Business owners and marketers know the importance of a strong content marketing strategy. Your blog is the first thing many visitors see when they land on your site. Similarly, if you hope to keep your audience engaged, you have to promote high-quality content through your various marketing channels.
I don’t have a single doubt that content will continue to reign king in the coming years. However, the way we create and distribute content has changed dramatically. Instead of creating static posts, we need to start thinking more about interactive content.
Interactive content is a post, form, or video that encourages users to engage with your business. The more people interact with your content, the more opportunities you’ll have to turn visitors into subscribers while convincing subscribers to become customers.
Today, we will explore several essential tips you can use to create more interactive content.
Ready? Let’s get started!
Embrace Personalization
The best way to encourage more user interactions is to use personalization to send relevant content and offers. Research shows that 4 out of 5 consumers want more personalized posts and promotions from their favorite brands.
One way to make your content more relatable is by creating customer personas that align with the various people who visit your website. An online pet store would design segments around people who own specific animals.
The thought process behind this strategy is simple; people are more likely to interact with posts and offers that relate to the pet they own. Cat owners want to read and comment on cat-themed blog posts, and dog owners are interested in promotions specifically for dog food and toys.
Once you create your audience personas, you can use what you learned to add personalization to your on-site, social media, and email marketing strategy. If you’re not sure where existing customers fit into your personas, use on-site surveys and email outreach to ask users to tell you more about their interests so you can send them personalized content in the future.
Focus on Customer Loyalty
Another way to add an interactive touch to your content is to design your funnel with customer loyalty in mind. The eCommerce marketplace is fierce. If you’re not offering an incentive to keep visitors coming back for repeat orders, there’s a good chance they will experiment with multiple brands, which can damage your profit margin and customer relations.
There are several things you do to reward customers for their loyalty. One strategy that works well for us involves giving users promotions on our other products after their first order. We believe that this incentivizes users to stay loyal to our brand when plenty of other companies operate in our industry.
You can deliver these promotions through your mobile app, website, or email. If you use push notifications, you can create custom alerts to reward customers for their loyalty. These alerts work well because you can reach your audience even if they’re not on your website.
When you send users messages about their loyalty points, we’ve discovered that you can boost your conversion rate and add personalization by showing recommended products. Users are more likely to interact with your brand when they see products or services that resonate with their goals and pain points. Don’t forget to strategically include links back to your website to make redeeming their points as easy as possible.
Gamify Your Marketing Strategy
You can make your website and social media channels more interactive by adding gamification. Simply put, gamification is the process of adding game-like features to your marketing strategy. We use several different ways to keep our visitors engaged with this technique.
On a few of our sites, we use spin-to-win wheels to keep users who are getting close to leaving to stick around. When a visitor is navigating towards the X on their browser tab, we trigger a popup that shows a colorful wheel spinning with prizes that may convince them to stay. Some of the rewards we offer include: – Free lead magnet – 20% off their order – 50% off their order – Free annual license
These are all things our target audience would find valuable. If someone is genuinely interested in our products, this element of gamification could be the thing that turns them into a customer.
We are big fans of hosting giveaways on social media. Everyone loves a good raffle. Our team hosts giveaways during times that are important to us, like on our company’s birthday. There are times when we decide to create a contest so we can grow our lead list, social media followers, or sales.
When running a giveaway, it’s essential to determine how you want users to interact with your brand. Establish rules that will encourage them to take the specific action you’d like to see. For example, you could create a rule where visitors can enter by joining your email list. This strategy is an excellent way to generate new leads while interacting with your audience.
Post More Video Content
Did you know that 43% of consumers say they want more video content from their favorite businesses? One reason for this trend is video content is one of the best ways to interact with your audience.
The possibilities are endless. You could take your knowledge to social media and host interactive webinars. We like to create these types of events if we want to discuss a specific customer goal or pain point. You can appeal to most of your audience if you host a webinar that dives into one of these hot topics.
At the end of your presentation, give your audience a chance to ask questions and engage. You’ll find that these moments can help you build trust through direct interactions.
You could also create a YouTube channel for your video content. Globally, YouTube gets 2 billion visitors every month. You can safely assume that your target audience is out there, waiting to find your channel.
We suggest creating playlists tailored to your various audience segments. This step will make it easier for visitors to find the content they want to see. As a result, there’s a greater chance they will like, share, and leave comments on your videos.
Final Thoughts
It’s easy to see that interactive content is here to stay. The good news is there are plenty of tools and strategies you can use to keep your visitors engaged. The tips offered today will help you build a robust marketing framework that focuses on highly interactive content and promotions. As your brand grows, you’ll start to find new and inventive ways to keep your customers coming back for more.
Nowadays, setting up strong passwords and installing antivirus software is no longer the bare minimum of cybersecurity.
You need a virtual private network (VPN) if you want to keep your online activities private because hackers, third parties, and ISPs continually monitor networks and your online habits.
When you work as a blogger, you might feel like the internet is your second home because most of your work is online.
However, remember that the internet is not a safe place to live. As a precaution, you should consider using a virtual private network.
For both updating your blog or meeting other bloggers on the internet, most experts suggest using a VPN to ensure your privacy and security.
A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, can be useful to bloggers for a variety of reasons:
1. Keeping information secure
Virtual Private Networks are most commonly used for the security they provide.Your readers’ information is sometimes stored on your computer, and it is your responsibility to keep that information safe. You need to know that your blog is completely secure.
Unless you do, you will ruin your reputation with each of your readers, and it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to regain it.
2. Traveling and Blogging
Many times, you will have the opportunity or necessity to blog while away from home. A public network is usually the only one available to you most of the time, so that you will need an internet connection for this.
Using public networks can pose a security risk because hackers can steal passwords and usernames, including those used to access your blogs.
Upon doing this, the hacker will have access to your blog, all of the work you put into it and your readers’ trust in you will be undermined.
3. Online identity protection
It is also important for you to keep the identity of your blog secret from other internet users.
Hackers desire access to your identity for many reasons, including scams and damaging your online reputation. Using a VPN is a great way to remain safe online even when doing important activities.
You may lose followers and users, however, by being invisible online. You may also have difficulty backing up your data.
4. Keeping you hidden
When updating a blog or uploading content, being anonymous when using virtual private networks is the first and foremost benefit.
Bloggers and webmasters need to ensure that their content is protected every time they upload because they could be stolen and misused to protect their content from hackers and competitors.
You can also keep your content and other information secure from prying eyes when using a private network to accomplish this.
5. Keeping your online transactions safe
It is crucial to keep all your online financial transactions safe and secure, regardless of paying for hosting or SEO services.
Therefore, experts always recommend using a VPN before doing any financial transactions online. It provides dense encryption of all the personal information or financial information added to an online store or website.
VPN Bonus Tip
When you travel or live in an area that requires you to pay exorbitant rates for private internet access, it is impossible to avoid using public Wi-Fi.
As a result, VPN can be an invaluable tool. It offers a secure tunnel for your online activities, disguises your identity when you use a public Wi-Fi hotspot, and enables you to protect your identity while surfing the internet.
Baker from Heartafact.com, a men’s lifestyle blog, joins us for a blog interview.
He shares his website’s interesting and unique origin story, along with the learning curve he had to go through to get the site ranking and start seeing some traffic.
Baker has the goal of reaching 100K traffic per month by the end of 2022 and is well on the way to achieving it. In this interview, find out how he has grown the site so far, including the mistakes he made and lessons he learned along the way.
How did you start your online business?
My name is Baker and I run and manage my website heartafact.com.
Heartafact is Men’s Lifestyle, Style, and Hip Hop website. We’re primarily focused on creating content for men around dating, grooming & style. We’re also covering current affairs and hip-hop music. I like to think of Heartafact as a mini GQ or Esquire.
I believe my site was created in one of the most unique ways.
My best friend had been sent to prison and, in order to keep in contact with him, I would write him bi-weekly letters. These letters were styled like a magazine. The paper was broken down into sections from hip hop, fashion, sneakers, current affairs, and more.
I realized my love for writing at that point and challenged myself to start a website writing the same things, only this time to a global audience.
I saw brands like GQ, Esquire, and Highsnobiety writing about the same topics as me so I decided to learn SEO. I discovered my audience’s pain points and created content to solve those problems. Heartafact was born!
Prior to creating Heartafact.com I had no previous experience in editorial writing or writing for the web in general.
This was evident in my first year running the site, I didn’t know what I was doing and I treated my first as a personal diary.
Frustrated about getting no traffic to the site, I took an SEO course and it made sense. No one was searching for my trip to Berlin or my thoughts on the sneaker event I attended.
Men wanted to know how to get more dates, use Tinder, or how to style Chelsea boots.
I understood immediately that I needed to treat my site as an access point for information as opposed to a personal diary. The success of my site today (success being relative to me) has given me the confidence to set new goals including wanting to explore other avenues of writing such as TV/Movie writing.
Can you share more about your website’s growth?
My traffic numbers continue to grow with my understanding of SEO and Pinterest marketing.
2019 – 500 per month (no idea what I was doing)
2020 – 10,000 per month
2021 – 15,000 and growing
Do I wish my numbers were bigger? Yes of course, but slow and steady wins the race. I’m happy with the growth and have set a goal to reach 100k in traffic by the end of 2022. This is going to mean publishing a lot of quality content.
My strategies won’t change much during the course of 2022, however, I am going to hire an SEO manager to help increase traffic. I want to target more difficult keywords as my domain authority begins to grow.
In order to ensure I rank and outperform sites with higher DAs, I have to ensure my content is best because content is king.
I’ll be honest, sometimes I felt bombarded with success stories that seem impossible to replicate – people having sites for 6 months and getting crazy amounts of traffic, or having sites that are making money in a short amount of time.
Those stories are great and inspiring but stories like mine are needed just as much! That’s because my growth is much more realistic and should paint a picture for the person reading to stay in it for the long game.
I started heartafact.com in 2019 and for that whole year, it didn’t grow at all, because, as I mentioned, I was treating it as a diary and no one was finding what I was writing. It’s not because what I was writing was bad, it’s because I didn’t understand what I was doing or the problems people were having.
If you’re a celebrity or personal brand like Kim Kardashian and you decide to start a website and write about eggs you will generate thousands of clicks. However, if you’re starting out without that leverage you’re going to need to pull people to your site through social media marketing and SEO.
I understand that now and make use of it. I also intend to do more brand work so I can reach more people through video etc.
What’s your revenue like?
I have only recently added Ezoic display ads to the site and I believe heartafact.com will generate about $100 per month.
BLITZ DEAL: PREMIUM AGED DOMAINS WITH ODYS: 30% OFF SUMMER SALE
NichePursuits Rating
Kickstart your online business with an aged niche domain from ODYS. Invest in sites that grow in value, with built-in SEO to help you get seen.
High authority: Gain a head start over the competition and save years of building authority.
Analyses you can trust: Receive a comprehensive authority analysis.
DFY affiliate sites: Add a done for you affiliate site package to help you grow and get seen.
I have also had deals for sponsored posts which ranged from $50 – $150.
However, for now, I’m generating $100 per month with ads. Of course, this amount will increase as my traffic grows.
The screenshot above shows traffic for June and July 2020 – traffic is gradually increasing.
What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to write for an audience – I can’t stress this enough.
As I’ve spoken about many times in this piece, the whole of 2019 I didn’t know what I was doing and writing about anything. Today I go through a detailed keyword research process to find out the pain points men have in my audience and make sure my content answers their pain.
It’s best to learn SEO, be consistent, and not give up.
I found this and it reminded me that everybody has a beginning. I looked at this old site and it’s like my letters to my friend – the only difference being the creator put his content online. If you look at the site structure and design and content there’s no SEO keyword focus, it’s more a personal diary.
Look at High Snobiety’s site today – millions of visitors, generate thousands of dollars, and a globally successful site. They have been in business for nearly 15 years. I use this site daily to remind myself to keep going!
How long did it take you to see success?
I’ll consider my site successful once I can go full-time from it. I still have a long way to go but in my mind, I’m successful and have overcome a lot already. A site generating $100 monthly at 15,000 in traffic is a success to me.
Think about it, success is relative and it’s about the journey. Do you know there’s someone out there whose site does 100,000 in traffic and generates $2000 + but they feel unsuccessful and miserable? What a bad position to be in.
I appreciate my small wins, and when I’m up to 100,000 I’ll appreciate it just like I do today. PERSPECTIVE!!
What’s your advice for other online entrepreneurs?
The best advice I can give is consistency.
Yes, you have heard it before and it’s for good reason. Sometimes even I want to stop but I say to myself, once upon a time I was getting 50 clicks a month, today I’m getting 15,000 in traffic a month. I didn’t give up at 50 clicks so it doesn’t make sense to stop now.
Understand your audience, their pain points, and understand how to position your content to be problem-solving. I don’t care if your website is about gardening, finance, music, breastfeeding, fashion, cars, or travel. There’s a group of people who want to hear from you!
Make sure you’re found on Google and serve their need.
Treat your blog or website like a business/job and not a hobby. That means set aside 1-2 hours every day! Turn off your phone and social media and use that time to research and create.
Today with smartphones and social apps it’s easy to stay online all the time. I’m a victim of this too but I’ve realized in order to achieve my goals every day has to include a portion of time that’s allocated towards production and creation. Your whole day can’t be consumption! CREATE!!
Lastly, study people, brands, and businesses in your niche and learn what they do well and apply those strategies to your own line of work. If the brand or person you’re following is successful remember they have a staff and can produce at a much faster rate so don’t beat yourself up. Start small daily, just like they did.
I’ve chosen to use tools such as teachable for SEO courses, listen to online business podcasts, and be part of multiple Facebook groups which share information about blogging and tips to increase traffic. https://www.youtube.com/embed/m7NuVjpi72c?feature=oembed
This is you, remember that – slow and steady wins the race baby!
Eric Burns is COO at NichePursuits.com. Before starting with Niche Pursuits, Eric was CEO and co-founder of Gazella Wifi-Marketing a SaaS tool for restaurants. In 2019 he sold Gazella to BloomIntelligence.com.
Eric has also owned a restaurant, built niche websites, self-published books on Amazon, and worked in the corporate world as an employee and customer engagement consultant for a global consulting firm.
