How to increase engagement on your business blog - We all understand the value of using a blog to promote products or services in our business, but we must also realize that without sufficient engagement on our business blogs, we can’t effectively promote our business or the products and services the way we want…
Take a look at a couple of internet based businesses in any industry, you’ll notice that more and more of them are beginning to realise the power of integrating a blog into their websites, unfortunately many of those are somewhat lacking in user or client engagement. But in this post we’re going to look at nine incredible ways in which to increase engagement on your business blog.
Increase Engagement on your Business Blog: 9 Tips
Know your Audience
Ok so the first way in which you can increase engagement on your business blog is to know your audience or customer base, know what they really want to read on your blog. Find out what kinds of questions they are asking, what types of comments they are leaving, and what types of content they are sharing?
Don’t be afraid to ask questions yourself, one of the best ways to get feedback from your audience is to create a poll.
Don’t just use your blog to write about news and developments about your business although it’s good to do this, but use the blog at your advantage to get your readers talking about your products or services a lot more.
Contests and Giveaways
You might have noticed a lot of businesses on the internet hold contests and giveaways on their company blog’s. They do this not just to promote their products or services, but also to get their customers, readers engaging more. And it’s also a great way to reward your customers for their continued support.
You can even ask participants to enter a reason ‘why they visit your blog or what they enjoy most about coming to your blog’ as a form of entry into your giveaway. This way you’re giving something back, getting them to engage by asking questions, and you’re beginning to understand more about what your audience really want.
Embed Videos
These days’s every online business is creating some kind of video to either promote their products or services or advertise their business using YouTube. And actually embedding those kinds of videos into your blog posts can really encourage readers to leave comments and ask further questions… Give it a try.
Reply to All Comments
Let me ask you this… do you reply to all the comments that you get in your ham folder? Or are you selective with the ones you want to answer? Let me know… as one of the things I see a lot of companies doing is that although they’re getting good comments on their blog’s, much of them are failing to engage or simply replying to some of these comments.
Visitors will almost get put off immediately and tend not to return to a blog where they’re being ignored, I’m sure you’ll agree with me I know a few blog’s that I’ve placed good engaging comments on and they never get a reply… So don’t let those kinds of opportunities slip you by. Increase engagement on your business blog by replying to all the comments, well at least the genuine ones. Just be seen to engage with your readers more, your online reputation will go far.
Make Sharing Easy
No blog post should go without the tools needed to share content on the web, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and StumbleUpon etc. Ensure that they are visible as well and not small and hidden somewhere in your post…
Give Praise
Giving someone a mention or praise is a great way to get people flocking and engaging on your business blog. It could be one of your top clients, a new customer or even one of your competitors… and why not? I’ve noticed that when you give someone else gratitude, more often than not that person will come right back and acknowledge it by leaving you a comment…
Interview Someone Important
Many bloggers do very well with getting lots of engaging activities on their blog’s through doing people interview. There is an awesome post about this by Ileane Smith on BasicBlogTips; you can read it by following the link below:
http://basicblogtips.com/blog-interviews-increase-engagement.html
Request Feedback
We all know the value of feedback to a business, it can be the ultimate decider whether others choose to use your services or not, choose to buy your products or go elsewhere… so the more positive feedback you receive the better right? And what better way to increase engagement on your business blog?
So consider using your business blog to request some feedback from your recent clients. You could even create a special post for feedback only, and place a link to it in your navigational menu.
Provide Customer Support
Finally we come to using your company blog to provide customer support, and I personally think that this is one of the best ways to increase engagement on your business blog.
For this to effectively work you’ll need to create individual posts that cater for each ‘frequently asked question’ or ‘most common problems’ that may occur. This way anyone leaving a comment wishing to receive support can do so on the respective post. It’s a lot easier to then address that question or problem a lot quicker.
So here is a quick recap on the things you can do to increase engagement on your business blog or your company blog.
- Know your audience
- Use contest and giveaways
- Embed videos
- Reply to all comments
- Make sharing your content easy for users
- Give praise and gratitude
- Interview someone important
- Request feedback
- Provide customer support
Well I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips, if you have any tips or suggestions of your own you want to add, as always please add them in the comments section below.
Remember to let us know your reactions on whether you reply to every comment that’s left on your blog…
Photo by Mavis