Boosting Engagement with Interactive Content

It's not a secret that attracting the audience’s attention to your product is not enough, especially now that there are thousands of competitors in the market. The real strategic goal is to attract, engage, and motivate people to use or buy your product over and over again. One way you can achieve this is through interactive content: videos, games, polls, quizzes, e-books, and more. 

What is Interactive Content?

Interactive content is a type of content that engages users of a website or social media in interaction, making them active participants rather than just passive viewers. Thus, the main idea behind any type of interactive element is participation, although its goals can be quite different: from providing useful data to entertaining and adding a ‘wow’ effect.

That's why all digital marketing specialists, from small niche websites and profiles to large brands, e-commerce sites, and information resources, are looking to implement this powerful tools like NPS survey tools in communicating with customers and visitors to make interactivities as personal and engaging as possible.

Benefits of Interactive Content

Well-designed interactive content is twice as beneficial: it helps both the audience and the brand. In a highly competitive marketplace, it's more important than ever to learn the best ways to engage your audience and keep them connected to your brand.

For example, on social media, the frequency of spreading visual interactive content is 40 times higher than that of static content.

Interactive content is more effective than other types, not only because it increases engagement (which we know all algorithms love), but also because it keeps the audience’s attention on your brand longer and makes people remember you.

Types of Effective Interactive Content

There are different types of interactive content, and in the beginning, it’s best to pick a couple and test them out. Try different things until you have enough data to decide what type of content your audience responds best to, and then keep creating new ones. Here are some of the examples:

1. Contests, giveaways and quizzes

This type of interactive content requires the marketer to have a good understanding of the format and structure of the website and audience. The main idea behind contests, quizzes, and giveaways is to increase loyalty and traffic. So make sure it doesn’t become an unpleasant surprise or just a useless measure for your audience.

2. Audience surveys and polls

Surveys, tests, and polls are designed to help your audience choose a product/service, assess knowledge, or learn. In addition, they increase website traffic and help to drive it, for example, from social media.

3. Slideshows

You come across slideshows on websites and social media platforms every day. For example, online stores show slides with promotions and special offers on the first screen. This format will help the audience compare similar products and choose from a large number of goods, which will simplify their experience.

Tools for Developing Interactive Content

Don't believe anyone who says that using interactive content in business is always a huge and unjustified cost in terms of money and time. Whoever says so simply doesn’t know that you can generate such content on your own, without involving third-party specialists and spending a lot of money. For such cases, there are dozens of different services that automate a significant part of the work:

1. Interacty is a constructor for creating tests, interactive photo games, and much more.

2. Thinglink is a service for generating interactive images, videos, and graphics.

3. uCalc is an amazing platform for creating online calculators.

4. Madtest is a constructor of quizzes, tests, and quizzes. Moreover, they can be posted not only on the website but also on social media.

5. SurveyMonkey is a platform for creating surveys and conducting research. Also a very useful tool for analyzing the audience.

6. Mapme is a platform for creating interactive maps with labels, routes, descriptions, and notes.

7. Outgrow is a platform that has simple, no-code tools to acquire qualified leads. You can boost your marketing with quizzes, calculators, and forms.

8. Hix is a free AI search engine designed to facilitate inquiries, providing access to information on interactive content, such as quizzes and tests.

Overcoming Challenges

Sometimes, using interactive content is pretty easy. Built-in forms for voting and polls have existed for a long time in Instagram stories, pages, and groups on Facebook or X.

However, commercial websites differ in the types of services and products offered, and this affects the nature of interactive techniques and the relevance of their application. It’s not always easy to encourage the audience to take active action.

First, it can be costly to develop. Usually, creating interactive content creation strategy is a complex process, and it costs more than in the case of static content. In some cases, you might even need a program code.

Second, there is a high probability of failed implementation. There is a chance of offering irrelevant interactive elements, which will do rather more harm than good. You should always remember that, first and foremost, the content should be useful and helpful to the user. 

Examples of successful use of interactive content:

Let's look at examples of companies successfully utilizing interactive content:

Case 1: Interactive catalogs in retail: companies that enable customers to create interactive shopping lists with ratings and reviews see an increase in conversion to purchase.

Case 2: Gaming elements in educational courses: educational platforms that incorporate interactive elements into courses increase student engagement and, as a result, learning success.

Case 3: Spending calculators in the financial industry: banks and financial companies use interactive calculators to calculate costs and plan budgets, which helps users make informed financial decisions.

Conclusion

Today, interactive content is the key to any company's success in attracting and maintaining the audience’s attention. Use it to show the company's work from the inside or demonstrate a product. Don’t forget about simplifying the process of solving customer problems. And, of course, use appropriate animation, which will make the pastime on the page comfortable and pleasant.