Creating a successful website means creating engaging content that captures and keeps the interest of your readers. It’s easy to misunderstand what makes content great and unique, and it’s not always easy to come up with fresh and engaging ideas to share with your readers. Your business relies heavily on the content you share, which means it’s time to figure out how you can make it better. Whether it’s good or bad right now, you can always make your online content better, which drives reader engagement. This increases your social media presence, and it equates to mores success for your site. These tips are sure to help you increase readership and engagement.
Read Other Blogs and Websites
One of the most effective ways to ensure your content is on target is to subscribe to and take the time to read other blogs and website content. While it’s certainly helpful if the blogs that you spend time with are in a similar industry to yours, it’s not a requirement. Good content can be found in every industry, and inspiration for creating your own good content for your blog could certainly come from your favorite beauty blog in terms of general ideas, themes, and even layouts. Use what you read to learn more about the industry and what makes good content in your own eyes. You can also gain ideas on taking a fresh look at your content through other blogs. Look at how they have diversified their content, and how they attract new readers.
Keep Things Organic
Great content begins with transparency. If your visitors aren’t sure where you’re coming from or what you stand for, it’s not going to work. Before you create content, ask yourself if it really meshes with you and/or your brand. Is it something you’d say or promote in real life, or are you doing or saying it because it seems as if it might help you gain new followers or help your social media growth? If you cannot honestly say you believe what you’re writing, it’s not organic. Honesty and transparency are non-negotiable when it comes to creating good content. To be more transparent, consider including an About page that discusses the topics your will write about and what your stances are on a few different topics. This can easily set the tone for your website and clear up any confusion.
Look at Your Content from A Reader’s Perspective
If you’re struggling to create great content, go back to step one. Look at your favorite blogs or sites and ask yourself what it is about those sites that work so well for you. Keep those things in mind when you go back and look at your own site, and ask yourself how you can incorporate some of what inspires you in your own content. When you take the time to view your own content with the eyes of a reader, you gain a new perspective. Since perspective is personal, this helps you find issues, make corrections, and it allows you to create better content. It’s also helpful to have your friends and family offer their opinions on your content. Their perspective is important because it’s different. Differences are often what make things better.
Take Notes
This is a broad approach to creating better content, so bear with it. The first step to taking good notes is to jot down ideas when you have them. If you’re in the car, dictate them into your notes. If you’re at home, keep a small notebook handy so you can put pen to paper and keep your ideas fresh. It’s frustrating to have a wonderful idea regarding great content only to sit down later and find you don’t remember what you were talking about.
The second means of taking notes involves listening to your readers. Do they have great comments about your content, do they seem to ask for many of the same things, do they seem to have constructive criticism? There is so much you can do by paying attention to what your readers respond to. If you’re coming at this from a social media perspective, take notes. What content gets the most likes? What content is the most productive for you and your brand? What is being said about your content that works, doesn’t work, or seems to need work? Once you note these things, you can act on them.
Keep it Simple
The best way to create amazing content is to keep it simple. You might be the wisest person on the planet, but most people want to read something that’s in plain English and offers little reading difficulty. Few people want to read nothing but big, fancy words when you’re writing about a simple subject. When people don’t understand what they are reading, they’ll stop reading. Keep it simple by writing your content in such a way that your readers can easily scan your work. Make sure what you say is easily understandable. Read it back when you write it. Are you confused? Do you feel things are explained clearly? If you don’t, change a few things.
Use short paragraphs. Use bullet points, and don’t stuff SEO into your content. A good SEO firm will advise you on how to use keywords and other strategies wisely. Overuse any of these strategies and you run the risk of losing control of your content, coming across as spam, or appearing unprofessional.
Use Media
Having straight text for your content can turn readers off very quickly. Be sure to mix it up with a variety of additional media in your articles. You can include photos, infographics, videos, or other interactive features. Not only does this make your content more visually appealing, but it also helps break up the material so that the reader can focus on what is being said more easily. Media that is added to your content can also add to the information you are conveying, without taking up as much space.
Get to the Point
Everyone loves a good story, but not when it takes too long to get to the point. The best way to create great content is to add a little personal touch to it. Start with a short story, and then get to the point quickly. Keep it relevant, and try to keep it honest. Your readers can see through anything that’s not transparent, and they’ll find it difficult to continue when they feel something is not organic. Once you begin with your story, get to the point quickly.
The best content is short and simple, and it’s to the point. Ask yourself what you like when you read articles online. Do you enjoy clicking “Next Page,” a dozen times to continue reading a story? Do you like seeing “Keep reading to see what happens,” at the end of every page, or do you like to read content that’s on one or two pages, easy to read, and to the point?
Wrap-Up
There are so many wonderful tips available to help you create great content, but these are the best of the best. They might seem simple, and it’s because they are simple. These are tips many people forget to utilize when creating great content. It’s not always about writing Pulitzer-worthy content for your website so much as it is about sharing what people want to hear so they keep coming back. When your readers look forward to reading your next post, you know you’re doing something right with your content.