People no longer cuddle with a blanket and steaming mug of tea in order to read every piece of content on your website. Instead, they can find anything they want or need with a click, swipe or tap. So your website needs more than just a blog article to stand out among the vast content of the internet.
A recent State of Inbound revealed that marketing automation, webinars and product how-to videos were important priorities of North American marketing teams. However, interactive content creation was the top priority.
Priorities of North American marketing teams:
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Interactive content creation (38%)
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Marketing automation (37%)
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Webinars (21%)
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Product how-to videos (16%)
Why does that matter? Interactive content is important and it’s not out of style anytime soon. We’ll tackle what it is, why it’s valuable for your business, and various tools that will help you test out interactive content creation.
What’s interactive content?
SnapApp helps marketers achieve greatness, unleash their potential, break through the noise and drive better results. According to SnapApp, interactive content is:
Content that requires the participants’ active engagement – more than simply reading or watching. In return for that engagement, participants receive real-time, hyper-relevant results they care about. Interactive formats add more value for the user by creating a two-way dialogue – enabling a personalized, user-focused experience from start to finish.
Summary: interactive content invites your visitor into your content through engagement. The content is as active as the visitor.
Think quizzes or questions, polls or preferences, or having to hover over something to reveal the content. (It feels like a young child eagerly exploring a lift-the-flap, pull-the-tab or slide-and-find book!)
Why is interactive content valuable?
First of all, your competitors have (probably) implemented interactive content on their website. Plus research shows that most people, especially millennials, would rather engage with their content than read a plain blog article or view a webinar. Roughly 45% of people rank interactive content in their top three preferred types of content.
Rather than pull SEO keywords out of thin air and hodge-podge together content, aim to hit the target of providing your visitors with the quality content that encourages them to remain on your site.
But the most valuable element of interactive content is its ability to foster lead generation. The more a person directly engages with your content, the higher value they will gain from it. And it’s if deemed valuable, then a visitor is more likely to share their personal information in order to continue using the content or see their results.
If your industry has content that feels boring, stale or old, interactive content could be the secret ingredient that re-engages cold leads and helps attract new ones. It’s revolutionary, strategic, and progressive.
What kinds of interactive content are available?
You’re in luck - there are various types of interactive content available to your company! Here’s just a few to consider:
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Tests and Quizzes. Save your customers time and money by crafting a free assessment. Ask the user a series of questions and then provide them with a result (usually via email so the assessment becomes a CTA). Consider a personality test or a knowledge-based quiz.
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Polls and Surveys. Discover what your users like with a basic poll or simple survey. Bonus: It gets your visitors engaged and it also helps you deliver more of what your users want! Example: What type of content would you like to see more of on our website? A. How-to blogs B. Videos C. Free printables D. Other.
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Contests and Brackets. Everyone loves free stuff! Entice your audience with a freebie. Think your people are more competitive? Then host a friendly competition where users play against one another in real-time.
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Interactive Videos. Most videos are a monologue of speech, visual content and text. Take your videos up a notch by adding interactive elements for an enhanced experience and higher user engagement.
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Webinars. Boost you webinars with 2-way communication! Invite your viewers to answer questions during the webinar, take a quiz to see the live results, or complete a few survey questions - each of which can help you customize your webinar to that particular audience.
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Product Demonstration or Tutorial. Help your customers make the decision to purchase your product or service with an interactive tutorial or demo. Allow your visitors to select specific parts about your product or service that they’d like to see, and then show them what they’re looking for.
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Interactive eBooks, Infographics or White Papers. Take content on your website that is already performing well, and morph it into an interactive eBook, infographic or white paper. While those are traditionally long and tedious to read, adding in quizzes, surveys, calculators or surveys make your good content into great content.
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Lookbooks. If you have a product that is customizable, then you should consider a lookbook. It’s an interactive element that lets users select and combine various combinations to create the desired product. Picture a fashion website that allows you to craft an entire outfit by choosing each element (shoes, pants, shirt, jewelry, skin tone, body type, etc.).
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Calculators. An interactive calculator takes data from the user and converts it into relevant information that they can use as a guide or support toward their goal. Examples include ROI, cost, revenue or time saving calculators.
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Interactive Press Releases. Say bye-bye to boring newspaper articles and say hi to videos, survey polls and resource centers. If your announcement invites engagement, then your press release is more likely to be shared and remembered.
Tools to help your company implement interactive content
In case you can’t tell, interactive content is fun, creative and should be added to your “need to do” list. But where to begin? Here’s a few helpful websites that will help you create and implement interactive content:
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Guides.co will guide you through the process of creating an interactive guide about the passion of your business.
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ThingLink takes your photos and videos to the next level with interactive features.
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Ceros helps you create interactive ebooks, infographics, magazines, lookbooks, nanosites or shoppable catalogs.
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ContentTools offers 7 types of interactive content: contests, trivia, polls, personality quizzes, ranker, caption this and can you guess.
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Brackify will help your business design an interactive bracket. You’d be surprised at innovative ways to run a bracket (other than based on sports)!
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Zaption inserts interactive, clarifying questions throughout educational videos.
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Last but not least is SnapApp, the company I mentioned in the beginning of this article. SnapApp boasts 9 different kinds of interactive content: polls and surveys, knowledge tests and quizzes, contests and sweepstakes, assessments and personality tests, calculators, brackets, and galleries.
...Now what?
You may have noticed that you’ll need to expand your budget to incorporate interactive content. Why does it cost so much? Because it works!
Interactive content is not going out of style anytime soon. If your budget isn’t at a place to expand yet, consider subscribing to the websites to catch some of their freebies. That allows you to test out different platforms while also experimenting with various types of interactive content until you discover the right fit. Besides, if you gain a handful of incredibly qualified leads, this will be more of an investment in your marketing than in you budget!
Ready to take the plunge with interactive content? The MindShift team loves to assist companies to incorporate engaging content and reach their goals. Find out how our team can help you!