Why is engagement important?
Engagement is an important factor for the SEO of your website. When Google sees that your engagement levels are high, it will raise your search engine ranking, and you’ll get more visitors.
Engagement can come in the form of blog comments, shares on social media, and repeated visits by your audience.
So how do we increase our blog engagement? These are some of the best tips and tricks to help you out.
1. Use Eye-Catching Visuals
Blog content, in its best form, should be a very visual experience. No one likes to read walls of text, especially on a computer screen.
Including eye-catching visuals and infographics will help your audience stay engaged and interested in your content, and will make your posts much more likely to be shared on social media as a result.
2. Make it easy for your readers to share and comment
One of the best things you can do to increase engagement is simply to make sharing and commenting as accessible as it can be.
Use sidebar share buttons so that they are always in reach and easily visible.
Look at the top blogs in your niche to see what they use for a comment system. Make it as easy as possible to comment, and eliminate barriers such as logins that might turn people away.
3. Simply ask your readers for engagement
This is an overlooked but extremely easy and powerful trick to implement in your content. Instead of just waiting to see if people will share or leave a comment, give them an incentive.
Ask questions throughout your content and in the conclusion. Ask them if they have any questions that you can answer about the topic at hand, or if there is anything you can add to the post to help them understand.
Be sure to respond to every comment that you receive as well. If you frequently engage with your readers in the comments, they will be much more likely to return another time for updates.
4. Bring your unique perspective to the topic
If you want to increase your blog engagement, it’s important to let your personality come through in your content. Your readers will be able to pick up on your passion for the topic, and they’ll be more inclined to join in the conversation in the comment section as a result.
Creating a connection with your readers through your writing is also a good way to encourage them to continue to come back to check for new updates and participate in your blog community.
By bringing a new perspective to the topic, you can explain it in a way that might shed new light on an old topic. If someone sees a great explanation they’ve never seen before, they will be more willing to share it with their peers on social media.
5. Use “click to tweet” quotes within your content
“Click to tweet” quotes are a great strategy you can use in your content that makes sharing quick and easy for your audience. With a click to tweet quote, it’s really just as simple as clicking a link and a tweet will automatically be entered in the text box for you to publish to your Twitter account.
To create one, visit clicktotweet.com and enter your quote. This can be anything, but try to keep it short and sweet and something that is highly shareable. After the link has been generated, simply copy and paste it into your content and you’re good to go.
6. Use reliable data and statistics
Most people love statistics. There are entire websites devoted to giving you up to date statistics and data on anything you need to know.
Using data in your content can give your readers confidence that you know what you’re talking about, and makes your article much more shareable. This data can come in the form of graphs, polls, or studies.
Another good strategy is to publish new data that other people can use in their content and link back to your post for credit. This will get you more traffic and domain authority. You can run experiments on your website like testing new traffic sources, ad campaigns, and guest posting strategies, then compile and publish your findings.
7. Promote your content on social media
Posting and promoting your content on social media is an important aspect of blogging and content creation. Social proof is very powerful and if your audience sees that a post has a lot of shares and comments already, they will be more likely to engage with your post themselves.
Repeatedly sharing your content in the months after you first publish a post has been shown to increase your reach by a massive 686%, according to a study done by Buzzsumo.
It’s also important to craft your social media posts with the goal of encouraging your audience to engage with it. This can be done by making polls, asking questions, and asking your audience to share their own experience as it pertains to the topic of the content.
8. Reply to all of your comments
Creating a lively community is one of the best ways to increase your engagement levels on your content, and there is no better way to keep people engaged than to reply to every single comment you get.
You’ll be able to create a great connection with your audience by simply replying to all of their comments and making them feel appreciated. Readers that feel valued and appreciated are more likely to come back and check your new updates and posts.
9. Stay on a consistent schedule
We all know that blogging is hard work, and sometimes life can get in the way of sticking to a strict posting schedule.
It’s still best to try to be consistent with your posting because your audience will know what days to come back to check your blog for updates. If you miss a post here and there it’s not a big deal and most people won’t give you a hard time.
Building up a loyal audience is one of the best ways to significantly increase your blog engagement.
10. Have a presence on other blogs in your niche
Establishing yourself as a knowledgable person in the comment sections of other blogs in your niche is a great trick to getting targeted traffic right back to your own blog.
Readers will often be interested to see what you have written and follow you back to your own blog to check it out.
Conclusion
Audience engagement is an extremely important aspect of building your blog and can be the difference-maker between success and failure.
Following these guidelines will give you a great chance at significantly increasing your blog engagement.
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by Nick Theriault
source: SiteProNews
