How To Create Engaging Content for your Website

Today the word engagement is thrown around a lot more than it was 10 years ago. This is mainly because it’s a popular metric on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and many other online platforms. Owing to the importance of engagement, you need to know how to create engaging content for your website

What Exactly Does Engagement Mean?

Engagement can mean something different to everyone. In a nutshell, it’s basically a metric that indicates how many people are interacting with your piece of content, blog, social media post, or channel.

This could be in the form of the following:

• People who have taken an action of some sort in the form of a click or view on a specific post or website. This also includes likes, comments or shares on your page, post or blog
• The number of messages or enquiries you might receive on social media or your website. Some platforms also include video views as a type of engagement.

The Most Popular Types of Engagement

When it comes to social media, the most popular types of engagements are likes, comments and shares. If you have a website or blog, other popular types of engagement metrics can be downloads, clicks, or even video views. (You should really conduct a regular content audit to find out which copy on your website is engaging your visitors. To find out how to do this. Find out how to do this here.)

What Engagement Metrics Should You be Using?

This all depends on what you are trying to achieve with your social media page, website or blog post. If you are selling a specific product or service and have a social media page, we suggest you focus on the metrics that matter. For example, if a 1000 people liked your posts but you didn’t make 1 sale or at least received an enquiry, than all those likes might be in vain. Don’t get us wrong: likes and comments are valuable metrics to measure, but there are more popular metrics to focus on, in your digital marketing strategy, if you are trying to monetise your website or social media channel.

Social Media Metrics to Measure

• Likes vs Shares – Always ensure you are comparing the two metrics to each other. The reason we suggest this is that a balance between the two indicates that you have posted a valuable piece of content or have succeeded to create engaging content for your website.

If you have a 100 likes but only 1 share, that is an indication that your piece of content might not be as valuable as you thought it might be. Think about it like this: if someone has taken the time to share your piece of content on their own timeline, it indicates that they treasure what you’ve posted so much so that they want to share it with the world.

Only a like indicates that it’s good but just not good enough. A healthy balance between likes and shares would be 2:1 or even 3:1 meaning that if you have 150 likes, you ideally want 75 shares, or at least 50.

• Comments – Comments are also a very valuable metric to monitor, however these can act as a double-edged sword . People can both praise your product or service or complain about it. None the less, it’s a great form of engagement as it creates social proof around your brand while getting other people to notice what people are saying about your products or services.
• Messages Received – Likes, comments and shares are to an extent valuable metrics to keep an eye on as these can help indicate whether your piece of content carries value for the reader.

Another metric we would emphasise would be messages received. If you’ve received a message from a potential customer, that means you’ve got a direct line of communication with them and could utilise that to further educate them around your products or services.

What Are Some of The Best Tools You Can Use to Monitor Engagement?

1. Keyhole

Keyhole is a great way of keeping an eye on your Instagram and Twitter account specifically. With this tool you can track usernames, hashtags, URLs, keywords and more. This is a great addition to your digital marketing strategy.

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is most probably one of the most popular social media monitoring tools out there today. It allows users to monitor all kinds of engagement on their social media channels including, reach, likes, comments, shares, fan page growth, messages and more.

3. Digimind

We talked about how people can, in some cases, complain about your brand on social media. Well, Digimind can help you monitor sentiment around what people are saying. Its sophisticated algorithm can pick up if what someone is saying carries a positive or negative sentiment so allowing you to stay on top of your brand’s reputation.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you are passionate about learning how to create engaging content for your website, love brainstorming ideas and selling your written creations to the public you need to become a copywriter with the Digital School of Marketing’s (DSM) Content Marketing and Digital Copywriting Course! In this digital marketing certificate, we’ll teach you how to sell your story through creative and enticing mediums as well as these fit into the greater context of marketing and brand communications strategy. It’s the premier digital marketing course out there. Read more here.