Interactive Content: What Is It and How to Master It

Content marketing revolves around creating and publishing content aimed at your target audience. Content can be incredibly effective for encouraging people to return to your website, generating leads, and increasing engagement. Furthermore, it positions businesses as authoritative and knowledgeable sources in your industry, which in turn builds trust. It’s no surprise 97% of 1,500 businesses from different industries said content marketing is part of their marketing strategy.

Content is a valuable tool for any business. Given its versatility, businesses are able to showcase their brand values and personality. There are many types of online content to consider, such as:

• Blog posts
• Videos
• Social media content
• Interactive presentations
• Ebooks
• Guides
• Interactive content

Interactive content is growing in popularity and more businesses are taking advantage of it. But what is interactive content? Read on to find out!

What is interactive content?

Interactive content is any type of content that conveys a message by encouraging user participation. It can be a great tool for drawing audiences in and increasing user engagement.

Interestingly, 88% of marketing professionals claim utilizing interactive content helps them differentiate themselves from other brands. There is a wide range of types of interactive content that businesses can take advantage of, and below we'll discuss some of the most popular examples.

Interactive webinars

One of the easiest ways to dip your toe into interactive content is through webinars. A webinar is a live online video conference or presentation that allows the audience to get involved by asking questions and discussing the topic. By ensuring presentations give the audience the opportunity to join in, organizers increase engagement and keep their audiences interested.

Some tips for creating interactive webinars include:

• Start discussions – Initiate two-way conversations. Throw in thought-provoking topics and encourage the audience to express their thoughts.
• Offer criticisms – Ask the audience to submit questions and feedback in exchange for your opinions. Just make sure your criticisms are constructive and aren’t offensive.
• Include breaks – For example, schedule five-minute breaks for webinars that’ll last for two hours. During those breaks, the audience can have casual chats with each other.

Quizzes and polls

Quizzes and polls are another common way to engage with your audience. This type of content is flexible: they can be used as stand-alone pages or added to other pages of your website, such as blog posts.

Another benefit of quizzes and polls is they require minimal effort from your audience. Polls are less time-consuming than something like a webinar. Businesses can also gather valuable data from quizzes and polls in order to better understand their target audience.

There are many types of quizzes and polls. For example, multiple choice questions, image identification systems, and matching items together. You can also include a basic question-and-answer quiz. Below are tips for creating quizzes and polls:

• Simplify the user interface – Design with simplicity in mind. And clarify where users can find the navigational buttons.
• Add visual appeal – Create products that are good for the eyes. To do that, mind color choices, font choices, and layout.
• Use a friendly (and professional tone) – Show gentleness, avoid rude language, and toss questions with respect.

Interactive infographics

Infographics with interactive features can be a hit. Examples include moving graphics, scrolling effects, and disappearing text. As an example, check out this interactive infographic of social media in real-time. To create interactive infographics:

• Add animation effects – Apart from the examples above, include glitter, stickers, and bouncing emojis. Design with audio, too.
• Avoid monotony – Entice with information other than text. Load it up with images and rich media. Then, once a user clicks on a particular section, make graphs and charts appear.
• Hide parts of the content – Make basic information visible. Then, if a user clicks on a particular section, present an in-depth version of that information — just like the idea above.

Interactive video

Interactive videos give the viewer the ability to click on the video for actions to occur. The rise of live video in the past few years has altered the landscape for interactive video, too. For example, Instagram Lives allow people to watch and engage with a brand or user in real-time. Tips for creating interactive videos include:

• Feature a TOC – Add a Table of Contents (TOC) so the audience can play the parts they want. This way, they can replay, fast-forward, skip, and pause ideal portions.
• Test the audience – Insert a poll, quiz, or survey every three minutes or so. You can also ask for feedback at the end of the video.
• Include captions – Increase the accessibility of your video. Enable translations, too.

Benefits of interactive content

Understanding the types of interactive content available for businesses is one thing, but the benefits are another.

Get a Higher Engagement Rate

Engagement rate refers to how actively involved your audience is with your content. If your rate is low, it might indicate your audience is not interested in the content you're producing. Interactive content often improves engagement rates because it incentivizes your audience to get involved and respond.

Capture More Data

Capturing data is so important because it transforms information into something understandable — and as an extension, usable information. Interactive content can help to generate leads, collect data and further understand your audience. There are a variety of ways to build engagement with your audience, such as using personalization campaigns, chatbots, or leveraging social media.

Improve Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is a perception-based concept. It describes how the audience sees a particular brand to offer better quality. Brand-loyal people may buy every product that a particular brand features — a reason it’s essential to maintain (or improve) the level of brand loyalty. Interactive content can help build trust and increase retention rates, which in turn reduces churn.

Tips for mastering interactive content

Want to create hard-to-resist interactive content? Here’s how.

Determine a strategy

Before starting any new project, it's important to have a strategy in place. The same goes for content marketing. Consider the following when developing a content marketing strategy:

• Who is the target audience?
• What type of interactive content will appeal to that audience?
• How is success measured?

Know your audience

Knowing your audience is integral to success. After all, knowledge is power. And the knowledge of your audience’s identities will help you accommodate them effectively — and sell to them better. How can you get to know your audience better?

• Conduct social listening
• Understand your target audience by diving into market segments or personas
• Send out surveys to better understand your customers’ needs

Regularly review and analyze content

It’s essential to review and analyze your content to know if it’s effective or not. Without assessing your content, you may be wasting time and resources. An important part of reviewing your content is to understand what is working well and what's not. This enables you to then make improvements.

A few key metrics that can be tracked are:

• Conversion rate (because it tells you your content persuaded the audience to take action)
• Time on page (because it tells you how much or little time the audience spent on your content)
• Page views (because they tell you how many people viewed your content)

Conclusion

The common marketing phrase “content is king” is still true. However, audiences are now more demanding and expect more from businesses. If you want to stand out from the crowd and make your audience pay attention, interactive content is a great way to do that. Author Bio: Rebecca DiCioccio is the Marketing Manager at Paperform. Outside of work, Rebecca can be found exploring the outdoors or with a book in hand. Rebecca’s background in copywriting and a keen interest in SEO and digital marketing mean she understands the importance of staying up to date with the latest trends in a dynamic and ever-changing industry.