Engage Your Readers And Encourage Interaction

When you started blogging did you have a vision of all these people flocking to your site that would leave comment after comment after comment? If I'm completely honest - I did! But that's not exactly what happened ;-) Sometimes I feel like I'm having a one-sided conversation. I pour my heart into a post, publish it and wait for the comments. And wait. And wait. And....yep, you guessed it, I keep on waiting. That's pretty normal in the blogosphere. Now a days it seems even harder to get people engaged and interacting on a post which sort of defeats the purpose of what a blog was designed for - to facilitate engagement (communication/comments).

Don't lose hope. Getting your people engaged on your posts can still happen - with a little encouragement ;-) Combine that with a little social media interaction and there’s no reason you can’t turn this into a fully engaged conversation that will help you grow a loyal base of fans.

How do we encourage our audience to interact with us?

People want to be heard, to voice their opinions, so ask them to give it. Ask them some questions, ask them to leave feedback and encourage them to share their opinions! This can be done right within the comments section of your blog posts. At the end of the post, give them a call to action - ask them to answer a question, share their experience with whatever topic the post is about, let them know you want to hear their experiences/opinions and to leave a comment below.

Keep in mind that it's important to respond to those comments anyone leaves! Keep your readers engaged and interacting with not just you but each other too. This can help you not only have a great conversation with a reader(s) and build a relationship(s), it will show your readers that you value their input, them and really do care and want to hear from them.

This can also be applied to any social media interaction you're getting too. Now-a-days a lot of bloggers are finding that they actually get higher engagement on Facebook (for instance) than they do on the actual blog post. You still need to do the same as you would in the post and give people a call to action. What do you want them to do? Ask them to do it - share it, comment, like, etc.