If you do not write engaging content, what could possibly happen, right? Blog posts, articles or any kind of content, we read them to share and exchange information. And if the content is not engaging or as I call it not designed to digest easily; readers will not enjoy reading it let alone understand it well enough to take action. But, your content still neeeds to be SEO friendly.
Did you ever feel like your content is extremely good but people are not engaging or taking action as you would like them to?
Don’t worry, almost all writers both online and offline have had this feeling.Writing engaging content is not hard but the more you practice the skill, it will soon become a craft.
The solution for writing engaging content is that you need to humanize your content but not sacrifice quality.
First thing you should know as a freelance writer, blogger or content marketer — You write to entertain and educate a PERSON. You do not write for spiders – especially Google spiders.
Now that everything is virtual, we tend to forget that we are marketing to humans.
And that’s where one falls behind because they forget that the content they are presenting needs to have value for the reader. How will it solve their problem?
So, it is very important to humanize one’s brand and blog to achieve success in online writing. Be it a multinational company or a part-time blogger who is looking for side income.
So, let’s see an example of how big companies use human emotion to get big success. Then we will go into how to humanize content to get liked and possibly shared but in ways that does not hurt SEO.
Coca-Cola
Almost everyone on this planet has heard about Coke?
This brand is the perfect example of how to use human emotion (joy and lifestyle) to reach your audience in a most successful way.
Some of the Coke’s slogan over the years-
- 1979 – Have a Coke and a smile
- 1989 – Can’t Beat the Feeling
- 2001 – Life tastes good
- 2006 – The Coke Side of Life
- 2009 to 2015 – Open Happiness
- 2016 – Taste The Feeling
Here is Coca Cola’s Facebook page for Bangladesh where I live:
Look at how many likes Coca-Cola has on their Facebook page in Bangladesh — 107 million 31 thousand 6 hundred 71.
And check out what Google says about the population of Bangladesh is 163 million.
So the marketers of Coca-Cola’s Facebook page of Bangladesh only needs about 61 million likes to take over Bangladesh’s entire population.
I hope they do succeed for some weird reason.
So back to the real stuff.
How can you as beginner or expert freelance writer or blogger humanize your blog posts?
What you want is to create an emotion and make your audience take action willingly and also not to hurt SEO in the process.
Follow these 5 tactics to humanize your content:
Ask, Appeal and Answer
The only reason you are reading this article is because you have a problem. You’re not gettting enough engagement with your content.
And you want to know why? And how can you improve your content that will also help you with SEO?
So I asked you — “Did you ever feel like your content is good but people are not engaging or taking action as you would like?”
Most of you nodded your head with me and then look down for an answer.
Then what did I do? I assured you that you were not the only one. I appealed, I resonated with you.
Then you looked a little further and what did I do? I answered your question. Not my question but your question.
The answer was – “The solution is that you need to humanize your content but not sacrifice SEO.”
So you see how powerful it is.
I learned this technique one day when I stumbled upon an article written by Brian Tracy. He is one of the top sales training and personal success authorities in the world.
He talked about how to wow your audience with your speaking talent. This also works in the written form of conversation. Wouldn’t you agree? Let me know below in the comments.
And when it comes to the SEO factor- the more time you can keep your reader captivated by your content, the more Google thinks your content has value to provide.
Learn how to How to Delight Your Audience – Without Hurting SEO with these five tips from guest poster Fatama Tuj Zohora @z_fatama
Click to Tweet
Use Story
Everyone loves a good story.
Stories are one of the easiest ways to the heart of a human. Why not use it in our content?
So with this article, I used the story of Coca-Cola. I did not include much of the company but I surely captured the main point I was talking about. So use relevant stories to make your content more personal.
To write engaging content you have to present relevant context in front of your readers.
This also helps with SEO. People scroll down to know the outcome of the story or some strategy and it creates emotions in people. People start to think and engage with the content.
Using stories is one of the best and easiest ways to add the human element to your content.
Have a Voice
Our personality shines through our way of talking and explaining or giving solutions. So having your own personal voice in writing is very important to appeal to your audience. How else can you write engaging content?
Now I will not say to have a voice that everyone likes. Because not everyone will like you, and that is what it is.
Some writers uses aggressive and sometimes offensive words in their writing and others do not use it all.
And that is your own choice.
So build a personality in your writing. You will appeal more to your targeted audience. Write like you are having a conversation.
Many writers and journalists especially use a controversial tone in their writing. This is one of the tricks of copywriting too. This is used to create emotions in people.
Very powerful stuff. Yet so simple to implement.
Use Images
Visuals are very important to online experience.
We read less and see more.
Writing engaging content also includes adding appropriate visuals. Because we like pictures and pictures catch our eyes way more than words. Using good, colorful, funny, joyful, emotional and sometimes even angry images take our blog posts to the next level.
Besides Google loves pictures too. Make sure to optimize them very well to help your content stay on the good side of search engines.
Using visuals is another way to make people engage with your content.
Explain Everything
You are an educator.
You are trying to educate plus entertain your readers. Educating does not mean teaching like math or physics taught in a classroom.
Write engaging content that does not make people feel bored.
Educating means letting your audience know something that you already know and that they might find valuable.
So explain everything you say or will say in your post. Do not just tell them. Do this, do that and you will get this.
No.
It will be worst kind of communication.
So explain everything to humanize your content. Explaining also means you have to go in depth with your content which is a great plus for SEO.
So here you go 5 tactics that you should implement in your content creation.
Humanizing your content, making it more digestible for your reader will elevate your content to the next level.
You will add much more value to them instead of just giving them statistics and on point analytics.
Statistics also help people understand more but use it in the way that your reader can understand the value of it.
SEO is not hard, it gets better with practice.
But you should not underestimate the importance of making your content appealing to people. You should balance in between them to make your content engaging and fun plus Google Friendly.
Fatama Tuj Zohora is a content marketer and strategist who is the owner of Fatamaz Space.com. She writes engaging content that speaks to her targeted audience. You can find her on Twitter @z_fatama
3 Responses
I am so happy that Chantel gave this opportunity to write for her. Thanks so much. If any of you guys have any question let me know. Thanks
Fatama – thanks for sharing your post with my readers!
So true, some of this top brands are so engaging and we learning from them can actually turn out post into a great one! Thanks for sharing !