Everybody wants the content or message they provide to be received by their audience. Every communicator’s first impression lies on how effective the message was and how engaging their audience was during the time. Well, as a creator or speaker it becomes really important that the messages crafted are well structured, relevant and engaging. So before communicating your content you should focus on creating engaging and effective content for your audience.
The first thing that comes to mind is how do you even measure that your content was effective?
It is simple, your content effectiveness lies with what your goal was when you communicated your content.
What was the purpose of your content?
What do you want your audience to know about?
What do you want your audience to feel about the information they received?
What will they have to do after effectively receiving your content?
If you get the answer to the above question, it becomes easier to craft your content with the goal you want to achieve. So know your goal first, have clarity in your mind about what your topic should be and in what topic you should hone your message to the audience.
In the process of setting your goal right consider three main components that can give you clarity 🙂.
Components of Goals for effective and engaging content
- Information: The most important part of setting your goal is having clarity about what information you want to provide. What you want your audience to know about?
- Emotion: Then comes the feeling. Yes, use of emotive words can evoke your audience’s feelings about the message. It’s important that you make your audience feel about what you really want them to do after receiving the message.
- Action: Every message or the information has some purpose attached, it’s in digital terms called call-to-action. Making your audience aware about what they have to do with the information they just received.
Following the process of setting your goal right , then attaching the goal with the purpose you can actually measure the success of your content effectiveness. So it is important to have a process set then to convey a message which does not have purpose, it’s just a waste of time and energy. Always focus on giving quality messages rather than focusing on quantity of messages with no proper goals.
You now know that you have to set a goal, but neglecting your audience can cost a lot. So while setting your goal make sure you have done extra focus on knowing your audience. Tailoring and reflecting about your audience is a crucial part if you want your message to be remembered by your audience. So what does that even mean? Tailoring the message?
Reflecting the message? Let’s dive into knowing these.
Tailoring the message :
You will usually create content in the form that you most are usually comfortable with. Like, if you are a data person , using data to craft the message is the most easy way. Similarly, if you are a story lover, crafting your message with story type is what you will do. But, the audience that receives your message are different kinds, they might be a data person or a story person. So there is variety in your audience, which makes it more valuable if you tailor your message with variances. The whole message might include short stories, little data, testimonials, pictures, videos. Not more of any but a few of each making the content more attractive and more rewarding.
Reflecting your audience:
Reflecting on who the audience are? Understanding your audience, knowing what their knowledge is, what their expectations are, knowing their attitude about the message you are providing. These little things can influence and should influence the way you are communicating your message. This would ultimately make your audience receive your message in a better way and can be the most memorable one.
You have taken two most important steps in the path of making your content most effective, now after setting goals and knowing the audience the next step is engagement of the audience with your content.
Wondering how to engage your audience? 😀
Don’t worry there is a simple trick to it! You just have to know the ways you can get your audience engaged. There are two ways of engaging your audience with your content.
Two ways to engage for effective and engaging content
- Physical Engagement
Making your audience do something physically. If you are live -making your audience chat about something, if you are on stage-making your audience do small activities with you (you don’t have to make them walk or dance, simply make them do an activity that they can do sitting), if you are posting content online- encourage them to comment.
- Mental Engagement
It’s about engaging with your audience on an emotional level that triggers areas of the brain associated with attention and retention. The most useful mental engagement is the use of analogies in your conversation. Analogies are sentences which can help to bridge the gap between what your audience knows with what they don’t, letting your audience go deeper about something abstract. For example: life is like a mountain, you start growing and moving with the time but you also go down after a peak, cause life never remains the same.
Hence, the major takeaway here is that by engaging your audience physically and mentally, they are more likely to remember what you were saying and understand the purpose of the information they received.
Are you wondering that having a goal, studying audience expectation and knowing how to make the audience engaged will the content be effective?
Yes it will certainly be, but you need to properly structure your message as well. According to your targeted audience, you can structure your message in three different types. This structure is provided by Matt Abrahams, the Larsen Lam Family Lecturer in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and a much sought-after keynote speaker and communication consultant for Fortune 100 companies.
He says every communication should be structured in three parts with beginning, middle and ending. Each part is equally important and will benefit the audience. Having a structured message makes it look systematic and more convincing. It makes the audience feel thoughtful and engaged. As per your message you can choose any structure and insert your message into it and then present. Bingo! Your most effective and engaging content is ready to go live.
Types of Structure
Type 1 structure: .Comparison -Contrast- Conclusion
In this structure, first you list things in common, then secondly you list things that are different and then finally you provide your particular solution to it.
Type 2 structure: Problem-Solution-Benefit
Here, you grab a problem of your audience, then you provide a
solution and then show how beneficial it will be to your audience.
Type 3 structure: What- So what – Now What
The most useful among all three, where you start by defining “what” it is you’re talking about ( a product, a process or an idea) then you state why it’s important to people you’re talking to is “so what” and finally you give them their next step on “what to do” after receiving the message or how to utilize the information received.
All three of the different structures are effective ways of crafting your message according to your purpose and provide clarity about what you actually have to say and how to finish the ending. Having a structure is like a roadmap, you know where to go, and how to start and when to stop.
What to do next??
Craft your content choosing any type of structure mentioned above, with your defined goal and target audience. You are in a way to create effective and engaging content that is relevant, variant and emotive.
After crafting your content don’t forget to review it and learn from it, so that you can plan and improve for your next content. Repetition-Reflection-Consistency is the only way to get better at creating effective and engaging content.
Please comment below after crafting your impactful content and share your thoughts, your each and every comment is valuable.