Easy ways to stand out from the competition using interactive content marketing
I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage “Content is King.” While that’s true, it’s no longer enough to simply write a text-rich blog post and expect engagement to follow.

According to a Microsoft study, the average human being has an attention span of eight seconds. Eight seconds! You need to grab the attention of your readers or followers and require their active participation quickly.

That can be easily done with something called interactive content marketing.

While pieces like blog articles and e-books are considered passive content, interactive content requires the person to actively participate in the content, be it swiping, tapping, answering a question…

In this article, I provide 3 ideas you can use to grab the attention of your audience and stand out from your competitors.

Some of you may remember those “choose your own adventure” books from childhood. The Black Mirror TV show did an incredibly unique episode called “Bandersnatch” that allowed you to choose the moves of game designer Stefan and his ultimate fate.

While you probably won’t go that far with your marketing videos, an easy interactive marketing tool is to have a Facebook Live where you answer questions and take feedback virtually.

Here is an example. During my Tea Time Tips Facebook episodes, I ask questions and encourage my viewers to comment. You can also ask questions which I answer live on video.

It’s a fun and simple two-way conversation that gets everyone involved in the episode instead of me just talking “to” my followers.

Surveys and Questions
These are great interactive social media marketing tools. Let’s start with the polls. I’m going to go with a Facebook example again, because it’s so easy to create a poll while creating your post. That is how:

Besides polls, another way to easily encourage engagement is by asking a question in your Facebook News Feed.

While it’s a good idea to keep your question relevant to your business, go ahead and have fun with it! You want your audience to be motivated and excited to answer your question, whatever it is.

This is an example from one of our clients who owns Malarys Fashion Network, a clothing boutique in Cloverdale, BC. Yvonne framed a fashion-related topic in a playful way on her Facebook page and got a lot of interactions, including 20 comments.

To get it right, think of some interesting topics that relate to your business. Here are a couple of generic pointers that might help:

  • Can you recommend me something good? [your product or service category] books this summer?
  • What business advice would you give yourself when you were starting out?
  • If you could run your business in any period of history, when would it be and why?

infographics

Engaging visual infographics to communicate statistics or other information quickly and clearly. Neil Patel wrote a great article in 2014 about the power of infographics. It is still relevant today, and you can read about it on our blog.

However, it’s time to step up your infographic game with interactive elements. It is true that it takes more time and effort to create a bidirectional infographic rather than a static one. But if it’s relevant to your business and captivates your audience, the traffic, engagement, and social shares you get (which will link back to your site) will be worth it.

There are numerous sites that allow you to create infographics from a template, or you can hire a professional graphic design company to create them for you.

Here’s an infographic Google made to explain the complex topic “How Search Works.” You can interact with various elements to move through the content, which is much more interesting than a long page of text.

Now that we’ve gone over a few ways you can create these unique pieces of content marketing, let’s look at some of the benefits.

I talked a bit about how to increase engagement: You share interesting and fun content and users are more likely to engage with it and share it themselves.

Aside from increased user engagement, here are 3 other ways interactive marketing tools can be beneficial:

They may collect data for you.
As marketers, we rely on data to make decisions that will benefit our business. It can be challenging to collect behavioral data by asking questions directly for several reasons: Customers are very wary of these tactics, and it’s not fun!

(When was the last time you filled out one of those surveys that a website randomly asked you, just because?)

By using a poll or engaging question, you can learn more about the likes and dislikes of your audience. If you’re inviting your audience to interact with an infographic, you can gain valuable insights by watching where they navigate and click.

Clicks and conversions increase.
As a small business owner, you should always be looking for ways to engage with potential customers. It can be a real challenge to get someone to download your ebook or make it a landing page on your website.

That’s where interactive content comes in. You can increase your clicks and conversion rates big time. The Content Marketing Institute did some case studies of brands that saw click-through rates of over 50% when they used them.

Put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers: what would you rather click on at the top of the marketing funnel?

A “Submit” button on a website that asks you to provide your email so the company can send you a white paper? Or a quiz or survey that asks for your opinion on a relevant topic and then asks for your email to send you the answer?

You’ll find that many people are much more willing to provide their information if it’s presented in an engaging way and doesn’t sound like you’re asking.

They build brand loyalty.
When a viewer only reads an article or watches a video, their participation is minimal, as is their engagement. But the content that people can interact with is different; You can create deeper relationships.

Research has shown that the more relationship a consumer has with a brand, the more likely they are to be long-term loyal customers. You start to be seen as an expert in your area and people trust you.

And the more people trust you, the more likely they are to buy from you.

The content marketing landscape is always evolving, and you have to be willing to change with the times if you want to be successful.

Expect to see more interactive videos, quizzes, polls, questions, infographics, and more; it’s time to seriously consider adding them to your marketing tools if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

We know it can be nearly impossible to keep up with your marketing when you have a business to run!