More is not always better, and content marketing is a key example of this. While content marketing can be a viable technique to help give your company that little boost it needs, there are a vast amount of companies which overuse it. You may be wondering how such a thing could be overused. It helps to rank you higher in the search engines, and bring more customers in from social media, right? Yes, it does, but there is a firm goal with this type of marketing which is often overlooked in the race for the top spot on search engines. Let’s take a look at the real reasons why more content marketing isn’t always better before we delve into what actually is.

Why More Content Marketing Isn’t Always Better

Businesses spend numerous hours, tons of effort, and lots of money on content marketing. They push the strategy so hard that they tend to forget what the original goal was- to engage the audience content marketing brings in. Optimizing keywords, ranking high in the search engines, and spending money on articles to bring in your audience isn’t going to help you one iota if you don’t have something on your site meant to engage the audience. So how are you supposed to engage them? Continue reading to find out.

How To Engage Your Audience

Engaging your audience is actually incredibly simple, which is why it is such a shame so many businesses forget it. Once you have brought people onto your site via content marketing, have something for them to do. Below is a comprehensive listing of just a few easy ideas.

• Run giveaways. Rafflecopter is a good gadget to use, but you can use any method or gadget you like. Giveaways do not have to be huge. Plenty of people will enter them for the chance of winning a small item or bundle of small items.
• Have polls for your audience to vote on. The best polls are those on the same topic as your business niche.
• Ask for people’s opinion. This may include surveys, or short bits of information asking the readers to express their opinion on a given subject via comments.
• Always use a call for action at the end of your articles. A call to action is written into the last paragraph of a blog post or article which prompts the reader to do something- anything.
• Offer links to additional information. This can be information on your site, from an outside site, or could even be citing references used to write the article. Whichever way it goes, it gives the reader the opportunity to delve further into a topic pertaining to your given business niche.

That’s Not All

These are, of course, just a few general ideas which have been proven time and again to work effectively. The main idea is to come up with your own way of engaging your audience. Just remember that getting something out there is only the first step. In the majority of cases, you must then personally engage with your audience. You can not simply ask for people’s opinions and leave it at that. If the opinions are being posted via comments, you must try to respond to at least a portion of them. Responding to all people can be virtually impossible, but giving their comment a like allows them to feel as though you have actually read what they had to say. On blog sites, responding to at least a quarter to half of all commenters is a good idea. On social media sites, responding to more is necessary. Just remember that the ultimate goal of content marketing is to engage your audience, and conversing with them will keep them engaged, thus keeping your business at the forefront of their minds.