5 Reasons Why Your Content isn’t Driving Engagement

Many marketing gurus today emphasise the importance of content, and engaging content at that. Yet despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to see what the content hype is all about. You write blogs, make videos, and actively post on social media and yet none of it generates the momentum you’re looking for to drive user engagement. If your content is not driving engagement and ultimately sales, then you’re wasting time, energy, and resources contributing to an already overcrowded web. So, what drives engagement? Here are 5 reasons why your content isn’t being engaged with and what you can do to help increase user engagement for your business.

1. Not the Right Audience

One of the main reasons your content might not be engaged with is because it is not aimed at the right audience. If your content does not directly speak to or address the pain points of the person reading it, chances are they will not engage in a meaningful way. In order to counteract this, developing detailed content personas can help you make sure your content is on the right track. Content personas are composite sketches of a target market based on validated data, not assumptions. Start off with a demographic in mind, and gather inputs from customer support representatives, sales reps, product managers, and most importantly – customers. Once you have a picture of your target persona’s goals and pain points you can create value propositions specific to their needs and compile keywords that are relevant to them. 

2. Doesn’t Provide Value

This goes hand in hand with serving the right audience. Even if your content is being served to the right audience, it needs to provide value to the reader in order to get results. Look for ways to gear your content towards a specific persona by offering valuable information that is directly relevant to their pain points. This content engagement strategy will allow you to better understand your target persona, and therefore create more relevant, engaging content. 

3. Not the Right Medium

Blogs are not the only form of content marketing. It is important to diversify the types of content you are putting out in order to find out how your audience prefers to consume content. Some types of content commonly used to gain attention from users include:

– Video
– Podcast
– Animations
– Checklists
– Infographics
– Webinars
– Books
– Email Series

Take the time to figure out what forms of content your personas would most likely respond to. Are your customers more active on social media or do they prefer receiving emails? Develop a content strategy that reflects your specific audience’s online habits.

4. Not Discoverable 

Sometimes the problem isn’t that your content isn’t relevant enough, but that your intended audience just can’t find it. Here are some ways that you can increase traffic to your page:

– Organic Search (SEO): Using the right keywords to appear in relevant search results
– Paid Social Media: Sponsored posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
– 3rd Party Paid Media: Pushing your content through a paid third party service
– Email: Sharing your content directly to your email list
– Influencer Marketing: Leveraging tastemakers and industry experts to share your content with their audiences

It is important that you consistently are generating new content, writing content that is tailored to your audience, and promoting your content to reach the right people. In order to properly gauge the engagement of your content, you first need to generate a consistent traffic flow to your site.

5. Not Being Measured

UX design teams have plenty of experience with testing their visual design components and UI, but an area that is often neglected when testing is content. Content engagement metrics are extremely important. Leverage techniques like card sorting to figure out the most intuitive organisation of information for your site. Ask testers to recall product descriptions or ad copy to see how well your messaging is getting across to your audience. Pay attention to the language and keywords they use, and the ones they don’t. Conduct A/B testing of social media copy to see what posts generate more traffic. Use measurable data to determine if your content is actually providing value to your target audience.

Need more help determining whether your content is user friendly and engaging? Would you like to test your website? TestMate offers user testing in Australia that will benefit your brand! For more information on our website usability testing services, contact us today!