you crucial insight into your audience’s needs and ambitions. This, in turn, will help you build more effective comms. Remember, engagement is a two-way street.
3. Make it Visual
Words are no longer enough to get your message across. In fact, too many words can be off-putting to readers and confuse your key ideas. Stripping back your written content and including strong imagery will create a more enjoyable experience and visuals will actually boost how much your reader remembers. Infographics and icons are a great way to create a visual look if you don’t have access to company photography.
4. Create Sticky Content
When people interact with your content you need it to stick. Boost retention by including interactivity, such as polls, quizzes and videos. Not only will this make your comms more fun, but your readers are far more likely to remember something they enjoyed reading. Quizzes are also a great way to test an audience’s understanding of your content as they progress through it.
5. Be Brave, Be Concise
Break up your message into small, digestible chunks of information. Cut the waffle and only include the key points and calls to action. Tightly edited copy is a massive aid to usability by ensuring your reader comes away with a strong understanding of your message. Also, on a practical front, the more concise your comms are, the more likely people are to read them.
6. Monitor the Conversation
While it’s important that your comms drive conversations, it’s essential that you remain in control of the narrative. Remember to invite feedback on your content to open up a two-way dialogue.This will gauge customer experience, encourage reader engagement and ultimately help you build more effective communications. Including an email contact or feedback quiz is a great way to achieve this.
7. Get the Whole Picture
It’s essential to monitor your content once it’s been circulated to assess whether you are truly engaging your audience. The best way to do this is to use analytics and tracking to monitor your readers’ involvement and understanding. PageTiger’s reporting suite tracks everything your audience reads, right down to each individual click. Find out more about our system by visiting our website here.
