Get Ahead in 2024 with These 8 Interactive Content Trends

With countless companies and brands jostling for position in today’s digital landscape, modern consumers have a lot vying for their attention. 

t’s no longer enough for a piece of content to be helpful, accurate, and relevant to a target audience’s problems and concerns. 

It really needs to be something special to truly stand out from the rest of the noise, and interactive content fits the bill perfectly.

Interactive content is so effective because it goes beyond merely informing and entertaining your audience. It actually asks people to become active participants and engage with your content. 

The result is an experience that’s a little different for everyone in all the right ways. People tend to remember truly great interactive content experiences, leading to better information retention and higher overall conversion rates.

But as with other aspects of content marketing, interactive content is constantly changing, so it’s essential to stay in the know about what’s currently popular and effective. 

The following are some of the most noteworthy interactive content trends for 2022. Learn them, remember them, and make them part of your content marketing campaign this year.

1. Personality Quizzes

If you’re like most people, you don’t just see personality quizzes around when you’re scrolling through your social media timelines. 

You’ve probably also taken more than a few of them yourself, and with good reason. 

Quizzes — especially those that promise to tell users something fun or unique about themselves — are highly effective marketing tools.

Not only do people love taking them, but they often can’t resist sharing and talking about the results, helping that quiz reach even more people. 

And through the very process of interacting with the quiz, your audience gives you plenty of personal data you can use to make your next round of interactive content even better.

In other words, quizzes have been among the hottest interactive content trends for a while now, and they’re certainly not going anywhere this year. The sooner you start brainstorming a few of your own, the better.

To give you an idea of what these tests might symbolize, check out the Orbitz example below:

2. Scrollytelling

Whether you’re producing traditional or interactive content, it’s crucial to break up your text into snackable, easy-to-manage sections to keep readers engaged. 

With standard written content, this can be done by using headings, subheadings, and lists to organize the information and make it easy to skim. 

Adding images, videos, graphics, and charts is also effective while adding visual interest.

Scrollytelling mimics this effect and takes it to the next level with fun surprises like animations, video sequences, or audio effects that are activated as a reader scrolls their way through the material. 

This incredible New York Times story on Syria’s civil war is an excellent example of successful scrollytelling in action.

Although scrollytelling can be more involved to produce, it’s so memorable and does such an incredible job of engaging an audience that it’s well worth considering. 

Trust us. This is one of those interactive content trends you’re guaranteed to see more of in the future, so throw your hat into the ring now.

3. Interactive Social Media Content

Popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram take a lot of the guesswork out of leveraging interactive social media content in your favor with entertaining, dynamic features that encourage users to stop scrolling and take notice. 

For instance, Facebook lets users easily create and upload 360-degree photos that invite an audience to interact with images in meaningful ways instead of simply looking at them before scrolling on.

You can also poll your audience on Twitter and through interactive stories on Instagram or Facebook. 

You can use built-in engagement features to transform ordinary videos and images into irresistible mini-games, as well. 

And those are just a few examples to choose from. All it takes is a little creativity to turn an everyday Insta-story or tweet into an experience your audience can’t resist.

4. Interactive Infographics

Infographics have been content marketing staples for a long time now for lots of good reasons. 

They’re colorful, sleek, and visually interesting in a way that catches the eye and gets people curious. 

They also pack a lot of information into a manageable, inviting branded format that’s easy to consume and fun to share.

An upgraded version of the now-classic infographic also happens to be one of the most important interactive content trends for this year. 

Terrific options like hover pop-ups and embedded clickthrough links to pages, written content, quizzes, and other extras add value to an interactive infographic and engage users. 

Features like these also make fantastic fits for ebooks, whitepapers, and other content types your company may already use.

Check out the Uberflip example below:

5. Augmented Reality Shopping

Consumers have been falling madly in love with online shopping for a while now, but the pandemic really solidified it as a modern-day staple for just about everyone. 

However, while people are now fully comfortable shopping for many different items online, they’re still concerned about making poor buying decisions in certain instances. 

Augmented reality (AR) apps help take a lot of the risk out of the process.

AR shopping leverages interactive technology to let shoppers “try” before they buy, so they feel more confident about their purchases. 

Customers can “see” how a cool new sofa or area rug will look in their office or family room before putting their money down. They can even determine whether an outfit, haircut, or makeup palette will suit them in advance.

And with an incredible 71 percent of today’s buyers saying they prefer AR-assisted shopping because of the peace of mind it gives them, augmented reality helps you close more sales this year, too. 

Add it, along with immersive virtual reality options, to your list of interactive content trends to try immediately.

6. Interactive Videos

Many of today’s interactive content trends represent a natural progression from traditional content media to more innovative, engaging versions of the same options. 

Interactive videos are a perfect example of what we mean. 

Videos were already red-hot for the way they made it so easy for marketers to captivate an audience and add some personality to their branded content. 

The fact that it’s so easy for a great video to go viral doesn’t exactly hurt, either!

Adding interactivity to the mix is a simple way to take a content marketing tactic that’s likely already working well for you and upgrade it to another level. 

As with infographics, videos are perfect fits for the addition of clickthrough links to important landing pages and additional content your audience will love.

For instance, top social video platforms like YouTube now make it easy to add interactivity to your content. 

Make your content snackable and approachable by adding shortcuts to different sections of longer videos. 

Interactive video cards, graphics, and other options can help engage your audience and encourage them to check out even more of your content, as well.

This video from LaCantina is a great example of interactivity.

7. B2B-Specific Content Solutions

Don’t make the mistake of thinking interactive content is only effective for B2C businesses. 

Interactivity is also set to transform the way B2B businesses attract, engage, and nurture stronger relationships with their customers. 

In fact, not only are many marketers already widely using B2B interactive content, but 62 percent of B2B marketers overall plan on fully embracing interactivity within the next couple of years.

So if you’re in the B2B sector, it’s officially time to get ahead of the curve and get your strategy into development. 

Creativity and uniqueness are the keys to fantastic interactive content that really resonates, but many B2B marketers are already seeing terrific success with calculators, business-focused quizzes, contests, enhanced ebooks, interactive white papers, etc. 

Look for ways to take these interactive content trends and make them your own throughout this year.

8. User-Generated Content

Interactive content is so successful right now because it fits perfectly into a digital world where personalization, participation, and engagement are huge parts of the best experiences. 

People don’t just use social media and the internet at large to kill time or find solutions in a pinch anymore. They’re important parts of nearly everyone’s daily life at this point, so it makes sense that the most successful content embraces this.

Content marketing campaigns that included pushes for user-generated content were already on the rise. 

But the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 found even those who weren’t heavy social media users before turning to their platforms of choice for social connection and a sense of belonging. Now they’re used to this, and the new status quo is here to stay.

So any smart marketer should be including user-generated content in their plans.

Not only does it help use interactivity to make your audience feel like they’re an important part of what you do, but it’s an inexpensive, efficient way to spread the word about what you do. 

Your audience does so much of the work for you, leading to limitless amounts of fresh content that builds relationships and changes minds.

If you’re still new to interactive content, it’s only understandable that you may not know quite where to start. 

But it’s easier than you think to get the hang of things and start generating incredible options your audience will absolutely love. 

Staying in the know about current interactive content trends helps you brainstorm where to take your creativity next, as does keeping up with what your competition is up to.

Taking the guesswork out of planning, creating, and distributing interactive content with the right user-friendly tools is the key to handling the rest. 

Check out our handy rundown of the best interactive content tools every marketer should try for more information. 

You’ll be generating head-turning interactive masterpieces like a boss in no time!