Whether you’re blogging to support a cause, share a hobby, market a business, or other reasons, reader engagement is an important part of that landscape. To grow a lasting audience, plant these ten seeds in your mind garden:
1. Design your garden. Identify your topic and audience. The greatest success generally ties in with your passions and areas of expertise, plus the topic’s longevity and audience’s level of interest.
2. Analyze the turf. To stand out from the crowd and increase exposure, understand your competition. Who are they? What are they publishing? Where are they finding the most engagement?
3. Feed it consistently. Develop long-term relationships by staying dedicated to your niche. If the premise of your blog is vegan lifestyles, don’t dissuade subscribers by suddenly addressing unrelated topics such as automotive care.
4. Till the promotional soil. As you attract subscribers, retain email addresses in order to support future promotional efforts. When you post something new, notify them via email and provide a link to facilitate social shares.
5. Entrench your authority. Quotes from experts, factual information and statistics further your credibility. Connecting with influencers on social media and getting involved with the community will also help to ensure that people take you seriously.
6. Unearth your creative roots. Revealing your emotions, opinions and experiences deepens your personal bond with others and makes the content more appealing.
7. Rotate the crop. Break up visually boring, dense text with bulleted lists, photos, infographics or videos. This is also a proactive measure to retain readers affected by digital eye strain, who might otherwise abandon your blog altogether.
8. Make it easily accessible. Implement new ways your audience can interact with your content. For example, record a video about your post and convert it to a podcast. You can embed these recordings directly in your post, while encouraging more followers by using them to build a YouTube channel.
9. Stay in the zone. Post with regularity. At least once a week is recommended to generate solid traffic and inspire loyalty from your audience. Two to three times per week is even better. A higher frequency of blog posts attracts more indexed pages in search engines, which will help connect new readers.
10. Transplant generously. Use hashtags and share posts on other channels (i.e., LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest) to promote the highest levels of engagement. You can freshen up the notification by writing a new headline each time and pairing it up with a new photo or other art.
Michelle Peña is the senior editor of Office Technology Today and Small Business Tax Strategies. You can also follow her on Instagram @michymashup and LinkedIn @michymash.
