Originally published June 21, 2021 , updated on September 2, 2024

Having an online presence has become a vital part of an effective marketing strategy. It’s important when trying to attract the right audience to your company and brand. However, simply having a website or social media pages is not enough. You need to create fresh content regularly to keep your audience and customers engaged. Also, the pieces you create need to be highly engaging to keep them coming back. For that, you may need the help of content writing services.

Before publishing anything to your website, blog or social media platforms, determine whether you find it interesting and would engage with it yourself. If not, it’s time to start again, chat to a content writing agency or service and create pieces that will be interesting and add value to your readers. 

Creating Content with Content Writing Services

Here are some ways to tap into your creativity and create engaging, relevant and valuable stories and articles for your audience. And if you struggle even after this, you can always use professional writing services or a content writing company.

1. Make Use of Content Writing Services

Content writing agencies are professionals at what they do. They are the experts, so before you even try to do it yourself, definitely look into using a company. An agency will be able to best optimise your pieces for SEO, they are able to provide regular pieces and because they are excellent at what they do, you should assume that the pieces will be highly engaging. At least you should expect it from a good content writing company. 

2. Make Sure That Your Content Uses Subheadings

While we hope you read this piece in its entirety, if you scroll down and skip the paragraphs, the subheadings will give you all the tips you need. The use of subheadings breaks up a long-form piece and makes it easier for the reader to consume the information in bite-sized pieces. Long pieces tend to lose readers early on, whereas smaller chunks broken up by subheaders can hold their attention a lot better.

3. Ensure That You Tell a Good Story About Your Services Through Your Content

This seems obvious, but you will be surprised at how many people and companies produce random pieces of content. These pieces don’t often have a logical flow, tell a good story or are even relevant to the brand. Ensure that what you put out either makes for an entertaining read, provides valuable information, motivates people and has a clear call-to-action. A good story has one or more of these elements; otherwise, it can tend to get a bit boring.

4. Use Images and Video as a Way of Getting Your Content Out

There are many ways to tell a story, and it’s not all through words. Engaging content doesn’t always have to be entirely written. In fact, a recent survey by Hubspot found that 49% of marketers use visuals on their blogs and websites. Yes, you can use words, but it’s essential that you bring in visual elements as well. There’s a reason people say a picture is worth a thousand words. A well-placed or well-shot image can do wonders in telling a story. The same goes for video. Video consumption has increased tremendously over the last couple of years, and there’s no stopping it. Look into video as part of your bigger strategy. These types of media can prove to be highly engaging.

5. Use Lists to Make Your Content More Engaging and Easier to Read

Similarly to subheadings, lists are a great way to break up long-form pieces. Turning a piece of writing into a list immediately makes it more digestible. Some of the best content writing services and agencies often use lists. Long-form pieces can easily be cut up in this way because they know people will engage with this more. It’s also something that people are more likely to save and refer back to at a later stage.

6. Be Clear on What You Want Your Pieces to Say

No one is going to engage with or share content that is muddled and makes no sense. Ensure that your message is 100% clear and that you write concisely. Confusing pieces, whether long blogs or shorter social media snippets, will put people off. They will go elsewhere to find information that’s easier to read and much better to engage with.

7. Link to Other Parts of Your Website

Include links to other pieces on your website. Not only is this great for SEO, and any SEO content writing service will swear by this, but it also creates value for the reader. They stay on your site longer and end up reading more of your pieces. They will also likely comment or share the information if they dive deeper and find your website to be incredibly valuable and useful.

8. Quote Well-Known Sources

Using well-known sources in your writing builds a sense of trust and credibility around your brand and the information that you share. By quoting high-profile people, establishments or media outlets, you immediately make your content more engaging to lovers or followers of the person or company you are quoting.

Be sure to cite your source as you use them as a way of crediting the original source. 

9. Write Clear Headlines

Catchy headlines work in the news. It doesn’t work as well for engaging pieces and writing articles that give people information. People want to know what they are in for before they click on an article or story. If your story is about how to pick yourself up after your business failed, say that in the headline. Don’t try to be too smart with your headlines. If people don’t know what the story is about from that first look, they won’t engage with it.

10 End the Story at the Right Time

It can be very tempting to chase a word count with a story. Maybe you’re a content writing service, and you have been briefed to write 2 500 words. Or you’ve read that there’s a magical number of words that makes your piece highly engaging. Yes, sometimes you need to write long-form articles, but if you’ve told your story in 1 500 words and anything more feels forced, then wrap it up. Be concise and don’t be overly verbose just to meet a certain word count. The same goes for video. Yes, the sound of a 10-minute short movie sounds great, but could you say everything you want to in three minutes instead? Don’t drag things out, as it will cause people to bounce off. 

11. Make Sure What You Distribute Is Valuable

Ultimately, you really want your stories, statues, newsletter and articles to be valuable to others. What do you do when you stumble upon a piece or a social media post that adds value to your life? This could be a motivational quote you came across, an article that helped you personally or in your career or even a tweet that made you think differently about something. Chances are, you probably liked or retweeted the post, or shared the story. All of these are acts of engagement, and if you or your content writing company create posts that add value, you will find more people engaging with that piece.

Conclusion

If you don’t succeed in creating highly engaging pieces right off the bat, don’t fret. Go over this list again, try another time or, as we mentioned at the start, hire a company that specialises in SEO content writing services. Content is king, as they say. Now is the time to take on the challenge and ensure that you are putting out high quality, engaging and valuable pieces.

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