Yes, a blog about not blogging, very contradictory, but copywriters of the world, fear not…!

Don’t let this title fool you, blogging is still a very relevant content type in the marketing world. It still brings in organic traffic, helps to create brand awareness and provides us with our daily knowledge/entertainment/news etc...

But, it’s very easy for businesses to simply rely on blogging to make up their entire content strategy.

Five years ago, simply creating a blog once a week around one of your industry keywords or phrases might have been enough to pass as a strategy… But in the uncertain days of 2018, it is no longer valid.

Why is this?

It’s because of the sheer number of blogs that are out there right now. WordPress provides a great insight into how much activity happens on their websites in real time. WordPress users alone post 82.6 million new posts a month… So just imagine how many others are also being posted a month on other platforms. It’s staggering!

There is so much SEO competition now for keywords across every industry you can think of.

But there is also another problem brewing in the blogosphere…

The actual number of people reading blogs in their standard text form has peaked and is now starting to drop.

Why could this be?

People are getting bored of the standard blog; they want something that engages them a little more, something that makes them think, ‘wow’!

So what is the solution to this?

It’s time to start thinking outside of the box!

Let’s get interactive

So what do I mean when I say interactive content?

It’s basically content that engages the reader or asks the reader to participate with the content on a certain level, rather than sitting and simply reading text.

The benefit of interactive content is that people are more likely to stay engaged and take in what the content is trying to offer. It turns content into an experience.

Let’s take the example of GDPR… Not the most thrilling of subjects, and there are thousands and thousands of blog posts out there about it.

Naturally, as a digital agency, we were getting asked questions around GDPR all of the time from our clients. We had published a blog on GDPR but we wanted to do something different that people could follow… a checklist to compliance.

So instead of creating a blog checklist, we decided to create an interactive checklist in the theme of descending the GDPR mountain.

At the end of the checklist, we link directly to our ‘What is GDPR?’ blog post to keep people interested and to give them more information.

Within 3 days of posting this interactive piece onto our blog, it was the most viewed and shared post for the month.

So let’s take a look at the types of interactive content you can create to get yourself out of that blogging mindset.

• Quizzes - Everyone loves a good quiz, especially an online quiz. It’s a fun way to engage your audience and can be a great lead generation tool if you gate the results page.

They are relatively easy to make and there are a multitude of tools online to help you make them.

• Interactive infographics - Like the one around GDPR we created, this type of content allows you to add another dimension around the topic you are talking about.

Highly engaging, visual and shareable, this type of content can elevate your content strategy to the next level.

• Interactive E-book - E-books are great for providing valuable information and knowledge to readers, but it’s often a slog trying to get through a static 20 page PDF document.

Instead, why not make your next E-book interactive? It adds a new level of depth to your content, allowing people to stay engaged throughout.

• Assessments or surveys - Not only are interactive surveys / assessments a great way to gather information from people, they are also a personalised, engaging piece of content that can give a customised answer at the end, depending on which options people have chosen.
• Interactive video - Video is already one of the most engaging types of content out there at the moment. But there is a new type of video content that allows even more engagement for the viewer… interactive video!

People can decide on the narrative, download content and even buy products without leaving the video.

• Games - Interactive mini games are a great way to keep your audience engaged with your brand whilst having a lot of fun.

They are also highly shareable and a great way to get your brand in front of more people.

Time to leave the blogosphere?

It’s not quite time to completely give up blogging for your company as the benefits are still there for many B2B industries.

But it is time to dip your toe in the interactive water and start to broaden your content offering a little more, particularly if you want to keep your audience engaged.

Many marketers fall at the first hurdle when it comes to creating interactive content because it takes more planning and design knowledge to create. But get over that hurdle and you will reap the benefits at the end.