Content as we know it is shifting. The types of content that we have grown familiar with such as audio books, e-books, vlogs, blog posts, and even infographics, while powerful, are primarily designed to be consumed passively. Audiences listen to, read, or watch such content.  While readers might share or add comments, passive content does not require true input from audiences, and has no real-time response base.

Responsive website design has changed more than just the way audiences access content. It is also changing the face of content itself. Brands are now able to exercise a far greater degree of control regarding how audiences interact with content. Now that mobile has surpassed desktop, audiences can interact with brands from any location at any time.

How Powerful Is Interactive Content?

is an excellent example of what can be accomplished with interactive content. Using an interactive quiz model that allowed their audience to learn something interesting, BuzzFeed generated more than 40 million views with just one quiz alone.

While a massive amount of views is certainly an incredible benefit of interactive content, this new model also provides a host other advantages. Among these benefits is the ability to stand out from an ever-increasing den of online noise. According to The Content Marketing Institute, 70 percent of marketers plan to increase their content production within the next year. What this means for marketers is that there will be even more content to compete with in the coming months. In order to stand out from the growing competition, marketers will need to seek out dynamic content opportunities that are more likely to catch a viewer’s attention.

Interactive content can assist with this in several ways. By breaking away from mundane, passive forms of content, marketers can take advantage of an entirely new way to interact with online visitors. Built on the concept of experiential learning, interactive content takes informing visitors beyond simply reading to actually experiencing and being engaged by content. A study conducted by Demand Metric found that 45 percent of marketers using interactive content discovered it to be highly effective in terms of educating visitors.

Since interactive content is not usually tied down to a direct publication date, it also tends to have a much longer shelf life than passive content. Due to its evergreen nature, marketers are able to leverage far greater value from interactive content.

Marketers are also able to glean a wealth of information regarding consumer behavior from the way in which users engage with interactive content. You cannot put a value on the level of unparalleled insights that can be gained into the consumer psyche with interactive content. The information obtained from such content can then be used to customize subsequent personalization, providing marketers with a groundbreaking opportunity to drive both qualifications and sales.

Designing Interactive Content for Your Brand

Currently, the most popular model for interactive content is the freemium model. With this model, visitors are able to participate in a quiz or other type of assessment without being required to provide any type of contact information. Such information is only required if the user wishes to share their results, see how others performed, etc.

Tools such as ion Interactive are now making it much easier for brands to quickly build and publish a variety of interactive content, such as calculators, quizzes, contests, games, assessment tools, and more.

When planning an interactive content campaign, keep in mind that the bottom line is to provide content that will catch users’ attention and provide value. Most successful interactive content provides some level of entertainment value. It does not necessarily need to be something heavily educational, but it does need to offer enough value that the user is willing to spend a few minutes on. Some of the more successful interactive content quizzes have been as simple as assessing which state a user should live in. Remember to keep the attention span of your users in mind. Quizzes that are too lengthy and take too much time to complete are more likely to be abandoned, so keep it short and simple.

Interactive content is currently one of the most exciting and powerful opportunities available for marketers. Learning how to properly harness it can help your brand to quickly stand out from an ever-growing online world.