Interactivity Is A Major 2021 Content Marketing Trend: How Interactive Are You Really?
Digital content brings all you need to your smartphone screen. But the overabundance of content has reached saturation point. People need something extra, especially in a post-pandemic world.
When content becomes interactive, your audience is no longer skimming through a blog post or skipping ads on your video; they are actively engaging with the content. And interactivity will be a critical factor in making or breaking your brand in 2021.
What is Interactive Content?
As the name implies, interactive content allows the audience to go beyond watching or reading and more actively engaging with the content.
If you have ever taken a quiz like ‘Which character from [movie name] are you?”, you have engaged with interactive content.
In the past, digital marketers and SEO professionals largely relied on long-form content like blogs, white papers, and eBooks to reach audiences. And make no mistake about it, quality content still works. However, with so much static content already being published online, businesses need to adopt interactivity to stand out from the competition.
Major Types of Interactive Content
While interactive marketing boosts engagement, does it make any business sense to make your website, social media, or YouTube channel more interactive? The answer is yes. And here are some numbers to support that answer:
● 45% of B2B buyers prefer interactive content
● To cater to this market, more than 60% of B2B marketers are already leveraging interactive content
● 73% of marketers claim that using interactive content enhances brand recall
And while videos and infographics are still major players, 43% of consumers prefer interactive videos and infographics over non-interactive ones because it gives them greater control over their content consumption.
In short, they are three major business reasons for publishing interactive content:
Boost engagement
Improve brand recall
Generate data
For content marketers, interactive content provides “reusable” value, boosting multiple exposures and repeat visits.
Types of Interactive Content
Here are some of the best forms of interactive content that you can leverage in 2021 and beyond:
Online Polls, Surveys & Quizzes
Quizzes are easily manageable and highly engaging. Because they are fun and easy to complete, quizzes are highly shareable as well. The best part is, you can easily create quizzes using tools like Survey Monkey and Quiz Maker.
Calculators
Secondly, calculators and online tools have a high response rate, especially on e-commerce sites. These tools come in handy when you have to compare mortgage rates, insurance plans, investments, etc.
Interactive Graphics
Moving on, interactive infographics, image sliders, and 3600 images are also popular ways to make visual content more engaging. These types of graphics help in everything from before/after product comparisons to creative data representation.
Games
What’s more interactive than online games? Of course, not all marketers need to use this expensive and resource-heavy marketing tool but customized games can generate engagement, links, social sharing, and user data.
Webinars
With a rise in online learning, interactive webinars have allowed brands to reach out to their audiences in a highly personalized manner. All you need is a service like ZOOM to host engaging webinars and Q&A sessions.
Interactive Videos
Finally, you can also go for interactive videos. Once again, this marketing format is not meant for all kinds of businesses. But those who have tried it have found it to be successful. Netflix even produced an interactive film, Black Mirror, in 2018, where subscribers of the streaming service could determine the climax!
How to Create Interactive Content
As of 2020, almost 35% of marketers claim that 10% of their content is interactive. In the same survey, almost 90% of marketers said that they will make at least 10% of their content interactive by 2022.
The question is, how interactive are you?
Here are some tips to help you get started with interactive content in 2021:
● Consider your budget and resources
Interactive content requires higher bandwidth, money, and skillset. So keep your resource constraints in mind before ideation.
● Know your audience
There’s a downside to interactive content as well. Longer load times and higher bandwidth requirements can turn off users. Moreover, your audience may be looking for straight-forward information instead of interactive graphics, in which case your efforts will prove counterproductive.
● Consider a trial run
Before you go for full-scale integration, try to optimize one area of your customer’s journey and then move on from there. This will also help you gauge audience interest.
● Repurpose old content
Finally, you don’t always have to build interactive content from scratch. You can easily turn a top-performing blog post into an interactive infographic, or a white paper into a webinar. The possibilities are endless.
And before you invest in full-scale competencies, you can always take advantage of third-party apps and services and services to create, publish, and manage interactive content.