Creating effective content should be one of your top priorities as a blogger. The reasons why are many, but it all boils down to the only way you can attract and engage your readers is if you’re making an effort to create excellent content for them.
Choosing the right words is one of the most important aspects of effective content marketing. Now, it’s easy to think of a catchy headline and even easier to write engaging text that keeps people reading – but you need to know how to create content that will grab your visitor’s attention and keep it for longer than a few seconds. If you don’t learn how to write effective content for your site, you won’t succeed with inbound marketing at generating more leads, sales and revenue.
Effective content not only attracts and engages your readers, it also helps you achieve your business goals. With ever-changing content industries, effective content is vital for success. But how does one define effective content? 10 core attributes that help attract and engage your readers are revealed below.
Table of Contents
Be helpful
This is the most obvious attribute of effective content, but it’s also one of the most important. Your readers want solutions to problems they have. They want information that helps them make better decisions, and they want to learn something new as well. If you can provide all three, you’re onto a winner!
Be relevant
Relevant content is more likely to be read, shared and acted on. As a result, relevant content is also more engaging.
Being relevant means that your content is tied to the interests of your target audience and/or the area of interest they are researching. The best way to ensure relevance is by asking yourself what exactly you want to write about, who you want it to reach and why they should care about your product or service.
Be thought-provoking
If you want your audience to engage with your content, then you’ll need to make sure that it is thought-provoking and meaningful. Your readers should be left thinking about what they just read long after they’ve finished the article or blog post.
Before publishing anything on your site or social media page, ask yourself: “What do I want people to think and feel when they’re done reading this?” If the answer is nothing at all, then perhaps it’s time for a rework. There are plenty of ways that content can leave an impression on its readers: by making them laugh out loud or cry; inspiring them to act differently; making them think about their own lives in a new way; helping them understand something better than before and so on.
Be interesting
Create content that is interesting. Interesting means that it captures the reader’s attention and keeps them there. This can be achieved by using a unique writing style, inserting humor where appropriate, using interesting images and statistics, using examples or stories to reinforce your points, quoting experts in your industry or field and asking thought-provoking questions. These are just some ways you can make your content more interesting.
You should also consider ways of expressing yourself in new ways; this includes experimenting with language (for example: try replacing a word with one that conveys the same meaning but has a different tone), analogies (for example: comparing two things) and metaphors (using descriptive language).
Be accessible
One of the most important things you can do to help your readers understand and connect with your content is to use language that’s easy for them to understand. That means using simple words, short sentences and paragraphs, active voice, present tense verbs wherever possible, avoiding jargon—anything that makes it easier for your reader to understand what you’re trying to say.
It also means making sure that the structure of the article is clear and easy for people who aren’t experts in this particular subject matter (or any other) to scan through quickly without getting lost or bogged down in long pieces of text or overly complicated sentence structures. This can be done by using lists instead of paragraphs; subheadings; formatting like bold or italics when appropriate; plenty of white space between paragraphs; etcetera!
Be inspiring
You can motivate your audience by being inspiring. Inspiration is the act of supporting or inciting someone to have higher aspirations and ambitions, especially to do something creative or original.
When we see people who are successful in their field, it can be very motivating for us. You can use examples of other people who have succeeded and show how they did it in order to inspire your readers to take action and be more productive themselves.
It’s also important that you inspire creativity – because if people are inspired enough, they’ll create the ideas that you need!
You want your content to inspire kindness and tolerance as well; these core values will help attract an audience that’s more likely to buy from you in future.
Be practical
Practical information is the secret sauce to a great piece of content. It helps your readers get what they want, whether that’s more productivity or a solution to their problem. Your readers don’t care about the latest fad or trend; they want useful, actionable advice that makes their lives easier.
Be authentic
Authenticity is a key component of effective content. It can be challenging to be authentic, but it’s worth it. Authentic writing means being genuine, honest and real in what you write—and that means admitting mistakes and having the courage to admit when you’re wrong. It also means being yourself: If you’re writing about something in your life that matters deeply to you, then let your passion show through in your words.
By using authentic language, readers will feel more connected with what they read because they’ll know that the writer isn’t hiding behind marketing jargon or other corporate-speak (unless those things are actually useful). In fact, as one HubSpot study found: “people tend to trust companies who use personal pronouns like ‘we’ over ones who use impersonal pronouns like ‘our company.'”
Be transparent
Being transparent is one of the most important qualities for creating effective content. When readers sense that you’re being honest, they feel safe and trust in your brand.
When you are transparent with your audience, you give them access to information that they need or want without having to ask for it directly. For example, if you want people to subscribe on your website, don’t just say “Subscribe Here!” Instead explain what kind of value they will get by subscribing (e.g., our newsletter includes helpful tips and tools). This way when readers see this button they are more likely to click because they know exactly what they are getting into.
Be memorable
As you write, keep these points in mind:
- Useful content solves a problem. It has a purpose and answers questions.
- Relevant content is relevant to the reader’s interests, needs and expectations. It speaks directly to those things that are of interest to them rather than wasting time on unrelated topics.
- Thought-provoking content is unique and interesting enough to stand out from the rest of your competitors’ offerings in search results or social posts—or even just for someone who might come across your article somewhere else online later on (like through an aggregator like Reddit).
- Interesting content offers a point of view or opinion that differs from everyone else’s out there so people will want to read it because they don’t see it all the time—or at least not in such an interesting way!
- Accessible means easy-to-understand without being dumbed down too much (elevator pitch) while still being accurate enough not sound like misinformation; inspiring motivates readers into action by giving them something concrete they can do right away instead of just telling them why they should care about something without any suggestions how they could help too; practicality means specific advice based on real-world scenarios rather than abstract concepts that tend not be applicable beyond their initial use case
Content that is helpful, relevant, thought-provoking and interesting attracts more readers.
Relevance, thought-provoking and interesting content are all hallmarks of great content. These three attributes can be achieved by considering your target audience and the purpose of each piece of content you create. If a piece of content is relevant to your reader’s needs and interests, then it will be more useful than content that is not relevant. Similarly, if a piece of content makes them think about something new or in a different way then again it will be more useful than content that doesn’t do this. Finally, if someones finds an article interesting then they’re likely to keep reading which means they’ll find out more information which could help them solve their problem or lead them towards making a purchase decision – thereby increasing engagement overall!
