A fundamental principle for brands to follow when it comes to content marketing is that they must keep their readers engaged. Creating content isn't enough to cater to audiences. What is written has to hold a personality in order to increase engagement, gain trust, and convert visitors into customers. Content with personality will help brands claim their digital space.
Not only this, if brands choose to give their web content more personality, they will be able to cultivate a relationship with their audience and showcase them their expertise. There are several ways through which brands can give their content a boost but writing content full of personality has proven to be one of the most effective.
Creating entertaining content can be a challenge. To make their next content pieces more appealing, here are 10 easy-to-implement tips for brands to give their content more personality.
Tip 1: Telling a good story
Humans love stories. It's the reason why we've been telling them since prehistoric times. The trick to the art of storytelling is to come up with a story that has both entertainment value and a message that coincides with the purpose or mission of the content. Brands that do this are likely to retain their readers.
Another is anecdotes. Any time a piece feels drab or gets bogged down in nitty-gritty facts and details, inject a relevant anecdote. When used properly, anecdotes can grab the attention of readers and set the stage for the rest of a blog post. They shouldn’t be overdone, of course. But when used in moderation, anecdotes can be a blogger’s best friend.
Tip 2: Encourage an emotional response
Content that elicits an emotional response - even if that response was typically considered negative such as anger, frustration, or anxiety – is more likely to be shared than content that did not engage the reader’s emotions.
In order to create gripping stories that rouse an emotional connection, brands should pack their written content with emotionally charged words. They should also tell stories that are designed to elicit particular responses while shaping the overall tone to fit the emotion they are appealing to.
The result will not only be a piece packed with more personality but also one that is more likely to be shared with others.
Tip 3: Formatting
If words are the paint, then formatting is the canvas. Good use of paragraph spacing, bold type, italicized fonts, and other devices like bulleted or numbered lists can make a brand's content far more pleasing to the eye, leading readers to feel as if the content is more interesting even if the words are the same.
Brands should make it a habit to craft short paragraphs to keep readers from being bored. Use of italics to add emphasis to keywords, especially when drawing a contrast between two words should also be a priority. Likewise, bolding keywords is an effective way to emphasize.
Formatting will let not only enable brands to create their own unique voice but also prevent errors in their content.
Tip 4: Incorporate fascinating facts
People read for two reasons: to be entertained and to learn. While both these reasons aren't mutually exclusive, it's hard to teach a bored audience. Inversely, it’s hard to be entertained if audience members, to some degree, aren’t expanding their intellectual horizons. Hence, brands should research their content topics to find fascinating facts and sprinkle them throughout their piece.
If a brand is able to educate as well as entertain, people will enjoy their work for the amazing information they learn, and in turn, brands will be able to write more exciting content that draws an audience.
Tip 5: Write as you talk
Brands should remember to write with the same voice and enthusiasm when telling a story to a friend. They should keep the tone conversational and communicate as clearly and as personally as possible, and that will automatically infuse itself into their writing.
There is, however, a right way and wrong way to go about this. Brands should keep in mind that they don't want their writing to come across as a garbled stream of consciousness. Brands should stay true to their identity and focus on getting it heard.
Tip 6: Talk to your audience
While incorporating language preferences can add personality to a brand's content, it’s just as important to understand how their customers speak.
When brands write using the same language as their customers, they build rapport. In some cases, they circumvent the need to use language tricks to pack personality into their content – simply using their audience’s language can be enough to generate engagement.
Tip 7: Build suspense
Building suspense is the holy grail of great writing. It's one of the most coveted skills and is the reason mystery writers can sell books that fly off the shelf.
Suspense can be built even when crafting content. Brands should ask themselves what the most interesting part of their piece is and build toward its reveal while subtly mentioning some powerful new insight they plan to disclose. They should work towards the reveal little by little, unraveling the details and building suspense.
Tip 8: Have something to say
Brands should remember to bring the kind of unique take that truly engages audiences even when they're talking about experiences that aren't theirs.
Probably the fastest way for brands to pack personality into their content is to say something new or different. Having a unique perspective conveys the excitement that’s incredibly hard to achieve simply copying the work of others.
So, how does a brand engage readers in this era of short attention spans and information overload? The only way of effectively doing this is by creating unique content. Writing content in a voice that’s interesting and unique can put a fresh spin on even the most mundane topics. The above-mentioned topics are fairly simple to implement but they can effectively transform a brand's content marketing strategy.
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