Creating engaging website and social media content to attract more customers to your business is a key skill for digital marketing. Often, the most attractive digital content looks like it was created effortlessly, but that’s hardly ever the case – in the majority of cases, the content creator will have used dedicated software and/or hardware to make their photos, videos and text look as enticing as possible. Here are some ways that you too can learn how to create engaging digital content.

1. Use a Graphic Design Programme

Graphic design software is not just for creating complex products such as magazines or videogames; you can also use graphic design programmes to create sleek social media posts and to edit photos and videos. If you have never done any graphic design before, start by using Canva, a web-based design platform with free functionalities that make designing easy for novices by giving you scores of modifiable templates to choose from.

Once you learn more about graphic design and its principles – the book Graphic Design School is excellent for that purpose – you can graduate to more complex software. Top tip: choose Affinity Designer over Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, as it offers pretty much the same features for a fraction of the price.

2. Learn about Search Engine Optimisation

The term Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short, refers to a series of practices that web and content developers use to maximise the chances of their websites ranking highly among search engine results – in other words being near or at the top of the results list on Google, for example. SEO is a complicated and ever-changing field, with several elements that you need to keep in mind, such as:

• keywords
• metadata
• user intent
• campaign analytics
• site maps
• links
• indexing
• post engagement

… and more! If you have no idea what any of these terms mean, the best thing you can do is enrol onto an SEO boot camp or – for a much more comprehensive education about all the elements of successful customer engagement through the web – a Master in digital marketing. Since search engines and social media platforms change their algorithms so often, it is crucial to listen to the experts who have the time and resources to keep up with the latest updates in the field, or your knowledge will soon become outdated.

3. Research the competition

Another strategy for creating engaging content is to pay attention to the kind of work your competitors are producing and the different platforms they are using. Either emulate them or create your own, differentiated niche in response. Things to look out for include:

• What are the trending hashtags for your sector on each particular platform at this moment in time? (Remember that trends, by their very nature, change all the time!)
• What kind of aesthetic – colours, fonts, types of images and so on – do your competitors use in their most successful social media posts?
• What kind of videos from companies in your industry are attracting the most attention from customers? Are they informational videos about the products or funny segments?