Publisher success boils down to attracting, keeping and growing audience numbers. And that depends on producing killer content.
The publishing world is incredibly competitive, with audiences demanding to be wowed with each piece of new content. Successful content must be visible, memorable and shareable to stand a chance in an increasingly crowded content arena. Every new piece needs a catchy headline, stellar SEO, eye-grabbing visuals and compelling storytelling.
This makes content engagement a critical metric to understand, given that it defines how effective publishers are connecting with their audiences. Let’s take a closer look at the vital elements of content engagement, dissecting what it means, the best ways to measure it and techniques to enhance it.
What Is Content Engagement?
Content engagement measures a piece of content’s effectiveness at getting the audience to interact, share and take a relevant action. It extends beyond pageviews and likes to encapsulate a range of behaviors, including clicking on links, commenting and sharing posts. The ultimate goal is to create engaging content that sparks these various forms of interaction.
These interactions serve as valuable touchpoints, providing real-time insights into audience preferences and behaviors. More than just statistics, they offer a window into how audiences experience content, allowing publishers to refine and improve their strategies accordingly.
Why Is Content Engagement Important?
Content engagement is crucial as it’s a fundamental measure of content’s effectiveness in capturing audience attention.
With competition for that attention on the rise — there are around 200 million active websites worldwide — it’s essential to make every interaction count.
How to Measure Content Engagement
For publishers, their website is often the central hub for their content, meaning they must understand how well it’s engaging their audience.
To that end, performance metrics that offer insights into visitor interaction and on-site behavior become invaluable. They serve as crucial indicators for content performance, helping fine-tune digital marketing and editorial strategies for maximum impact.
Let’s focus on a few key metrics that provide insights into content engagement.
Average Session Duration
How to track: Google Analytics > Audience > Overview
The average time users spend on a website can indicate the quality of its content and how well it meets their needs. To put it into perspective, the average time spent on a website was around 55 seconds in 2022. A longer session often means users are finding value in your content.
Form Completions
How to track: Google Analytics > Conversions > Goals > Overview
When a user fills out a form to subscribe to a newsletter or download an eBook, it strongly indicates that they value that content. The number of form completions directly relates to the strength of the calls to action (CTAs) used.
Comment Sections
How to track: Google Tag Manager or directly in your CMS.
An article or blog post with a comments section can serve as a valuable gauge of user engagement. Comments can inform publishers about the aspects of content that are resonating with their audience.
Source: The Verge
A lively discussion in the comments can turn a simple post into a community hub where readers share their experiences, tips or questions. This enriches the content experience and extends its value. This is a perfect example of leveraging user-generated content (UGC) to add value to the content and bolster engagement.
Publishers can later use these discussions as inspiration for new content, diving deeper into topics their audience is passionate about.
Social Media Metrics (Likes, Comments and Shares)
How to track: Native analytics on each social media platform, such as Facebook Insights or Twitter Analytics.
These are the metrics usually come to mind when we talk about social media
engagement. They can provide a lot of information about how relevant and appealing content is to the audience.
Shares are significant among these metrics because they extend the content’s reach, effectively turning the audience into brand advocates. A high number of shares often indicates that your content is engaging and valuable enough to be passed along.
Social Media Referral Traffic
How to track: Google Analytics > Acquisition > Social > Overview
While social media likes and shares can offer valuable insights into audience engagement, the number of clicks that lead back to the website are just an equally valuable content engagement metric.
For instance, tracking clicks from social media posts to important articles or landing pages on a website is highly revealing. It demonstrates that the audience is not just passively liking or sharing the content but is actively engaging by taking additional steps to learn more.
How to Improve Content Engagement?
Attracting eyeballs is only half the battle. The real challenge lies in engaging the audience effectively. Here are some actionable strategies to improve content engagement.
1. Know The Audience
Start by constructing a comprehensive buyer persona, representing the ideal consumer. This persona serves as a guide for strategic decisions on content production. It should outline:
- Content consumption habits
- Communication channels
- Interests
- Needs
- Pain points
- Demographics
By understanding these attributes, publishers can pick the best topics, channels and tone to capture audience interest.
The New York Times, for example, went beyond basic demographics and dove into reader behavior using data analytics to understand how different segments of its audience interacted with their content.
This enabled it to tailor their content strategies to focus on user-generated content (UGC), evergreen content, real-time news updates, and other forms of material that resonated well with specific audience segments. As a result, NYT saw a significant increase in engagement rates, including shares, comments and time spent on articles.
2. Optimize Content Distribution Channels
The channels used to distribute content can significantly influence its reach and engagement. Platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) have made organic reach more challenging. However, paid promotion options such as boosting a Facebook post can extend reach considerably, potentially attracting new audience segments.
For websites, tools such as Google Analytics help identify high-bounce-rate pages and low form-completion rates on websites. Consider using plug-ins such as Scroll Depth to analyze user behavior and optimize CTA placement. If crucial CTAs are being skipped, it might be worth relocating them to more visible sections or enhancing the content to retain reader attention.
The Washington Post adopted a comprehensive distribution strategy beyond its native platform. In addition to its website, it maintains a strong presence on various social media channels and syndicates its content through news aggregation platforms.
Its email newsletters are also strategically segmented to deliver targeted content to specific reader demographics, which has increased click-through rates (CTRs) and engagement.
This multi-channel approach allows it to reach diverse audience segments effectively, thus increasing engagement.
3. Craft Immersive Experiences Tailored to Your Audience
Once publishers understand their audience well and establish a presence across multiple platforms, they can lay the foundation for engagement. It’s not just about where the content is posted and how it looks, it’s also about how the audience experiences it.
Leverage Live Experiences
Take the trend of live streaming. Live experiences such as webinars, lectures and performances have grown in popularity in recent years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. These interactive formats can lead to high engagement rates, as they offer real-time opportunities for audience interaction.
Consider hosting a live webinar on a topic that resonates with audiences. Webinars allow real-time interaction through Q&A sessions and polls, fostering a sense of community and engagement.
TED Talk bundles its back catalog of talks with live streams of future events to create added value for its audience.
Source: TED Live
User Interface and Navigation
Publisher websites are primary hubs where experiences often start. User interface and navigation are, therefore, crucial.
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Leverage heat maps and user testing to understand how visitors interact with the site. If there’s a high drop-off rate on specific pages, consider it a red flag indicating the need for improvement.
For instance, Airbnb, known for its intuitive user interface, provides a seamless booking experience. Simplifying the user journey with straightforward navigation and user-friendly filters encourages visitors to explore more listings, extending their time on the platform and increasing engagement.
Fundamentals such as removing friction from the buyer journey and visual design and consistency are universal when it comes to digital navigation.
Visual Branding and Emotional Resonance
Maintaining a consistent visual brand across platforms creates a more unified and engaging user experience. Create a visual language for the brand using colors, fonts and graphics. And remember the emotional aspect.
Create content that evokes feelings — inspiration, trust or excitement — to fully engage the audience.
Apple is a prime example of effective visual branding. Its clean and uncluttered design approach makes its products and interfaces easy to understand and use. And publishers should also care about their branding.
Take North American sports publisher The Athletic, which teamed up with New York design studio Gretel In 2018 to revamp its branding. The publisher engaged the studio to develop its “brand story” and expand its “creative toolkit”.
Source: Gretel
Gretel used the inline A as the starting point for the publisher’s new design language, which heavily emphasizes slab characters.
Experiment and Innovate
Finally, never be afraid to experiment. Whether adopting new content formats or diving into emerging social media platforms, the digital landscape is constantly changing. Keeping abreast of these changes and being willing to adapt is crucial for creating memorable experiences that resonate with the target demographic.
BuzzFeed built an entire brand identity around listicles and interactive quizzes and, despite the company’s financial woes of recent years, the latter still serves as a great illustration of content innovation. By offering personalized content experiences, BuzzFeed managed to engage users and keep them on-site longer.
Final Thoughts
Content engagement is a multifaceted metric that validates the content’s relevance and usefulness. Engagement is vital for brand loyalty and business success and is achieved when publishers know their target audience, research trends, optimize distribution channels and create emotionally resonant experiences.
Creating engaging content is now as much a science as it is an art and requires equal parts relevant data insights, human-centric storytelling and content marketing strategy. The editorial department needs to work more closely than ever before with the marketing team to be able craft an effective content engagement strategy.
