In a world where we are constantly bombarded with content, it can be hard for you to break through the noise and entice readers into clicking on your content. Sadly, fantastic content alone isn’t enough to draw in a huge audience. You need a fantastic headline to match. Your headline is the first thing a reader sees, hence why it can ‘make’ or ‘break’ your content. Have a boring headline and no one will ever click through and read your content, putting all your content marketing efforts to waste. But have a catchy and engaging headline and watch the readers flock to your content.

So, you may be wondering, how do I write a catchy and engaging headline that will entice readers? We’ll get into that with these 5 tips, just keep reading.

1. Trust your gut

When you create your content, you should have some indication of what your content is about and what title could be relevant. Just write it down. This will be your starting point, write what is relevant to the content you wrote then morph that title into something that is attention-grabbing and intriguing.

2. Make it short and snappy

A title or headline can ultimately make your break your content, as it can make a huge difference to whether audiences will be compelled to ‘stop’ or ‘go’ at your post.

A catchy title should reach out and grab the reader by intriguing them and peaking their interest. Therefore, your title should always hold keywords that evoke a response from the reader, enticing them to view your content. By using questions to appeal to the readers hunger for knowledge this can increase the readers response to the title, making them want to find out more, and gain something from a grabby, thought provoking question. Audiences are bombarded on a daily basis with content, so to stand out we need less; so make it short and snappy.

3. The numbers add up

A catchy headline doesn’t just mean how suave you can sound, neither does it mean drumming the content up to be the most amazing new thing that the world has ever seen. Headlines are most effective in their simplest of forms, in fact, around 36% of readers prefer simple number orientated headlines. For example a simple number oriented headline could be ‘4 reasons why you should switch to HTTPS’ or ‘5 website must haves for an excellent user experience’. Headlines like this are more likely to attract readers as they are simple.

4.  Optimize, Optimize, Optimize

As stated already, keywords are a vital asset to utilise, as they can assist in increasing your search engine visibility. By utilising keywords in your headings, you are allowing your content to be found more easily and accurately. Your titles should be built around the keywords that are most important to the content of your article. But that doesn’t mean you should utilise ‘keyword stuffing’, allow your focus keywords to guide you in writing your title, without allowing them to take over.

5. Solve a problem

Just like a call to action a headline should draw readers in. You can do this by providing a solution to a problem that relates to your reader. Often readers will wonder ‘why should I keep reading’, by presenting your content as a solution to a problem that they have they are more likely to read on in hopes that you will assist them in solving that problem. For example, ‘Running out of blog topics? Try these 5 tips’ catches the attention of readers who are running out of blog topics and makes them intrigued by the idea that you may be able to provide them with a solution.

And there we go. By now you should feel more confident in creating a catchy and engaging headline. It’s important to always keep your audience in mind when creating your headline. They don’t want to read something that appears boring. But equally they don’t want to be tricked by ‘clickbait’ into reading something that is not at all relevant to them. So keep your audience top of mind when creating your headlines, what does your audience like and what do they want? What excites them and what annoys them? Just take the time to understand your audience and you’ll be on your way to content marketing success.

By Lydia Barley

Photography is an essential part of content marketing. As mentioned in our last blog post how to make your content visually appealing and relevant for your audience making your content visually appealing with images is extremely important in creating engaging and easy to read content. Quicksprout found that content with relevant images get 94% more views than content without images. This shows that not only are images crucial for creating great content, but they also help draw people in to your content.

So by now you might be freaking out, especially if your business doesn’t naturally engage in photography and have the tools and skills necessary to create appealing images. You have no need to fear however as there’s a growing number of websites that provide free stock photos popping up all over Google. In this blog post we will share some of the best. All of which can provide your business with stunning images (not corny stock images of people in suits waving at the camera with a cheesy grin!).

1. StockSnap

URL: https://stocksnap.io/

StockSnap brings together high quality images from a huge pool of submissions. Making them available for downloading, copying, modifying and distributing for both personal and commercial use for free, without asking for the photographers permission. StockSnap has a tag based category system allowing you to search for ‘keywords’ that describe the image you are after. Your search can be as broad as ‘happy’ to as specific as ‘dachshund puppy in the snow’.

2. Pexels

URL: https://www.pexels.com/
Pexels, similarly to StockSnap provides high quality photos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license, allowing users to download, copy, modify and distribute the images provided for both personal and commercial uses. Pexel have a broad range of photos, with over 40 000 free stock photos. Every month Pexel add a minimum of 3000 high resolution photos to their collection. Pexel also has a tag based category system where users can search for relevant images by putting a keyword into the search bar.

3. Unsplash

URL: https://unsplash.com/

Unsplash has one of the largest collection of images with over 300 000 high resolution photos. These photos are provided by a community of photographers from around the world. Unsplash continues to add to it’s collection of images each day, with thousands more photos being added each day. With that many photos, it’s highly likely that Unsplash has the image that you’re hunting for! Users can scroll through the new photos for the day or they can use Unsplash’s search feature if they know exactly what they are searching for. All of Unsplash’s images can be used for both commercial and personal use without providing attribute to photographers.

4. Burst

URL: https://burst.shopify.com/

Burst is another free stock photo website, however burst is powered by popular ecommerce platform, Shopify. Burst’s range consists of thousands of high resolution images, taken by a community of photographers from all over the world. Just like all of the other platforms discussed, Burst provides all photos free for both personal and commercial use with no photographer attribution required. Burst categorizes it’s images into themes such as ‘coffee’, ‘fitness’ and ‘fashion’. In addition to these themes, users can search for the image they are after in the search bar provided. Burst will pick up on the keywords you use and find relevant images.

By now you should feel more relaxed and ready to begin gathering a collection of images for your content. There are an abundance of free stock photo websites out there (that aren’t all cheesy!), we simply discussed 4 of the most popular. With both a strong content marketing strategy and SEO strategy you’re on your way to business success.

Are you looking for assistance with your content marketing or SEO? Ignite Search can help! Contact us today.

By Lydia Barley

43% of people said that the primary reason they unfollowed a company/brand on social media is because they post irrelevant or unappealing content. Alarming, right? This statistic shows the importance of ensuring that your content is both relevant and appealing for your audience as opposed to just smashing out as much content as possible. While taking the time to generate content for your audience is great, that time is wasted if your audience feels as though the content is irrelevant or unappealing. So, how can you ensure that your content is relevant and appealing? Well, in this blog we have gathered a list of tips to help, so keep on reading.

1. Know your audience

When your content falls flat this is usually because it’s not what the audience was looking for, hence why it’s important to understand who you’re delivering your content to and why. If you post content based on a topic that your audience has no interest in they will not bother to engage with it. Knowing what your audiences’ interests are will allow you to create content for them that they will be interested in and will engage with.

How you can get to know your audience

• Look at your Analytics on the platform that you are using – These analytics will provide you with an insight into the demographics of your audience. Some platforms have an analytics feature built in, such as Instagram, which allows business account users to see the ages, genders and locations of their audience. In addition to built in analytics features there are a range of other sites that will allow you to analyse your analytics and audience demographics (such as Hootsuite).
• Take the time to engage with your audience and get to know them – This will not only build relationships with your audience, but it will provide you with an insight into their interests and the type of people that they are.

 

Pictured: Hootsuite Analytics – Facebook Insights

2. Answer questions that your audience has

Answering questions that your audience has and are seeking answers to is a sure way to ensure that your content is relevant to them.

How to know what questions your audience has

• Ask them – There’s no simpler way to find out what questions your audience has then to just ask them. You can ask them directly face to face or via a social media post, an email, a phone call, a poll or a questionnaire.
• Visit Q&A platforms – Visit popular Q&A platforms (such as Quora) and see what people are asking about in your industry.
• Read your comments, engage with your audience and look what’s up on social media about your industry – More commonly than not, you’ll stumble across some relevant questions that your audience are seeking answers for.
• Use platforms that have a question finder feature – There are a range of different platforms that have question finder features, such as Ahrefs and SEMRush. These platforms will provide you with a list of questions relevant to your selected keyword.

3. Make your content visually appealing

Making your content visually appealing is extremely important for attracting, maintaining and generating engagement from readers. Making your content more visually appealing makes it seem more interesting and easier to digest. If people think your content is too hard to digest they’ll just leave.

How to make content visually appealing

• Write shorter sentences – Shorter sentences make your content easier to digest.
• Organize your content into shorter paragraphs – Organizing your content into visually recognizable chunks also makes it easier for readers to digest. Larger chunks are harder to skim and are harder to follow.
• Use subheadings– Using subheadings further organizes your content into chunks and makes it easier for ‘skimmers’ to understand what your content is about.
• Use dot points – Breaking up your text into dot points works similarly to organizing your content into shorter paragraphs, making it easier to digest.
• Use charts, graphs and infographics –charts, graphs and infographics can break up your content and make it easier to read, some people are also visual learners who remember and digest content easier when it’s visually demonstrated.
• Use images– Not only can images break up content and make it easier to read, relevant images can add to the experience also. Quicksprout actually found that content with relevant images get 94% more views than content without images.

Pictured: Blog post How to Get Online Reviews and Manage Negative (or Fake!) Reviews

So in summary, ensuring that your content is appealing and relevant to your audience is crucial for your content marketing success. Particularly as audiences today don’t just desire relevant, appealing and engaging content, they expect it. By now you should recognise that this can be achieved by simply knowing your audience, answering questions that your audience has and creating visually appealing content.

Looking for assistance with your content marketing or SEO? Ignite Search can help! Contact us today.