How can content grab the center position and attract attention? A guide to creating explosive content!

The so-called hot-selling content is content that readers are happy to read, share, and forward. These contents may have more than 100,000 views and may generate good conversions .

Simply put, a hit product = high content engagement.

So, what is content engagement?

“Content engagement” is when real people respond to your content in a measurable way.

Different businesses, different types of content, events on different channels , and even different stages of the same marketing campaign have different definitions of content engagement.

Likewise, “engagement” also depends on your marketing goals.

If your goal is to get more email subscribers, sending them to more pages won’t necessarily help your engagement.

For most companies, content engagement is measured by the following indicators:

Total readers: The number of people who read an article, similar to UV.

Reading time: The amount of time each reader spends engaging with a piece of content.

Completion rate: The percentage of readers who finish an entire block of content.

Shares: The number of people who shared your content.

How to increase content engagement and create hits?

1. Make sure the content matches the title

David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather , once said: "If your title does not attract the audience's attention, it is equivalent to wasting 80% of the advertising fee. For the content, it is a waste of 80% of the energy and time."

In the era of Internet marketing , if the title cannot attract the user's attention at the first time, it may be a 100% failure.

It should be noted that the content promised in the article is disconnected or irrelevant to the content provided; the title is bold and attractive, but the content when clicked is pale and weak, lacking sufficient content material or evidence to support it, which is what we often call " clickbait ". It will make readers feel negatively deceived or gain nothing, affecting subsequent forwarding and sharing behaviors.

Commonly used title forms include: question-and-answer style, vernacular style, hot topic style, rhetoric style, emotional style, etc.

2. Use an introduction to grab attention

After the title, the introduction is arguably the most important part of any content. If this section is boring or unclear, readers will tune out in seconds. Here are 3 ways to write an introduction.

Tell a story

Start by partially concealing the information and grabbing the reader's attention by telling anecdotes, stories, and individual examples.

Smart Blogger Jon Morrow provides us with a reference.

Instead of revealing everything at the beginning, it whets the reader's appetite, makes them excited, and looks forward to the rest of the content.

This method has now become a more common soft-text technique used by many social media and self-media accounts, such as the various well-known Forbidden City and Taobao copywriting ; WeChat big account Mi Meng did a soft-text promotion for Zhenpin.com titled "How much money do you have to make to be considered successful?" 》, etc., all use funny, heart-wrenching, or interesting stories to attract readers.

Scare your readers

If you can make your readers feel like they’re missing out on something by not reading your content, you may also increase their engagement with your content.

You can start from the human weakness of fear and use emotionally rich trigger words such as "devastating", "terrible", "fatal", "miss", "lose", etc. to attract readers' attention.

Note all the highlighted words above. What these words mean is that unless you follow the advice in the article, you will scare away your potential customers - which is exactly what they don't want to see.

Make a bold statement

Making a correct and bold statement in the opening quote will create a pressure that compels the reader to read more.

Media Post Communications once sent out such a newsletter.

The article begins by saying, “We are at the dawn of a machine learning revolution.” This statement could easily attract readers in the marketing field and entice them to read on.

3. Add some humor

Marketing is a psychology.

When you put your users in a good mood, they will respond to you and your brand in a positive way. But never force humor; it must be used appropriately and naturally.

Do you still remember the "identity card" of Zhu Youjian, the Ming Dynasty emperor who was "pranked"?

Is there also the cute and domineering Emperor Yongzheng who became famous in “I Am Such a Man”?

The Forbidden City Taobao uses humorous and interesting articles to popularize people and history, allowing the culture and collections of the Forbidden City, which are once aloof, to slowly integrate into people's daily lives.

How powerful is this kind of “humorous and fun” content style?

In addition to the WeChat articles with over 100,000 readers each, the Palace Museum’s Taobao store has 2.459 million fans.

"Yongzheng Imperial Calligraphy" folding fans, "Top Hat and Flowered Feather" hat umbrellas, "Ji Xiaolan and Heshen" Q version decorations, Twelve Beauties stickers, "Open and Honest" chargers... one by one, the Forbidden City's cultural and creative products were all over the circle of friends as soon as they were launched!

Recently, the Forbidden City WeChat account of Renxing Taobao has released several articles selling rice dumplings, cakes, and sachets, and the number of readers is as high as ever. But the messages from fans are true love!

Humor is just a form; rich and valuable content is what is most important.

4. Create a sense of anticipation or ritual

It is important to create a sense of urgency before an activity begins. Whether it’s a teaser banner or video, a countdown or a series of photos, a sense of ritual in revealing a “secret” will be more eye-catching.

Many retail e-commerce companies are good at using this method, such as NetEase Yanxuan 's limited-time purchases, Taobao , JD.com's flash sales, Amazon's Z flash sales, and so on.

Office Direct Interiors also uses this technique for special offers. This is a simple countdown with an image of the product and the time remaining. It’s actually not difficult to do this.

5. Take advantage of hot trends

A video that quickly goes viral on YouTube , Tencent, Douyin or Weibo is likely to quickly develop into a hot topic that sweeps the entire Internet. Pay close attention to and monitor hot events or topics that may set off the Internet, and use them creatively to showcase your products/services.

When iPhone X was launched last year, major brands took advantage of it for hot marketing . Ele.me used "first scan the face, then scan the smell" combined with facial recognition to promote its own products.

The quiz with prizes that became popular some time ago, many corporate brands seized on this trend and user curiosity and created their own similar quiz with prizes activities.

However, be careful about the content you post and the hot topics you participate in, so that it fits with the brand and does not damage its reputation.

6. Use better content design

Which of the following two contents do you prefer?

Without a doubt, we would choose B.

The accumulation of large amounts of text is not only visually strenuous but also difficult to understand.

Readers love content that’s easy to read, and by using a visual structure that’s easier to read, you can keep your readers reading longer.

Create short paragraphs

Breaking up long sentences into shorter paragraphs will increase the readability of your content.

Content Visualization

Compared to using text to talk about the content, images can directly solve the problem of readability, are easier to process, and can convey information faster.

Utilize headings and subheadings

Headings can clearly divide the hierarchy of content. This allows readers to quickly jump to the sections that interest them. Additionally, breaking up a long article into sections can also make it easier for you to create content.

Follow the "Inverted Pyramid Model"

Journalism has always followed the inverted pyramid writing model. This model advocates putting the most important information first. This is a good way to structure content, allowing readers to taste the "sweetness" of reading as quickly as possible.

Smart use of format

Put the key sentences in bold or highlight them.

Because readers prefer to scan rather than read, they are likely to choose to read the text you highlight while scanning your article.

But don't overemphasize everything; too much highlighting equals no focus.

7. Transformation and Reshaping

If your brand is too traditional to really change, consider a traditional rebrand.

We have seen that many excellent traditional brands in China are actively trying and exploring to reshape their brands, some of the more successful ones include Pechoin , Wufangzhai and Liushen.

Founded in 1931, Pechoin has gone from being popular to almost disappearing. In the past two years, it has become the domestic brand with the highest market share in the domestic skin care products market, thanks to its brand reshaping.

1) In line with the trend of the times, the brand launched a new brand positioning of "herbal skin care" and catered to the consumption needs of young groups by re-developing and launching product series such as San Sheng Hua, Qi Yun and Hai Zhi Mi.

2) Use Internet thinking for marketing. Invite celebrities such as Jay Chou and Fan Bingbing as brand spokespersons to create a young and fashionable image for the brand.

Sponsor popular variety show festivals such as "The Voice of China" and " Happy Camp " to increase brand exposure. Use various innovative technologies and content marketing methods such as Moments ads , H5, and long posters to gain brand attention.

8. KOL Marketing

Because KOLs have a large number of fans and supporters, their opinions are very appealing and can often lead to direct customer triggers and conversion rates .

Cooperating with them and letting them display your products/services on various channels has become one of the many brand promotion strategies .

Whether it is internet celebrities such as Papi Jiang , Late Night Liu Lao Shi, and Mimi Meng, or opinion leaders in various vertical fields, they all have influence and sales capabilities that cannot be ignored.

Each post has a very high number of likes

9. Competitions and Prizes

Who doesn't want to be honored? Who doesn’t want to receive prizes and rewards?

Give users the opportunity to show and express themselves by organizing prize competitions/interactions, attract your followers, and get as much exposure as possible for your business.

For example, Sephora asked its fans to fill out a form to enter a contest where the prize was an all-inclusive five-day trip to Costa Rica and a year’s supply of surf products. Imagine how popular this campaign would be… Sephora could gain valuable information from it – detailed user data.

10. Create unique hashtags

On social media, we post all kinds of hashtags every day, but not every word or phrase will work.

Topic tags need to be relevant and attractive to the brand and products, be able to encourage users to generate UGC content, and have topic interactivity.

Commonly used topics can be event-based, such as #OPPO Zhejiang Satellite TV R15 Release Ceremony#, #Youku VIP Membership X Plan#; can be interactive, such as #Is an annual salary of 200,000 at the age of 30 considered a failure#, #Photo editing, breastfeeding and skin care#; can also be in the form of prize-giving activities, such as #Travel with Weibo#.

Choosing and using a good hashtag can bring more exposure and engagement to the topic, making it more likely to become a hot topic.

The key to content marketing is to get readers involved as much as possible. With more and more marketing channels today, maintaining the consistency and effectiveness of the content information delivered by the brand is a big challenge. For content marketing to be successful, a content marketing strategy must be firmly executed across all channels.

Relevant titles, interesting introductions, visually pleasing organization... paying attention to interaction and communication in the content marketing process will help brands create popular content and increase content engagement.