With attention spans at an all-time-low of eight seconds, small businesses are having to change the way they market their products on social media.
With limited time to entice potential customers, who are likely gripped by constant scrolling, growing businesses are struggling to stand out on social media. This has led many to pivot towards interactive content in order to be seen.
The aim of interactive content is to enhance audience engagement and increase their familiarity with your business and ethos, which leads to higher conversion rates. So, before you push on with your static content strategy, read on to find out how to transform your content into an interactive, money-making machine.
What is interactive content?
Interactive content refers to anything on social media that encourages user participation, engagement and interaction. Unlike static content (such as text posts or images), interactive content is designed to create a dynamic experience for users, making them feel more involved and engaged with the content.
This type of content often requires users to take some action, like clicking, swiping, answering questions or sharing their opinions.
The benefits of interactive content on social media
You can barely scroll through three social media posts without being met by some form of one-sided sales pitch. It may be a product, a course or a piece of software that will help you to make a million in a matter of hours. Social media scrollers are unlikely to have the attention span for these posts, skipping past them without a moment’s thought.
But don’t panic! This is where the benefits of interactive content come in.
Standing out from the crowd
According to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute, 81% of marketers believe that interactive content is a more effective attention grabber than static content. This is largely because it acts as a relief from the mindlessness of most online content, especially short-form TikToks and Instagram reels.
Offering a sample
‘Try before you buy’ has been a mainstay of physical marketing for decades, giving consumers a risk-free trial of the product on offer. People are far more likely to purchase what you have to offer if they are exposed to it in action first.
A break from the mundane
There are few people with access to social media accounts that haven’t found themselves deep in a wormhole of mindless scrolling. Giving your audience something to do, or think about, is a welcome relief from the mundanity of short-form content.
Types of interactive content
There are plenty of variations of interactive content, some which require a bit more technological guile than others to set up. Thankfully, most interactive content can be crafted to work seamlessly alongside your pre-existing content strategy.
Polls and quizzes
Two of the most simplistic forms of interactive content are polls and quizzes. Not only will they increase audience engagement with your post, they enable you to find out more about what your audience wants. They will also allow the audience to self-diagnose a problem that you can solve.
Infographics
Infographics can help you hammer home why your demographic needs the product you have on offer. Infographics can be made interactive by having your audience scroll along to reveal statistics in full detail.
Games
Producing your very own game relating to the product/service you’re offering will either require a large budget or an abundance of technological know-how. If you’re fortunate enough to have this backing, games can be one of the most effective ways of getting new customers on board. Think of something simple and unique and they can also be a real money spinner, just look at the success of Wordle.
Interactive storylines
Creating an interactive storyline that takes a viewer to a different product depending on the choice they make requires extensive thought. However, it will prove effective. If you’re selling a variety of products, it can help you redirect the customer to a tailor-made item, increasing the chance of a purchase.
By integrating interactivity into your content, you’ll stand out from the masses of formulaic, skippable content polluting social media and familiarise audiences with your brand. This will boost leads, turning potential sales into reality.
Written by Alex Blackman (Portfolio)
Alex is a content writer based on the banks of the River Blackwater in Maldon, Essex. His professional career has seen him write for a multitude of publications about a range of topics, including health, entertainment and possessed pets. He has also spent time working as a journalist, reporting on gritty, hard-hitting stories about cheese festivals, footballers’ autobiographies and parking fines.
His ideal day would consist of listening to The National on repeat while devouring loaf upon loaf of sourdough bread.
