How to Create Interactive Content That Engages Your Audience

As a customer-focused marketer, you understand what makes your audience tick — and what makes them click. Every customer base has a preferred content topic set that elicits a positive response. The article themes get them sharing, forwarding, and commenting. The e-guides that they can’t wait to download and the video content they head straight to on your e-newsletters or social channels. 

There’s only so much topic diversification that brands can do without risking losing or alienating their loyal readership. For instance, if you visited the Foleon blog and we were covering the latest news in Formula One, you’d be a bit confused, right? Your audience trusts you to deliver valuable, timely content on the subjects you can speak knowledgeably about, naturally giving your own unique spin. 

One of the best tactics for optimizing and scaling your content output while staying true to your core topic clusters is putting a fresh spin on an existing topic. This saves busy marketers time, boosts your SEO and SERPs, and helps build brand awareness. It also reinforces your messaging and means you continue to delight your customers. Happy days!

This article will discuss effective, proven ways to give new life to established content topics. You’ll discover how to identify which content assets to update, which formats are ripe for repurposing, and how to revamp high-performing assets with fabulous interactive elements. 

Are you sitting comfortably? Then, let’s begin. 

How to identify which content assets to update

Your first port of call is to work out which articles, guides, eBooks, and so forth to update. Here are some tips on identifying which assets to put a fresh spin on. 

1. Check your analytics for articles that have previously ranked well but dropped off over time. Perhaps they could do with realigning with search intent or updating keywords that will perform better today. 
2. Seek out the content that is date or time-sensitive. The Best of 2021s and Top Events of 2020, for example. 
3. Locate static content that could do with a visual refresh, including those that would benefit from interactive elements such as quizzes, calculators, or checklists. More on this later… 
4. Check content related to current affairs or a situation that may have changed considerably over time and update to reflect current events. 
5. Find any content not performing well on mobile or smaller screens and update accordingly. 

Top tips for putting a fresh spin on an existing topic

Make your content interactive

Let’s start with what we mean by interactive content. Interactive content is any content asset that requires and encourages the user to engage with it actively. 

Research from the Content Marketing Institute and Ion Interactive revealed that 81% of marketers agree that interactive content is much more effective at grabbing people’s attention than static content. The team here at Foleon loves interactive content, and we can see from our client’s successes that customers love it too. 

Naturally, you don’t want to go over the top and blast your audiences’ retinas into oblivion, but adding a few relevant and interesting interactive elements into the right content assets can boost engagement and improve the customer experience. 

Here are some ideas for interactive elements that can refresh existing content. 

1. Add a quiz to the end of a blog article. For example, a questionnaire helps the reader understand which solution is right for them or a test to see how much they know about a particular subject. Always ensure the quiz is relevant to the topic, improves the user experience, and is easy to do on all devices. Give the reader somewhere to go after they complete the test. For instance, a prompt to find out more about the solution that fits their test outcome. Or a link to a blog that will tell them more about a topic the test shows they are interested in. 
2. Include an interactive calculator in an eBook or how-to guide. Calculators are a powerful tool for helping customers understand a product's or service's benefits. As someone glad they left math classes behind at High School, these handy gadgets are one of my favorite interactive content elements. They can tell an evocative story when used and provide instant results. You could also prompt your reader to supply a few contact details in exchange for a more detailed report or summary of their results. Great for lead gen or building an email marketing list based on their preferences. 
3. Add an explainer video to a blog or email marketing campaign. Video demos or explainers are a great way to convey information to a lead at the awareness or decision-making stage of the buyer journey. Encourage your user to participate in the experience by bringing them into the story. This could be by inviting them to control the flow of the video through drag, scrolls, and other interactive buttons. 
4. Embed an interactive animation on a key website landing page. Interactive infographics and animations are not only great content formats for bringing complex information to life, but they are also highly shareable, so great for boosting engagement on social media. If you have findings from a data-related report, try an interactive animation to help users digest the information. Or, if you want to show trends over time or in various geographical locations, interactive illustrations could be just the ticket. If you’re looking for inspiration, watch The Infographics Show on YouTube.

Add some personal touches

Today’s customers are often interested in the stories and people behind a brand. Adding some insights or quotes from your team members creates meaningful connections between your company and your customers. It also adds credibility and demonstrates your expertise.

Personal marketing is a powerful content marketing tactic and creates memorable user experiences that should give you a competitive edge. Find out more about personal marketing. 

Optimize your call to action

A compelling CTA can mean the difference between a new customer and losing a lead to a competitor. Look at your current CTAs across your web pages, downloads, blogs, and other collateral. Perhaps there is a new offer or piece of content that the reader should be informed about.

Sometimes the most effective way to motivate your lead to do something is to encourage them to Get In Touch or Contact The Team Today. But, as all marketers know, it is a challenge to cut through all the noise online, so if it is appropriate for your brand, you could try doing something a little more adventurous. Perhaps adding a fun picture or a cheeky message could make your CTA stand out from the crowd. 

Follow up on old posts with fresh insights

Look through your blog archive and identify any content that would benefit from an update. You can refer to the original content demonstrating how situations and trends have changed over time, then offer an update with new insights, data, illustrations, and so on. 

As you can see, that content gathering dust in your archive could be ripe for a repurpose and a refresh. Updating the title, imagery, CTA, or body content gives your valuable content collateral a chance to shine. It isn’t just the content that didn't perform well the first time around that could benefit from a makeover. The content that performed well may still have plenty to offer both your business and your customers. 

Putting a fresh spin on your content helps you build your brand and reinforce your message but also helps to boost its SEO value. Google and other search engines are fans of fresh content and updated pages. They want to direct their users to the most useful, relevant content, so if you update your keywords and ensure the content continues to align with search intent, they will be happy to send traffic in your direction. 

Don't forget...

You don’t need specific technical or design expertise to add interactive elements to your content assets. With Foleon, you can create eye-catching, user-friendly, and responsive designs with a simple drag-and-drop editor. We even offer professional standard templates to help you get more quality content to market quickly. Why not request a demo today and get your content the attention it deserves?