Is high performance content keeping your audience engaged?
Hold on! Can high performing content fail to engage the audience in the first place? The answer is yes. It can follow all the parameters of a good content pillar strategy, yet loose the audience if not done right.
High performance content has to balance between uniqueness, information, expertise and artistic expression. If you want to understand whether the content is adding value to the viewers, simply check if the content is answering any of these questions: is it ‘A Guide’ to do something, does it describe ‘How to’ do something, or does it describe ‘What is’ something?
If the content answers any of these questions then you have benefitted the viewers’ knowledge base. However, make sure that content is backed by research and analysis done from credible sources to give it a strong foundation. Doing this will add expertise to the content and technically bring a content in the ‘high performance’ domain.
It is worth noticing that even after creating a high performance content, it might be failing in keeping the audience engaged. Several reasons can contribute to this factor. Here, we will explore in depth how can a content strategy be high performing yet fail to keep the attention of TA.
Irrelevant titles: With the desire to get people’s attention, a common mistake creators make is the inclusion of clickbait headlines that sound catchy. Clickbaits were once a trend that masses fell for but soon caught up to the strategy. Noticeably such titles failed as the actual content was not as “jaw dropping” as the titles had claimed. The Return Path study of the effectiveness of subject lines in 2015 confirmed the same. It is better to keep the titles engaging, crisp and directly related to the content.
Poor writing flow: Any content that is informative in nature might fall for this trap. It can happen if the paragraphs are too long, flow of information is not maintained, and creativity in expression is lagging or the tone of messaging changes mid-way. For instance, if an article intends to give knowledge about shoes to its TA but adopts a formal tone to convey the message, the audience will use interest soon. Similarly, a tech giant using slangs in its blogs will lose touch with its TA. To overcome this issue, research well about the TA and analyse their interactions with brands and the brand voicing of competitors. Recreate the content based on this analysis with coherent and relatable content.
Keyword Stuffing: To make a page rank, it is common to add too many ranking keywords. However, not only will this negatively impact your visibility but also the content quality. Take the keyword “Best shoes for running” for example. The TA typing in such a keyword would probably looking for investigating and comparison purposes. A shoe brand stuffing this keyword for selling purpose, therefore, will not be able to convey the desired message effectively.
Missing CTA: High performing content is intended to make a viewer take action, but if there is no clickable source then the viewer might surf your site or channel for the desired CTA (call to action). The action might not just be a direct query submission, but can also be a subscription or simple redirection to your products and services.
Ultimately, you can work hard to create a sound balance between information, creativity and quality but without fine-tuning your content, it becomes difficult to keep the audience steady. If you want your content to perform like the HERO, then it has to be projected like one to the target audience.