Are you struggling to get your readers to engage with your blog?
When I started blogging, I struggled too.
But then I found that people who have an engaged audience on their blogs have this one thing in common:
Their content is interesting.
“How can I make my content interesting?”
Well, that’s what I will be answering in this guide.
I know how it feels when your readers read all your posts but don’t take the time to comment or share. I know it hurts.
Reader engagement is the key to building a massive community of fans.
Your readers engage with your blog in a lot of different ways. This engagement could take place in any of the following forms:
- Commenting on your blog posts
- Sharing your blog posts
- Navigating to another blog post
- Subscribing to your newsletters
- Or simply taking some action
Reader engagement is also a search engine ranking factor. Google uses the bounce rate of your website to measure Reader Engagement. Bounce Rate is simply the percentage of visitors that leave your website right after viewing a single page. The less the bounce rate, the better.
An engaged reader spends more time on your website which decreases the bounce rate. And less the bounce rate, higher the search engine rankings.
1. Use Short Paragraphs
Do you like reading long paragraphs?
I don’t. No One Does.
Long paragraphs are really boring to read and make your article look like an essay. On the other hand, short paragraphs are easy to read and scan.
Short paragraphs encourage reading. They develop user’s interest in your article and make the reader read your article till the end.
People want to get answers as quickly as possible. And short paragraphs can be scanned quickly.
Most people don’t read your articles. They scan it. They scan your article and try to extract important information. And small paragraphs help them easily scan your article.
People skip long paragraphs. That’s why magazines, newspapers and popular websites use short paragraphs.
The next time you work on an article, try to tweak all your paragraphs and make them as small as possible.
Pro Tip: If you can’t make your paragraphs smaller, try to convert them into bullet point lists.
2. Ask For Engagement
Here’s the deal:
Your readers don’t know what to do after reading your post. But by asking them to take an action, you can actually make them engage with your content.
Sounds easy, right?
Just ask your readers to take an action and Boom… You have got some engagement on your blog.
If you don’t get it, here are some examples:
Below is an example of Derek Halpern from Social Triggers asking his readers to take an action:
As you can see, he is not asking his readers to specifically comment, share or email him. But his readers know how they can connect with him. They can leave a comment, message him on his email or send him a tweet.
You don’t have to spoon feed your readers. They know what to do. Just ask them to take action.
Want to make it even better?
Ask your readers to take an action in the newsletters you send.
In the below example, Brian Dean from Backlinko is asking his readers to comment:
Want to know why Brian does this?
There is a simple reason behind this. Brian knows that his newsletter subscribers are his loyal readers and fans. And they are always ready to take an action.
People who ask their readers to engage in their newsletters generally get more engagement. Neil Patel gets more than 30% of comments on QuickSprout from his newsletter readers.
3. Tell A Story
We all have stories. Some sad stories and some good stories.
Want to know the best part:
Everyone likes reading stories. And when you tell your personal stories to your readers, you develop a connection with them. Which leads to more reader engagement.
“What stories should I tell my readers?”
Well, these stories should generally answer a question like:
- Why you left a job?
- What made you start your business?
- What failures did you face when starting your business?
- Why your strategy failed?
- Why [Something] didn’t meet your expectations?
- How starting a business changed your life?
These are just examples of the stories you can tell your readers.
The stories you write should be relevant to your content and the reader should be able to relate your story with himself.
Derek Halpern, Founder of Social Triggers always tries to tell relevant stories that his readers can relate to.
In the below video, Derek talks about Being More Confident.
At the beginning of the video, he tells a personal story about himself. He tells his viewers how unconfident he was in his college days. All his viewers can easily relate themselves to this story.
If you haven’t seen the above video yet, I really recommend you to watch it. It’s really awesome 
In all his articles and videos, Derek tries to make that personal connection with his readers and viewers. That’s why he gets an overwhelming amount of engagement on his blog.
“But Derek is an expert. I am not. Will it work for me?”
Yes. Storytelling will work for you. It works for Brian Dean, Neil Patel, Me and thousands of other bloggers.
You don’t need to be an expert to tell a good story.
Pro Tip:
Sad stories get the most engagement.
Sharing a sad story with your readers can open floodgates of reader engagement for your blog.
Jon Morrow of CopyBlogger shared his personal sad story in a post atProBlogger. He shared his story about how he met an accident that led to losing everything.
Want to know what happened next?
It led to 10,719 Facebook Shares and more than 500 comments on the post.
If you still think storytelling cannot help you increase engagement, then knock yourself out.
Telling a good story entertains your readers, develops a personal connection and can do miracles when it comes to reader engagement.
4. Use Images And Videos
Adding images and videos to your content has a lot of benefits.
Images and Videos make your readers spend more time on your website by making your content even more interesting.
Moreover, a research conducted by Buzzsumo And OkDork revealed that articles with images get more shares than articles without images:
You should try to add as many images and videos as possible.
But what images and videos to add?
These images and videos can be:
- Infographics
- Video Tutorials
- Video Demonstrations
- Graphs and Charts
- Relevant Stock Photography [ not recommended ]
These images and videos need not always be your own creations. You can use 3rd party Infographics, Images and Video Tutorials in your blog posts by giving proper attribution to the author.
Think finding Infographics is a difficult task?
Here’s an easy way to find Infographics you can use in your articles:
Step #1: Open up visual.ly and create an account or login if you already have one.
Step #2: Enter a keyword in the search box in the header and hit enter:
Step #3: Choose( Click ) a relevant Infographic in the results:
Step #4: Once you open the infographic page, Scroll down the page until you see “Embed This Visual” button:
Step #5: Click this Embed this visual button and select “Switch to WordPress Code” at the top of the pop-up box:
Step #6: Click the blue box to copy your HTML embed code. Now, paste this code in the text section of WordPress editor:
That’s it. You just embedded an Infographic in your post
Now you know how I get infographics for my blogs.
It is always a good idea to check the license of the 3rd party Videos and Images you use on your blog. Using content that you don’t own without the author’s permission is a copyright violation.
Copyright Violation is one of the most common mistakes that beginner bloggers make.
There are a lot of websites that provide images under CC0 license. This license gives you the freedom of redistribution, modification, and commercial use. Here’s a list of Websites That Provide Free Images Under CC0 Licence.
5. Respond To All Comments
Should you take the time to respond to all the comments on your blog?
If you ask me, I would recommend replying to every single one of them.
Why?
Well, replying to comments on your blog has a lot of benefits.
Replying to comments increases the content of your blog and helps youtarget more long tail keywords. Which in turn gets you more traffic.
Source: makingamark.blogspot.com
Replying to comments is essential if you are trying to build a community around your blog.
No one likes to leave a comment on a blog whose author doesn’t reply.
Replying to comments on your blog encourages the readers to leave comments.
If you really care about your blog readers and commenters, reply to their comments.
6. Mention Influencers In Your Articles
Do you want Influencers to promote your content for FREE?
Mention them in your articles.
Sounds easy, right?
But it isn’t that easy to get influencers to promote your content. There are a few reasons why this isn’t as easy as it sounds:
- Influencers are busy people. Really Busy.
- Your content needs to be good enough that influencers want to share it.
- These Influencers get lots and lots of emails and messages. And unfortunately, they can’t reply to every single one of them.
Mentioning Influencers in your articles is only the first step.
Once you mention an Influencer in your article, you have to reach out to them and let them know that you mentioned them in a recent article.
But before you begin, here are some key points you need to keep in mind:
- Mention influencers only when they or their content is helpful to your audience.
- Link out to them when possible. Linking out to relevant authority sites in your niche is good for SEO.
- Mention their full name. And not just the first or last name. Example: Derek Halpern.
- Don’t mention celebrities like Obama, Akon, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc. Because most of them generally don’t have the time to read blogs.
In this article, I have mentioned Derek Halpern, Adam Connell, Neil Patel, and Brian Dean. I have not mentioned them just for the sake of it.
I have mentioned them because their content is relevant and helpful to my audience.
Getting an Influencer to promote your content greatly increases reader engagement.
Adam Connell from Blogging Wizard does this a lot of times. That’s why he gets a lot of comments and shares on his blog posts:
In this post, He mentioned Glen Long and linked to one of his posts:
7. Be Everywhere Your Audience Hangs Out
Being Everywhere helps you build up an online presence.
And people who know who you are and see you at a lot of different places are always ready to engage with you.
Being everywhere is easier than you think.
Just build a presence where your audience already is.
In simple words:
- Be active in Facebook Groups related to your niche.
- Post on Forum related to your niche. Example: Warrior Forum is related to Internet Marketing and SEO.
- Be active in Google Plus Communities related to your niche.
- Leave helpful comments on related blogs.
- Be active in LinkedIn groups.
- Be active on niche community sites like inbound.org.
Commenting on other people’s blog is a great way to get into their radar and build relationships with them.
Always Avoid comments like “Nice Post!”. Try leaving helpful comments that add value to the author’s content.
I have a rule when it comes to commenting on blog posts. I simply call it “The 140 Characters Rule”. The rule is simple. Your comment should always be longer than 140 characters.
When you leave a helpful and value-adding comment on a post, It encourages the author to take the time to reply and visit your blog. It also gets you in their radar.
Most blogs allow comments. If you are looking for a blog to comment, go check your reading list. You will surely find more than one.
Finding Forums related to your niche is easy. Just search Google for one for one of these queries:
- “[Your Niche Or Topic]” + “forum”
- “[Your Niche Or Topic]” + intext:”powered by vbulletin”
Here’re are some examples:
- “Web Design” + “forum”
- “Game Development” + intext:”powered by vbulletin”
- “Gardening” + “forum”
- “Graphic Design” + intext:”powered by vbulletin”
- “Dating” + intext:”powered by vbulletin”
Searching for “Web Design” + “forum” will get you a lot of forums in the search results:
Forums have a really engaged and active audience. Building up your presence on Forums will help you find new friends and make new relationships with other bloggers.
8. Write A Case Study
Case studies are highly specific and unique. They drive a lot of targeted traffic.
Your readers can’t find them on any other site.
A case study is simply a detailed written analysis of a project or a ‘case’.
Brian Dean writes a lot of case studies and all of his case studies get a lot of engagement:
As you can see in the above screenshot, he got 679 comments, 489 Tweets and 567 Facebook Shares on his latest case study.
You can write a case study about your own experience or experience when working with a client.
Here are some examples of good case studies:
- How I generated 200 leads in just 6 hours
- Why my first business failed
- How we helped [Client] get [Desired Outcome] in [Time Period]
People love case studies. And it doesn’t matter if you write a case study about a success or failure. Case studies help your readers make the correct decision when they face the same situation.
9. Use A Clean Design
The design of your blog matters a lot.
If you don’t have a clean design, all your hard work to increase reader engagement might become just a waste of time.
When choosing a design for your blog, you should keep the following points in mind:
- Your blog’s sidebar needs to be as clean as possible. You should have no more than 5-6 widgets.
- Remove any popups you have.
- Don’t use more than two fonts. Most sites make use of two fonts. One for the content and one for the headings. That’s fine. But more than 2 fonts can result in a really bad user experience and slow site.
- Don’t add too many adverts to your pages.
- Don’t use dark background colors. Text over dark background is difficult to read.
Pro Tip:
You don’t need to remove your newsletter subscription popups. Just make sure they are not annoying and don’t appear instantly.
You can use the exit-intent technology to display subscription popups right before the visitor leaves your site. They are less annoying and have a good conversion rate
Conclusion
Following these tips will surely help you increase reader engagement on your blog. But all good things take time. Nothing happens overnight.
Try out these tips and let me know if they work for you
But before you leave, take time to leave a comment and answer these questions:
- How do you plan to engage your blog readers?
- What do you think about these tips?
- What’s your take?
Leave a comment even if you want to answer just one question or have any questions of your own
(Author can be reached at By- Sonu Mehla Mobile- 8285910007 E-Mail- sonuandfirm@gmail.com)