How to Get More Blog Engagement

Are you looking to improve your blog engagement? One of the biggest challenges for most bloggers is getting engagement on their blogs.

Without engagement, your blog is basically a ghost town, serving no one and making you no money.

Most people are excited to start a blog with the hopes of generating income. Sadly, 80% of bloggers don’t make more than about $100 and only 8% earn enough income to turn it into a full time gig.

We all hear the buzz words like “content is king” and “blog engagement matters.”

You can create awesome content and get engagement on your blog, but all roads don’t necessarily lead to income generation.

In this post, I will show you how get more blog engagement that leads to income. Before I get into that, let’s review what blog engagement in order to have a common starting point.

What is Blog Engagement and Why Does it Matter?

It’s come to my attention lately that blog engagement is a huge challenge. I’ve heard lots of bloggers talking about it but the perception of what it is needs an adjustment.

Many bloggers think that engagement is all about how many comments you get on your blog or how many social shares.

While those may matter to some extent, blog engagement is much more than that. To understand it, we have to first define the objectives for our blog.

For example, I have a blog that been around for many years. I never get comments but I get lots of engagement in terms of leads and customers. Why? That was my main objective from the start.

Let’s dive in.

Why do you have your blog? Here are some categories that your reasons would fall into:

• Leads (build your email list)
• Sales (generate income)
• Blog Subscribers (they will come back when you post new blog posts)
• Free Downloads (builds your email list)
• Comments (helps with search engine optimization)
• Social shares (helps get more traffic to your blog and widens your audience)

When a person visits your blog and takes action that has an impact on any of your objectives that is engagement.

You can have a blog that gets lots of great comments, but never make a sale. In the same way, you can get hundreds of blog subscribers and never get a social share.

On the other hand, you can get thousands of visitors that convert to customers, without ever getting a single comment. Yes, it’s true!

Video: Get More Blog Engagement

Boosting Engagement on Your Blog Even if You are New

I know you put a lot of time and effort into building your blog and creating content. You should get rewarded for that! Here are your tips to boost engagement on your blog. Make sure you know what your objective is first!

Who is Your Audience and What They Want

Do you know who your target audience is? Who are you writing these blog posts for and how will those people benefit from reading them?

If bloggers just write whatever they feel like writing, they are writing for themselves and not serving any particular demographic. Engagement will be very low at best if you are not sure who you are talking to.

Define your perfect client or customer.

• Who are they
• What is their age group
• What do they like
• What is their income range
• What problems do they face
• What do they search for in Google
• and so on.

Once you understand your target audience, you can create a content strategy that appeals to that audience. We always hear people say, “write engaging posts.” You can only do that if you know exactly who are writing for.

For example if your target market are women over 40 who are busy and need to lose weight, then your posts should to be focused on solutions aimed at that group. If not, even your best content will be a mismatch for your audience.

So, your first step is to define the demographic whose attention you want to capture and create content around their needs.

DO NOT skip this step!

Find and Research Terms to Know what Your Audience is Searching for

I am surprised at how many people skip this step. Traditionally, keyword research is performed for search engine optimization purposes. It still is but it’s much more than that!

These are the search terms that people enter into search engines while looking for a subject or similar subject.

Video: Keyword research

Why is it important?

It will help your blog post get found in search but you will also learn exactly what your audience is searching for. By performing keyword research, you can find out in real time or over a period of time what people are looking for online.

If you don’t do keyword research, it will be difficult to get blog engagement because your content will not be a good match for what your audience really wants to know more about.

Write content that your audience wants.

Create a Positive User Experience

When someone visits your blog, they will get an impression. What impression do you give with your blog?

By creating a positive user experience, a visitor is more likely to return. There are many things that make up user experience and I am going to focus on just a few of those things.

• Structure every blog post you write. You should have a beginning introduction, middle and end. Too often I come upon blog posts with no structure. In other words, there is just large paragraphs of text going on and on and on. Reading that on a mobile device is no fun! It looks like huge blocks of text making it difficult to read, at best.
• Using subheadings to break up your blog post into logical sections makes it easier to read and follow what you have to say. Subheadings also help a reader navigate your blog post more easily.
• I’ve also seen blog post with no images at all. People love images and will be more engaged.
• Use lists that are either numbered or bulleted when possible. Information is not always appropriate in paragraph form.
• Keep paragraphs short for readability, especially on mobile devices.

Promote Your Blog Post in Social Media

After doing the aforementioned steps to get more blog engagement, it’s time to promote your post in social media. This is one of many ways to get more traffic to your blog.

Click here for my free ebook: How to Get More People to Your Blog

Here are two key take-aways for sharing your post:

• Share your blog post link in groups that are aligned with your target audience.
• Add some text that compels a person to click and then read it. Too often people just dump links into social media groups with no other text explaining why a person should even bother clicking the link to read it. These type of link dumps rarely get engagement.

Video: Where to Promote your Blog Posts

Include a Call to Action (CTA)

Your call to action is the most important type of blog engagement. This is where your visitor will take action on whatever it is you defined in your objectives.

This is also where the money is. It’s how you can start building your list, acquiring customers for your business, and generating income!

How do you want your blog visitor to engage with you?

• Opt-in to your email list
• Purchase a product
• Contact you
• View a video
• Download an ebook
• Something else

If for some crazy reason you don’t have a call to action that is your first problem.

Final Thoughts

Many people are just thinking about getting shares, comments, and traffic. But blog engagement is much more than that. You are online for a reason right? Usually it’s to make some money!

Craft your content around the needs of your perfect target audience and make sure you have a call-to-action, whatever it may be.

If you enjoyed this post, do share in social media.

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