Marketers
agree that the experience produced around their content pages (usually blog)
can make or break audience engagement. Yet, page engagement continues to rank
among the Top 2 Pain Points described by marketers when assessing their content
marketing challenges.
Since
you’re too busy managing your campaigns to delve into this topic and gain
clarity on how to improve the experience of your content page output, Fabl has
decided to tackle the subject for you (you can thank us later when your sales
team is so overwhelmed with all the leads you deliver that your manager gives
you some time off ;-)
By
examining a vast array of inputs, processes, tools and teams, we’ve condensed
leading content experience insights into the below 3 point list.
Number
1
Improve
Read Time
Did you
know the average human attention span in 2019 is 3-5 seconds? Did you know that
the average goldfish attention span is 9 seconds? That’s right, a freakin’
goldfish has an attention span almost twice that of the person
you’re marketing to. The struggle is real, y’all! So, why do we keep producing
pages of content that are delivered in a format that does nothing to grab and
retain attention? Be it pop-ups or sidebar widgets, busy animations or a lack
of immersion (think edge-to-edge, always), most content page layouts (designs)
feed into the highly distractible tendencies of our audience members. Give
people stuff to be distracted by and they’ll get super distracted by it! But
use design, content layout, page structure and user flow to retain and guide
your audience through the bulk of your pages’ content and they’ll thank you
with long read times, deep scroll depth and high conversion rates. As the
iconic Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe once said when it comes to
creating staggering results with design: “Less is More.”
Fact:
The human brain
processes information from pictures 60,000x faster than text.
Yup, not 60x
but 60,000x faster. So, always make it visual!
The data on high
quality video speaks for itself with a 13x increase in online video consumption
across the past five years #trending…
Challenge:
Name one person you
know who doesn’t enjoy watching cool videos online. Impossible, right? That’s
because it’s ubiquitous and, as marketers, we have a huge advantage by
embracing these facts and calibrating our content pages around
delivering the experiences that we, as consumers, love and enjoy and can’t wait
to share with our friends, family and colleagues. It’s no different in
marketing today; create the kinds of online content experiences that we, as
consumers, as people, value, remember, are emotionally stirred by, and the
positive business impact is staggering. By consolidating visual media sourcing
to a couple of trusted channels or platforms that deliver files in a format
that our content page creation system can ingest, process and deliver crisply removes
the guesswork and busiwork that get in the way of delighting readers.
Number
2
Reduce
Bounce Rates
So often,
we end up with ho-hum, text-dominated content pages that people bounce off,
skim over or, if we’re lucky, share on social media without actually reading
(it was probably a zinger-of-a-title that got the share, nothing more). The
pages of content we genuinely connect with, cite to peers or fall so in love
with that we willingly fork over our money (or, spend the even more valuable
currency of personal contact details…), are nearly all visually captivating and
slick to experience. These pages are not just populated with any imagery
or video, they’re populated with stunning imagery and video. These pages also
load fast, real fast. But sourcing high quality visual media, and
then processing and optimizing it to ensure pages we publish with it load
rapidly, is often a non-starter. The good news is this challenge isn’t much of
a challenge any more.
Start by
adopting a media optimization automation tool, letting software (not media
specialists or agencies) ensure your rich-media is formatted for all devices,
screen sizes, operating systems and browsers. Next, leverage any of the
countless rights-free online visual media libraries to put imagery first. Good
visuals + fast page load time is the critical combination to
successfully reducing bounce rate. Still not convinced? Two data points that
might help: A mere 1 second increase to page load time results in a 33%
increase to bounce rate & Visual pages get 94% more total views than text
pages [drops microphone].
Number
3
Inadequate
Engagement Tracking & Low Conversion Rates
It’s time
to stop tracking what our analytics systems tell us is important and start
tracking what our business results tell us are important. Most content
marketers depend on the global analytics associated with their company’s website
CMS. Wading through dozens of pages of exported Google Analytics reports to try
and wrangle some semblance of meaning into the campaign performance report that
is due this afternoon is enough to send a well-rounded person into the Psych
Ward. By focusing on the “Metrics that Matter” we can through the bath water
out but keep the baby…or something like that. In other words, pay attention to
audience behavior and interaction with content, on a granular level (scroll
depth before form submission rates jump, number of video consumption seconds
before users pause and move on, time on page as relates to increased pages
consumed) and allow these insights to shape your content strategy, your content
creation and your content delivery (design, user experience, page navigation).
By paying
attention to the core metrics associated with what, specifically, our audience
does with our content before consuming more of it, or better yet, before
converting, they give us a blueprint to follow for increasing the scale of
success. Take the time to onboard a system that provides the engagement data
you need to understand your audience’s needs, apply these insights to your
process and win win win.
https://stories.fabl.co/engagement?utm_medium=email&utm_source=sharpspring&sslid=MzMxMzWzMDYwNTMzAwA&sseid=M7SwtDC1tDQxMgMA&jobid=1ccedb76-03d5-4271-8a0b-3ec85f01d49a
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