What Makes Content Compelling?

The cliché in online marketing is that content is king. Content is what draws visitors to a site. The more visitors you have, the more chances for conversion. More conversions means more sales. More sales means you make a profit.

Every piece of viral marketing has content attached to it. But how do you make your content compelling enough that it does go viral, or at least compelling enough to draw a steady stream of visitors? This is what we’re going to answer in this article.

There are five techniques that must be followed to make compelling content:

Write what your readers are interested in.

Many bloggers have felt the pain of putting their words out onto their clean, modern website and having no visitors. One of the big reasons is that they’re not touching on themes that are currently relevant to their audience. Our reading habits tend to follow popular trends in our niches. It’s like reading the news. If there’s a big story everyone is going to report on it.

You need to tap into that. There are tools like BuzzSumo that can tell you what the most popular articles are in your niche at the moment. You can also do a Google news search on your niche and see what’s going on. You don’t have to parrot the crowd all the time, but it will show that you pay attention to the niche. Also, if you can offer a different perspective on the topic you can generate buzz for your site, which brings us to…

Write to add value, not to add content.

Some bloggers and businesses are stuck in an era where the goal was to impress Google with as much content as possible. The amount of content does matter but not nearly as much the value of your content. Search engines don’t convert; visitors do.

All of your writing should be for the reader. Whether it’s helpful, compelling, provocative, whatever, it should spark the reader’s interest. Ideally, it should make them want to comment or share the material.

Add media.

Gone are the days where a wall of text was enough to hold interest. Now we want photos and videos with our articles, along with friendly formatting with headings and bullet points. Buzzfeed has a whole industry made from image-heavy, text-light articles. That’s not to say there’s no place for text-heavy pieces, but use good design strategies to keep your audience from slipping over to YouTube in the middle of your piece.

Spread it yourself.

Bloggers who don’t want to get attention just put their pieces on their sites. Bloggers who want a little more attention share it on their social media channels. Bloggers who want maximum exposure shop their pieces around on social media and on other websites that have similar content. If you can share your content yourself in a place where it is welcome, do so!

Do it consistently.

The final thing is to always be posting. A regular posting schedule draws a regular crowd. If people can expect new content three days or five days a week and you provide it, you will get a loyal readership. If you only post a few times a month at random times only the most devoted readers will stay. Try to post at a minimum of once a week on the same day.