A digital content marketing strategy is one of the most powerful marketing solutions you can use to not only engage with your audience more but to help boost your overall conversions. Unfortunately, many people don’t take the time to focus on their content to really create something that’s powerful and that engages straight away. In not placing more effort in your digital content marketing strategy, your overall marketing efforts will falter. So how do you create powerful content that hooks your readers? This expert guide will give you the best-kept secrets to creating a powerful digital content marketing strategy that engages your audience.

Write Content That Brings Out Their Emotions

Evoking emotion from your audience is key if you want to really engage your audience and make them act on something that you’re offering or asking. The best way to gain emotional responses from your audience relies heavily on how you use your language and your words.

Did you know?

• Content that causes sadness has less chance of going viral than anger content.
• Anger content is more likely to be shared twice as much as other content.
• Content that surprises or is inspiring is more likely to be shared.
• Negative content is shared less than positive content.

There are six different emotions that you’ll want to try and target in your digital content marketing strategy. These include:

Surprise

• Ask a provocative question
• Make a bold assertion or statement
• State a startling fact
• Share a brand new idea of how to do something
• Challenge a common assumption and prove them wrong

Joy

• Share content that makes them laugh
• Create inspirational content that uplifts and inspires
• Present a positive story content with a happy ending
• Give the reader something in return for reading your content

Fear

• Use statistics or facts to back up a serious topic, but make sure there’s a possible solution for resolving the problem. You don’t want to make them feel serious fear days after they read your post. The possible solution will give them something to fall back on and have comfort in
• Share limited time offers telling them they’ll miss out if they don’t hurry up
• Include a story about a close encounter or dangerous situation

Anger

• Share content that’s highly opinion-based which goes against what others believe in or have said in the past
• Create content that’s controversial and will start a conversation

Sadness

• Create content that offers a non-happy ending
• Cruelty or anything similar that makes people want to help and act on

Disgust

• Create stories about bad people doing awful or unjust things
• Disgust stories should evoke a negative reaction, such as horror

In bringing out any of these emotions you have a higher chance of engaging your audience and making them react to what you’re writing about.

Don’t Be Afraid To Add Storytelling to Your Content

Storytelling is a powerful way to connect with your audience for more engagement. So what is this approach? The storytelling approach is telling your audience a relatable narrative designed to resonate with them and their experiences.  An example of a storytelling approach includes:

Begin your story with a relatable scenario that tells about the problem and what solved the problem. All content should be in a first-person view.

• ‘Over the past year, I struggled to keep the household afloat. More and more bills kept coming in which I only just managed to pay. My children and wife kept reassuring me everything was going to be okay, but I needed a way to get out of our financial rut. I was tired of working two jobs, missing out on my children growing up. I wanted to make more than I currently was but still have the ability to stay at home. That’s when I found….’

Work your way through the different stages of how you got to the solution

• ‘Life wasn’t always this great before I found …. I started to do some research online for work from home jobs. I knew that a lot were scams, however, this one caught my eye. I placed it in a ‘go back to’ pile, however, something was calling me towards it. This is when I knew that I should investigate more. So I….’
  

Talk about the solution to your problem in more detail and why your audience should try it.

• This new program …. has saved our house from getting repossessed. I don’t have to worry about struggling to get by all the time, and now I can go away on holidays without having to worry.’

The storytelling approach can be used in blog posts, website content, landing pages, etc. to really help connect with your audience on a deeper and more relatable level. Writing killer content that really engages and evokes emotion is key to driving more conversions and traffic to your website.

Utilize Power Words to Make A Bigger Impact

Power words are words that have a strong meaning or draw your audience’s attention. Some examples of power words include, but aren’t limited to, are:

• Breathtaking
• Extraordinary
• Painless
• Massive
• Ridiculous
• Expensive
• Viral

Power words have a strong way of really bringing power to a post title and content. Examples of post titles before and after using power words include:

Before

• New Treatment To Cure Cancer

After

• Breathtakingly Painless New Treatment To Cure Cancer

Before

• Man Finds Odd Looking Dolphin

After

• Man’s Extraordinary Find of Ridiculous Looking Dolphin Goes Viral

As you can see, powerful words bring more drama, suspense, and interest from your audience, making them want to learn more about what the article has in store for them. A full list of power words can be found here.

Answer Your Readers’ Questions & Make Content Useful

To write really engaging content you need to answer the questions your readers have been looking for. This content should be in-depth and detailed to ensure they come away with something substantial. How do you give them what they want, you ask? To give your audience the content they’re looking for, you need to do some research. Here are a few areas of research that should be covered to really hone in on your audience’s needs:

Utilize Google for Your Digital Content Marketing Strategy Research

Google Keyword Planner is a great way to find out what’s on people’s minds in the topic niche or industry genre you’re in. To find out key topics to write about through Google Keyword Planner you can follow these steps:

Step #1 – Log into Google Keyword Planner and type in your niche or topic that you want your article to come under.

Step #2 – Work through the Ad Group Ideas and the Keyword ideas to give your insight into what areas your audience is looking into for answers. Arrange the keywords by the average monthly searches before looking for keywords that feature two or more words. These types of words generally indicate there’s a problem of some sort.

Step #3 – In seeing these keywords you should be able to come up with some possible problems that could be covered in a blog post. Some examples are as follows:

• Top Lighting Tips For Newborn Photography
• Best Time Of The Day For Engagement Photos
• How To Make Amazing Black and White Photos
• When’s The Best Time To Get Maternity Pictures?

Check Relevant Forums

Forums that are relevant to your industry are also suitable for research purposes. A lot of people use forums to ask questions they can’t find the answer to. All you need to do is find ones that mimic your industry or the topic you’re looking to cover and then write an article around it.

So how do you find forums to search? Simply write in the industry topic or keyword, and forum after it. As an example:

• Gardening forums
• Digital marketing forums
• Technology forums

Your search should bring up sites or lists of forum sites in your niche. This also applies to discussion sites and Q and A sites.

Get Answers From Your Social Media Followers

Social media is a powerful tool; it engages more people than any other content marketing platform. To find out what’s important to your followers, ask  questions such as:

• What’s your biggest challenge in accomplishing your goals?
• What problems have you run into this week?
• What’s a problem that’s continuing to bother you?

Asking relevant questions such as this will allow you to dig deeper into what’s important to your audience. It will also give you a foundation to work from when writing niche blogs.

 Overall

When it comes to writing engaging content there are so many ways you can achieve this. By bringing out their emotions, targeting specific words, and solving your audience’s problems you have a higher chance of having a successful digital content marketing strategy. Are you ready to write more engaging content?

This guest post was contributed by Aaron Gray, a passionate digital marketing expert and the co-founder of Command Center. Command Center is the first of its kind, a complete online management app for business owners. With Command Center, business owners can consolidate all their online assets, deliver insights into complex data in simple-to-understand reports, along with measuring the ROI on all digital campaigns. Aaron’s goal is to help business and website owners take control of their online marketing and assets to be able to make smarter business decisions.