Thomas Griffin — June 21, 2019 — June 21, 2019
Engagement is the backbone of every conversation that happens online. Business owners and blog creators struggle to get the attention of their perfect audience due to all of the noise that comes with bringing half of the global population together in one place.
When creating a blog, you have to do more than get your audience’s attention for a few seconds. You have to inspire them to stay on the page and comment, share your post with others, and potentially sign up with your email list, or purchase a physical product.
We want to take a look at some simple ways you can encourage your audience to engage with your brand.
Know Your Audience
The most important rule to keep in mind when attempting to improve engagement is that you must have a deep understanding of your ideal audience. There are multiple ways to get to know your audience before creating more content.
The first and most common way to get to know your audience is by simply asking them questions. You can create polls on your website asking users what kind of content they want to see in the future. You can use this information to get a better handle on what type of content appeals to your audience.
Next, you’re going to want to check your Google Analytics account. From your dashboard, you can see your most popular posts — a queue as to what kind of content will do well in the future. Looking beyond your page views, you can see complex statistics about your demographics, such as their location, age, and browsing method.
Take all of this information and build multiple customer persona charts. These charts are lists that feature the interests of your users, their goals, their pain point, median income, and much more. If you want to create engaging content, you have to reach the right audience.
Stay Active on Social Media
According to Statista, there are currently close to 2.77 billion people on social media globally. You can’t miss out on all of those potentially engaging customers by skipping out on creating business social media accounts.
Many businesses schedule out their blog content to release throughout the day to catch the attention of potential prospects and get them to go to their websites. An additional benefit to this technique is existing customers may find and read your content, which could result in a share or comment.
When you create content that is shared widely, there is a better chance that it will reach your target audience and inspire a conversation on your blog or social media account.
Create Valuable Content
A little over a decade ago, it was common for businesses to create a blog online in an attempt to “keyword stuff” and artificially inflate their SEO ranking. Now, engagement is one of the fastest ways to make it to page one of Google. Since SEO is still prominent, but not nearly as important as it once was, there has been a shift in the way that marketers and businesses release content.
The best advice we can give here is to consult the customer personas you’ve made. Look for pain points and interests; those are likely going to be the most engaging content on your site. Now you’re tasked with finding unique ways to incorporate this content into blog posts that provide value to the reader.
Let’s look at an example. If you owned a gardening website and noticed that most of your customers have one problem — they don’t have enough time to tend to their garden — you would be responsible for helping them solve this pain point.
You could create a multi-article post detailing some tips and tricks for gardening when you are short on time. If the content is valuable and the tips are practical, gardeners who find this information and enjoy it will engage with the content and your business.
Incorporate Multiple Types of Media
Finally, try to include multiple types of media throughout your blog posts. We have all heard the phrase about a picture is worth one thousand words, and images can have a significant impact on the way people interact with your brand. For example, if you went to a website and decided to sign up for their mailing form, what would you find more appealing? A bland, black and white box, or this:
Videos are another excellent form of media that will keep your readers on your website longer. Research shows that blog posts with videos result in users staying 100 percent longer! Furthermore, people are far more likely to consume the whole video, as opposed to skimming through an article.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are quite a few ways to boost engagement on your blog. It’s important to note that every industry is a little different, and you may have to shift your focus periodically to keep audiences engaged across all channels.
Your blog should feature original, valuable content. Keep in touch with your followers on social media and always share your latest blog posts. Finally, mix up the media that you include in your articles. Before long, you’ll have a strong following of engaged readers.
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