Interactive Content Is More Than Just A Shiny PDF

To achieve success, marketers have to rethink their approach to planning and executing content for interactive formats.

Whether it’s consumer-facing, user-generated, or promotional, users have made it known that they prefer content they can engage with. Content marketers are being challenged to deliver their messages in different ways that stand out from the sea of static content being published online.

However, developing effective interactive content isn’t easy. You can’t just take an existing PDF or infographic and dress it up with some links and animations. To achieve success, marketers have to rethink their approach to planning and executing content for interactive formats.

If you’re new to interactive content creation, here are three key steps you can take to get started on the right foot.

Define Your Story

If you’ve never developed interactive content before, it can be a bit daunting to know where to start. Just like every great piece of content, it all begins with a story. The types of stories your brand can tell depends on a lot of factors: your industry, audience, brand mission, and intended distribution channels.

To start framing a story, it can be helpful to ask the following questions:

• Is this story about my brand, my users, my industry, or something else?
• Who am I writing this story for? What do they care about?
• Is this story educational or entertaining (e.g., valuable)?
• Has this story already been told by my competitors or other industry publishers? If so, how can I take a unique approach?
• Is this story factual or fictional? If factual, how can I breathe personality into it? If fictional, how can I present my ideas in a relatable way?

Determine Whether Interactive Is A Good Fit

Once you’ve nailed down your story, the next step is to determine whether that story is a good fit for an interactive format. Not every story can be told using an interactive format—and it’s never worth jamming a story into a format that doesn’t fit just because it’s a popular platform.

In order to discern whether a particular story will work as an interactive experience, ask yourself:

• Can this story be broken up into sections and smaller, bite-sized nuggets of information?
• Does this story lend itself to a visual treatment?
• Is it easier to show some of the story with graphics, animations, or videos?
• Does this story have multiple layers of narrative (a main storyline with additional details, or a story told from multiple perspectives or angles)?
• Is this a nonlinear story that viewers can consume in any order?
• Does the narrative branch off in different directions depending on the viewer’s preference or selections?
• Does shareability matter?
• Do you plan to serialize your story when you publish it?
• Do you want your story to live in multiple different locations online (e.g., a blog, website, landing page, sponsored post)?

If your answer is “yes” to a few of these questions, an interactive format will probably work great. If not, then you’re likely better off using a more traditional long-form content type like a PDF or traditional web page.

Establish Your Content Goals

Once you determine that your story is a good fit for interactive, the next step is to establish your goals for the project. This is one of the most important steps because your goals will shape how you craft your interactive experience.

When defining your goals for an interactive project, you should consider these three key questions:

1. Why are we doing this? It may seem obvious, but having a clear purpose will help you create content that drives real results for your business. It will also help ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page. Some common interactive content goals are brand awareness, engagement, lead generation, sales enablement, and customer education.

2. How are we going to distribute this content? Your distribution plan should include channels, a timeline, and a thoughtful flow of touchpoints if lead generation or nurture is involved. This will also help you assess what other assets you’ll need to create to promote your interactive experience.

3. What results do we want to achieve? Even if your goals are on the brand awareness side, you can still put some concrete benchmarks in place to assess your content’s performance. This ensures that when your content goes live, you have targets to shoot for and benchmarks to track your progress over time. Your results will look different depending on the nature of your content and your underlying “why,” but you should have an idea of what you’re aiming for at the start of the project.

By taking these steps, you can ensure that your interactive content is unique, innovative, and above all else, effective.