It is time to stop being a passive consumer of digital content and to start engaging with brands online.

While social media lets you stay connected with your audience and engage with your fans, more and more people are choosing to drop off the social media comfort zone and seek out one-on-one engagement instead.

Why? Well, let’s be honest. Social media can be a minefield. Your average user might see your funny tweet about the brand you’re promoting and never look at your website or find your email address to get in touch.

The good news is that you can have the best relationship with your customers without needing to beat them over the head with marketing material. Thanks to technology, building a one-to-one relationship with your consumers is a whole lot easier.

In this article, we’ll share some tried and tested ways that businesses are creating engaging content and encouraging their customers to buy their product or service.

1. Video content is taking over.

Yes, people are generally more engaged with video content than they are with text-based content. Videos let you interact with your audience, show them things they might not see in text, and allow you to do things like show off your products or host contests etc.

Whether you’re creating videos for YouTube or Instagram, keep the content fun, interesting, and most importantly, engaging. Let’s be honest, no one wants to get stuck in a boring sales pitch!

2. Customise your email marketing.

Thanks to tools like HubSpot, you can personalise your customer’s interaction with your emails. With HubSpot, you can create different email audiences based on customer data and send tailored email campaigns to specific groups. For example, if you notice that someone has opened and clicked on a lot of your past emails, you can create a new email list with this group and send them more relevant content.

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3. Post regularly.

Consumers are getting bored of seeing the same old thing on social media. They want content that is both engaging and informative. So if you want to retain your audience’s interest, you need to be consistently producing content that is both of those things. Create a schedule for yourself and stick to it. Consistency is more important than anything else when it comes to building credibility as a brand.

4. Use storytelling.

If you’re not very talented at story-telling or simply want to save some time, you can always just type up some top-notch sales copy and throw in some stock photos. While this might fool your readers into thinking you’re an industry expert, the truth is you’re just another internet marketer who copied and pasted some top-notch sales material.

The good news is that you don’t have to be a professional writer to tell a great story. One of the easiest ways to engage your audience is to use personal anecdotes and experiences to create a narrative that connects with your readers. If you want to learn more, check out how to write an engaging business plan.

No one wants to read a dull, formulaic business plan. We all want to read something that will make us interested in the person, company, or topic the plan is about. If you want to write an engaging business plan, start by thinking of some personal experiences that you can use to tell the story of your business. If you’re writing for a bank, think of some great deals or offers that you’ve received that could be used to show how rewarding your business can be. Remember, the whole point of a business plan is to convince the reader that your business will be viable and successful. So, think of some unique selling points that will make your story stand out.

5. Measure the success of your efforts.

You can easily track the success of your marketing efforts via online tools like Google Analytics. With these tools, you can see the sources of your traffic, how many people are visiting your site, and which areas of your site inspire the most interest. From here, you can better understand how your marketing strategy is working and determine what changes you’ll need to make to continue achieving your business goals.

6. Use analytics software.

If you’re serious about growing your business and want to see how your marketing strategies are performing, you should be using analytics software to track the results of your campaigns. Tools like Google Analytics can help you pinpoint the success of your campaigns, identify areas for improvement, and track the results of your campaigns over time.

7. Testimonials work.

The success of any business is often down to word of mouth. As customers digest the content you produce and the products you recommend, they will either like or dislike your business. When someone decides to give you their positive or negative opinion about your company or product, this is referred to as testimonial advertising.

When someone decides to leave a testimonial for your business, be sure to show this off to your advantage. If a reader has nothing good to say about a company, why would they bother to read the whole business plan? As a business owner, you deserve some good, old-fashioned praise and thanks for producing such a convincing business plan!

8. Use the right keywords.

When someone clicks on a keyword or keyword combination in a search engine, they are usually presented with content that is relevant to their interests. When someone lands on your website using these keywords, you want them to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. When someone types in a keyword phrase or combination, they are looking for something specific and you need to provide what they’re looking for. When someone discovers your website via a search engine and likes what they see, you’ve likely tempted them to click on a few of your product or service offerings. From here, you can introduce them to the rest of your company’s products and encourage them to become a customer.

Choosing the right keywords is easier said than done. You’ll need to brainstorm some ideas, test them out, and then choose the most suitable ones. Once you have a good list, check it regularly to ensure that you’re not missing any important keywords and ensure that your chosen words are relevant to your business. If you want to learn more, here’s a good place to start: How to choose the right keywords for your website.

9. Be consistent.

Keeping all of this in mind, you need to ensure that you’re always putting out content that is both engaging and useful. If you want to see your business successfully, you need to be constantly producing engaging content. While you might have heard the term ‘content marketing’, simply producing a lot of quality content is not enough. You also need to be ensuring that this content is getting discovered and bringing in the right kind of traffic. This requires a bit of effort and research, but it’s all worth it in the end.

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of digital marketing and how to successfully use digital media to grow your business. In the next article in this series, we’ll discuss how to set up automated email campaigns so you can focus on what’s important to you and your business.