Five Ways to Improve Engagement

Five Ways to Improve Engagement

Many professionals are catching on that having a well-planned website and continuous content are an important way to help you brand yourself in the Internet age. However, too many are throwing up dry content that could only be interpreted by someone in their own field. If potential clients can’t connect with your content, they’re not going to buy your product or services!

To help you create more engaging content, I’m going to go over five tips to help make it easier for current and prospective clients connect with your content. Let’s get started!

1)    Don’t use jargon. While you want to show your clients that you are the expert in your field, you need to be able to do that without a minimal amount of jargon. And even more, you need to explain to be able to explain words that prospective clients will be unfamiliar with.  in simple, clear terms. If they can’t understand what you mean, they won’t understand why you’re the expert.

2)    Connect emotionally. If people are looking for your services, there’s a reason why. A couple may be excited to beef up their retirement planning so that they can enjoy an active free retirement where they are free to explore their interests. A small business owner might be feeling nervous because he’s in trouble by the IRS. If you can show how you can bolster their joy or assuage their fear, they’ll be much more likely to engage with you.

3)    Show, don’t tell. You can’t just tell prospective client you can help them, you need to prove it. Luckily, there are many ways you can do this: sharing statistics from studies that prove your point, sharing the stories of other clients you’ve helped, weaving testimonials from happy clients into your bio, creating videos or graphics that clearly demonstrate the facts … this list could go on for a while. If you can back up your opinions with facts and success, prospective clients will begin to trust you.

4)    Keep it brief. With people spending so much time on social media, most people are becoming more and more accustomed to reading shorter blocks of text online. After all, Twitter’s limit is 140 characters, and studies have shown that posts with between 100 and 250 characters get 60% more likes, comments and shares on Facebook. That’s not much to work with! Although your website content certainly shouldn’t be that short, it’s important to keep in mind that attention spans are definitely decreasing online, with most readers only reading about 60% of articles online.

5)    Draw them in early. The first ten seconds a visitor spends on a webpage are the most important. This is when most people “bounce,” or choose to leave after only one page. If you can get them to stay for those first several seconds, you’re likely to get them to stay on a page for at least two minutes, and then hopefully visit other pages on the site. This is why having an engaging title, and interesting, clear first paragraph are so important.

If you follow these fives tips, you should start to see a difference in the amount of time people spend on your pages, and the frequency with which they share your content. If you have additional questions about how to improve engagement for your content, don’t hesitate to get in touch! 

orignial article by Lindsay Dicks