Getting people to find your blog is only one side of the story. Keeping them for a while is another side of it.
While increasing the visibility of your blog and making it easy for people to find is a tedious task, the saddest part comes when that visitor you worked so hard to earn, chooses to hit the back button and leave your site.
Apart from clicking the back button (which is not useful to you) what else can a visitor do instead, that could establish engagement on your blog? He/she can:
- Stay on and explore more blog posts
- Choose to leave a comment to your blog post
- Find your stuff interesting not only to them but also to their friends or mates and hence consider sharing them on social networks
- Want to stay long term and read on your blog's daily updates and hence subscribe to RSS feeds or email newsletters.
- Becomes a great fan of you and your valuable content, hence chooses to buy your stuff (training courses, e-books, subscription to premium content and so on).
Basically, by engaging your reader you are making him/her perform a useful action. But you cannot just simply achieve audience engagement.
Here are some useful tips that help you engage your readers.
Clean layout
This is about the first impression. You either make it or your reader leaves.
I won't be happy to visit a website that has some content written among flashing banners asking me to click on, animated gadgets and random ads. The layout must be clean.
Your content should rule the page and ads (or anything else) are secondary.
The layout should also be in such a way that the content is clearly present, with nice fonts and without colors (text and background) that strains the eyes.
Link to your old posts
Stand alone posts in a blog are normal. But try to include links to your previous posts, if they are relevant and in the context, in any blog post.
Linking to old posts means you are writing relevant content and content that aligns with your blogging focus.
Links within a blog post makes it easy for a reader to take action, that is read more of your content.
Display popular content
This again is to show more of your old content. In this case, it is not the relevant content, but popular content.
The advantage of showing popular content is that, you get to show off your popular hot posts.
This increases the number of links to blog posts displayed in your home page, hence makes it easier for the reader to click and explore more.
Make search and navigation easy
Your blog's readers are as busy as you are, even busier than you, searching for content, looking for answers and so on.
If they landed on your home page, they should be able to know where to move. It should be easy to search for a term, which means a search box should be available.
There should be a navigation bar which shows all the pages of your blog, say the archive page, about page and so on. Further, an additional navigation bar showing the categories of the blog posts could be of great use too.
Fast loading time
As I said just now, people are busy. If your site takes more than 5 seconds to load then your potential visitor has already clicked the back button.
So make it lighter to load faster. Do not use too many plugins.
Do not keep the unused plugins deactivated, rather delete them; you can install them later on if you wish to use them.
Use a caching plugin like W3 Total cache or WP Super Cache (my recommendation) will help you to increase your site's loading speed and increase user experience.
Appropriate keywords
If your blog appears on the search list for “chocolates” and when a reader clicks the link to see that you write about “cycling”, then you suck (according to the reader, not me :))!
Use only the appropriate keywords, write for people and not solely for search engines.
Don't be crazy about getting Google's attention and use inappropriate keywords. Use only those keywords that match your content, naturally.
Call out to take action
This is one of the tips that most bloggers overlook.
Sometimes you readers are not that smart or they don't care about what to do next. Why don't you guide them? Call them out to take an action.
- You could request them to subscribe to RSS feed either in a sidebar gadget, or in the header of the blog or at the footer of a post. You can include the benefits of subscription (say that you send out newsletters or free stuff and so on).
- You can ask them to leave comments at the end of the post. For this you may also finish the post with a question to the reader.
- You can ask the reader to share the post with their friends via social sharing buttons. You could explicitly include a line like “If you like reading this post, please consider sharing it”.
The responses you get when you ask your readers can be amazing. Ms. Ileane speaks about how powerful your blog's RSS feed is and how it helps boost engagement in this video:
Unique, great content
If you are not offering unique content, you should not be blogging, seriously.
If people find out that you are re-writing someone else's stuff, you are screwed. Your blog is not the only one in the internet. In order to show yourself up among millions of other blogs, your content has to be unique.
Even if you are writing magazine or news type of blogs where you report flash news, you should toss in your own ideas or perspectives into your post.
Otherwise, why should people find your blog while they can read the news at the BBC or CNN website? Unique content is a hook which anchors your visitors with no pain.
And, I am not going to talk about great content because that's not only a big topic, but you would have heard a lot of advice on creating great content. Have you implemented the advice? That's the key.
By the way, I highly recommend you to pick up my content creation course to help you create killer content for your business on a regular basis.
Pictures
A picture is worth 1000 words. When you have a picture or many pictures in your blog post you are most likely to engage the reader with your first impression.
The more relevant the picture is the more engaged the reader will feel.
In fact your picture will make the reader to decide in seconds whether to continue reading your blog post or not.
While using pictures to gain attention, it is important that the pictures are relevant to the blog post and funny or thought provoking, if necessary. However, make sure that you give credits to the pictures you use in your blog posts.
You can look for stock photos in various places, free or paid, the choice is yours.
However, you can also go premium to avail some of the high quality premium images.
In addition, make sure you upload the “web friendly” version of the images you downloaded since very high quality images will be bigger in size and will make your site load slow.
You can use compressor.io for this.
Or if you use Photoshop, you can use the “Save for web” option to get this done.
Free stuff
Offering free stuff is a way to engage readers.
Especially when your free stuff is prominent or obvious in your home page and in all pages, you are most likely to win a reader.
Note that I said “most likely” and not definitely coz it still needs some trust building before people could simply stay longer or eventually give you their email address.
Offering free stuff is a way of calling to action and since something free will attract anyone, the reader is most likely to take the necessary action (like subscribing to your blog).
In addition, depending upon the value of the free stuff and its content, you will most likely gain a loyal reader.
If your free stuff offers them really worth stuff they will come back to your blog, they will spread the word and they are most likely to buy any product that you launch later.
Archives (the most underused technique I'd say)
You can make anyone happy by having an archive page in your blog.
When someone arrives at your blog through a search and end up liking your posts, they would want to dig deeper. They want to skim through all your posts and find those posts that interest them and read them.
All this is possible only if you have a neat archive page which displays all your old articles in some clean organization.
It is highly recommended that you put the link to this archive page obviously and make it easy for the readers to get to your archive page from all pages.
Writing voice/style
I have ended up subscribing to various blogs (even some are on topic that I am not too deep into) just because I like the writing style and the voice of the author.
When I start to read an article and if I feel that the voice or the writing style is more engaging than the information in the article itself, then it reaches my heart and mind so soon.
As a blogger when you have a consistent writing style and if you can make your voice sound good and authoritative in your niche, you can surely make your reader look for more.
You can easily make them stick around this way.
What method do you use to achieve reader engagement? I'd love to hear from you. Please share in the comments.
Reading list:
- Benefits of RSS Feeds
- Using Visual Content to Increase Engagement
- How to Really Create a Popular Blog from Scratch
Hi Jane,
Great read here thanks…
Have you tried WP Smush It, it’s a WordPress plugin that automatically compresses all the images on your blog. Everytime you upload a new images they are compressed.
I swear by this plugin for speeding up my blog!
Cheers
Joe Elliott
Hey Joe,
Thanks! Yes I do know and use WPSmush it. Thanks for the reminder!
Jane.
Great info!
The biggest issue I often have with other sites is the navigation. It is always annoying when a site does not have an easy way to navigate it and find what you are looking for. I guess the archive would also help with the navigation as well.
Thanks for the info.
You are right Jay! Navigation plays a crucial role in user friendliness – if it is not optimal that will surely annoy the readers!
Hey Jane,
It’s good to see you here.
I totally agree with you. It’s really hard to keep your readers stay for longer. A good design always helps.
Interlinking is the best thing you can do. It will help you to engage your readers which will help you to reduce the bounce rate of the website.
Sharing other people’s content always works. People like to get appreciated.
Thanks for sharing this informative post.
~Ravi
Hey Jane,
One of the most critical objectives for content marketers is increasing engagement with website visitors. While the term has been around for decades, the concept of engagement has taken center stage in the digital age. In an era where multi-screen usage is nearly at saturation point among connected consumers, the problem of distraction is only going to get worse.
Infographics, graphs and charts, screen shots, product images, and more can be used to enhance our content and encourage our audience to hang around long enough to perceive the value of what we’re writing. Eventually, thanks for reveling a light on this topic.
With best wishes,
Amar kumar
Hey Amar,
You bring up a serious point. Distraction is going to get worse with multi screen usage for sure. So it is really crucial that bloggers work on boosting the engagement factors on their site to make the readers pay attention!
Thanks for your comment.
Jane.
Hi Jane,
Excellent post..
For me the major issue is my website loading time. It is exceeding more than 5sec. I am planing to add plugins like W3 Total cache or WP Super Cache to boost my website loading speed. Displaying popular content or linking to an old blog really works to generate more traffic and clicks. Keep posting nice info.
Thank you Jane.
Regards,
Prasanna
Hey Jane,
Great advice. I would say having a clean layout is vital if you want any of your visitors to stay and engage.
Whenever I read blogs I skim through them to make sure the layout is clean and easy on the eyes.
One thing I would add is to be active on blogging communities. This helps to build your reputation enough for others to come and engage on your blog.
Thanks for the share Jane! Have a great week!
Hey Sherman,
Yes – a clean layout is surely a vital thing. There’s already too much noise and a cluttered layout is only going to make things worse.
I too (unintentionally) skim for a clean layout and a cluttered layout certainly annoys me! If I don’t like it, my readers won’t too 🙂
Thanks for the comment!
Jane.
Great tips. While I have been following most of these tips on my blog, some of the tips still need to be followed especially linking to old posts. I haven’t yet followed it seriously. Hopefully I can do it asap. Thanks for sharing such valuable writeup.
Great read Jane.
I agree with the most of the points here.
Building audience who buy your stuff is not a joke. It’s impossible to build raving fans without having a USP.
Just look at Derek. He has a witty tone and he adds a TON of value through his content (videos, articles etc). He knows how to grow audience and he does it in a unique style.
Also make sure to ask questions at the end of your posts. Ask people to share and comment and they will do if they like your stuff.
Great tips.
Hey Anil,
I love Derek’s witty tone too 🙂 And I’m also a fan of Marie Forleo.
Asking a question at the end is a great way to make readers engaged.
Thanks for your comment.
Jane.
Videos and Comments do indeed create the most vital source of audience engagement. Most of my own blogs have a video followed by my own YouTube blog, and it is clear that the video blogs that I offer gets the most audience attraction and comments replies and followups.
Really a nice and informational article will really be helpful for those who don’t know how to get engaged with their visitor. Appreciated.
Hey Jane
That was really a good read. Nothing technical, still many bloggers fails to follow these simple stuff ( Including me)
Thanks for the article.
Audience and Visitors are really important for me.. but as of now I don’t have that much Audience than some competitors in my niche so I was looking for some ways to increase my Audience and Visitors. I might change some of my navigation format and look for things that slows down my website.. I might also try having a game/reward or prize as you mention in this post.. Thanks for the great advice…
Hi Jane,
Some great practical advice. Design, load speed and layout can have a significant impact on engagement.
A lot of people spend almost all of their time focusing on how much traffic they get through to their site and almost no time focusing on what the people do when they get to the site. If you can reduce your bounce rate by just 5% you can potentially increase your conversions by 10-15%.
Thanks
Neil
A very comprehensive, and good list. I especially agree with the “being visual” part. Both on blogs and in social media, it is important to engage the eyes. Images get people’s attention and the copy keeps them there.
Great read, Jane! Can’t agree more on visual impact is also important along with the performance of website. Tech savvy visitors always preferred good quality content along with the good visual appeal as well as the page speed. We being into B2B service industry and dealing with highly technical people are facing huge problem with engagement on website. Thanks for sharing the details.
Hi Jane,
These are all great tips. People are so busy nowadays it’s hard to get them to stay long in the first place so an attractive blog with all the bells and whistles is a must if we want our visitors to stay a while and engage with us.
When I’m browsing through blogs what attracts me most are the images and the layout of a site. 🙂
Thanks for sharing these tips! Have a great weekend!
Cori
Hi Jane,
I know, the audience is the foundation of my blog and audience engagement is one of the ultimate goals of bloggers. Actually, audience engagement is a complex topic, and you made it quickly realisable.
You have solved a lot of questions of mine.
Thank you
Probably the most critical objectives for content marketers is growing engagement with readers.