4 Great Ways to Get More Interaction on Your Blog
There are a lot of bloggers out there that write great content and even if they get a decent amount of traffic, some of them don’t seem to have a lot of interaction with their readers. On top of that, some of them might discover your site from the search engines and never come back again, even if they liked it. Seriously, they could have forgotten your URL or website name.
Your goal is to grow as much as possible with your current traffic. There are many different ways to get more traffic to your blog or website, but why not establish a better connection with your current readers from the start. Master this and then you can work on getting more unique visitors later on. So listed below are some ways to accomplish this and brand your website or blog:
1. Email Optin Newsletter Form
One of my favorite suggestions is to display an email opt in newsletter form on your site. If you’re using a WordPress blog platform, then you can place it in a widget on the side. In order to get an opt in form, you will need to sign up for a email service such as Aweber, Constant Contact, along with multiple others out there.
Another tip is to choose a newsletter form that is eye popping and has a good call to action. Then once you got a large list of email subscribers, you can easily email them about a new post that you made. This is more direct than having them subscribe to an RSS feed because the message is sent straight to their email address. RSS feed subscriptions can also be powerful and should be used along with email newsletters. Also, RSS is free so don’t forget to display a RSS feed on the site as well.
2. Subscribe to Comments Plugin
Another favorite tip is to use a free plugin called “Subscribe to Comments” for WordPress. Quick Online Tips uses this itself as shown on the bottom of the comments section and all they have to do is check the box. This allows readers to get email notifications after they submit a comment. That way they don’t have to keep checking up on the blog to see if someone answered their question.They just get an email that shows any comments placed after them and it gets more exposure to your blog so they are more likely to reply to the conversation. It gets them coming back to your blog.
3. Social Media
This has been discussed before, but you sometimes need to do more than the average person does. Instead of posting to social media sites and expect people to start following you, go out and read other peoples information and leave comments. You should look for targeted and similar subject areas. For an example, in Facebook you can do a search for your topic and register on a fan or group page. Sometimes there are thousands of people registered on one fan page. By interacting with a large fan page and leaving a link to your site in the signature can help get people to notice you.
4. Conversations with Readers
My third tip is to actually interact with your readers on the blog. Write a sentence or two at the end of your blog post telling them how much you would appreciate a comment or tell them to ask a question. Then come and reply to their questions or think of some to ask them. Usually having them ask questions will help lead you to more blog post ideas because some people start to become stuck with new ideas to write about. So this can be a big helper to keep your blog fresh with ideas and the readers will be more eager to come back for the whole post.
I hope this has helped and if you implement these tips you will see your blog grow. With that said, please share your own experiences, or thoughts or any question that you might have. I appreciate any feedback or if you have a tip, leave it in the comments section. Thank you!
About the Author
This is a guest post by writer Eric Woolf from the Pixels and Dots web design team. Please leave him your comments below or on the Pixels and Dots blog.
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Superb article, some great advice – especially for those intent on becoming blogging gurus.
Nice Alex,
Always,
Phil Butler
Managing Editor – Everything PR News
Indeed Phil, a really useful article for which the appreciation should go to Eric Woolf, its author, guest poster on Blogsessive.
Thanks Eric for a wonderful post!
I think this is your first post in 2010
Nice article.
Indeed satrya, you are right. First in 2010, definitely not last. Thank you for stopping by and reading!
I suggest the #2 should be replaced with ReplyMe plugin as Subscribe to comments sometimes is annoying when sending message anytime there is new comment while Replyme only send to the one who is replied, less annoying. Thanks
Tinh, “Subscribe to comments” and “Reply me” have indeed different functions. For example, on Blogsessive, “Reply me” won’t do much good as it is my personal choice to not use the “reply to comment” feature. So I guess you’d have to use the one that fits your blog the best. One of them is meant to create interaction between a reader and the blog, the other, to create more interaction between readers.
Thanks for your suggestion!
I find that the social media aspect and the conversations with your readers are key. It’s about building up a community of loyal and faithful readers. In order to do that you have to be loyal and faithful yourself.
Most blog comments have an option to subscribe to comments. But I see that few and few people are using this.
From my experience it could just produce email clutter. Imagine subscribing to 100 comments, and getting all those in you email.
Yes I know each post comment will slowly die down, but for the immediate present it can be a bit of a pain
Hello Alex. Great article here. I don’t know what to say but to start with, I just got your email today and I was wondering where I got it. I don’t remember opt-in (ing) to your newsletter or subscribing to your feed. But when I visited your site, I was literally taken aback because I thought that this was just any other spam accumulating in my inbox. Well anyway, if it was spam, it’s definitely worth my try. I have tried everything what you have written down here, except for the newsletter opt-in. I couldn’t say more the value of capturing e-mails from your readers. This is one of the most basic step in blogging. My blog caters to a very small and specific group of people in my area ( I’m teaching my workmates and previous classmates how to blog as a part-time with a little side earnings). Anyway, expect me to be a regular visitor here. Thanks.
@Robert – I’m not usually subscribing to comments, but rather prefer to check the website every now and then for updates. But some people actually do, and that’s the reason I offer a feed-based subscription here, instead of the email version, to prevent their inbox from accumulating more low-priority emails. Thanks for stopping by and dropping a good comment!
@Jun – Thanks for the kind words! In regards to the newsletter, I can assure you that:
a. What you have received is not a newsletter (don’t have one);
b. It’s the Feedburner mailer for the posts of the past day;
c. It’s opt-in only and you’d have to activate it from your inbox. I hate getting unsolicited mail and would never do that.
On a certain occasion I might use my subscriber base for a mass-email, but definitely not to promoted “money making schemes” but rather announce special events in the life of this this blog, like the one coming up pretty soon: 1 MILLION page views, which will probably come with a gift from me to my community.
Thanks for your comment!
@ Tinh, thanks for the recommendation. I will look into this. I know theres a lot of different ones out there.
@ Robert, I agree sometimes that its way to much of emails but it might depend on the blog. If theres only a few people leaving messages, then I don’t get annoyed but yes if there is a 100 people then it would be. You can always easily unsubscribe.
-Eric
I totally agree with #4. It is best to interact with your readers so they can be encouraged more to comment and visit your blog. It makes them feel good if they know that somebody is reading what they are saying and that you are taking notice of them.
Andrew, exactly. It can take a lot of time to interact with readers but thats how you gain a loyal following and those exact people are more likely to promote your site also.
You can just take a look at people reweeting it above. There more likley to share /recommend the site with others which can help grow exposure virally.
I agree with what Tinh said, in that I suggest the #2 should be replaced with ReplyMe plugin as Subscribe to comments sometimes is annoying when sending message anytime there is new comment…
I user ReplyMe on my philosophy blog, and I think it’s much more personal than subscribing to new comments.
Why not give it a go, its a fairly new plugin, so it could do with all the publicity it can get!
To test it out, please post a comment on my <a href="http://www.philosophy.christop....." title="ReplyMe Plugin Article"ReplyMe article on my philosophy blog
Thanks nice article bar my criticism!
Hello,
I have talked to people advising me to create a self-hosted blog as opposed to a blog written in a third party site like http://www.brimple.com, http://www.tumblr.com or http://www.blogger.com.
But basically, I’m thinking – why not do both? Personally, I feel that they would supplement each other anyway which would only provide me with more advantage.
And since brimple works like a social network, I’m thinking that it would really help a lot in attracting readers. So what would your suggestion be? Should I proceed with doing both, or should I just stick to a self-hosted blog?