People who arrive on a blog can expect an engaging experience. The blog owner needs to find creative ways to interact with their audience. The time and efforts they apply to this pursuit can help develop a larger readership. The blog should be a way for visitors to learn new ideas and concepts. Owner can use their blog as a place to expand their relationship with the viewers.
Goals
Different blogs will have different goals. Each author must decide on what is the purpose of their endeavor. They should take time to list their various short term and long term goals.
1. Long Term
A blogger, who makes concrete goals to achieve, will most likely be more effective at engaging their readers. These goals can provide a guide to how they approach their content creation process. Looking at what they hope to achieve, they can decide what needs to be done to accomplish this. Goals should be as specific as possible. This can include how many readers they plan to add to an email newsletter or some other statistical metric. Then they can create content and calls to action that will lead to these being done.
Posts
Instead of only saying I want more visitors in general, they can decide that they want to achieve certain on page visit length. This will require them to create posts that are detailed, complete concepts, and longer content to make the reader want to stay on page longer. This can be different than another blogger who wants to have a certain number of pages read per visit. These posts should be effective at leading the viewer towards other topics in a multi step approach using content and link structures to move them from one page to another. Their engagement methods will be determined by their long term goals, monthly or yearly, for the blog.
2. Short Term
Bloggers can subdivide their goals into different specific time periods. Short term goals can be created at various periods during the blogs life to try and create new experiences for the visitor. These more limited time goals can vary what the reader see when visiting a blog. It can break up the repetition of the blog for the visitor. These types of goals can increase the curiosity of the reader of what will come next. Blogs that focus on a certain type of format can then include a short term idea to see if this appeals to the reader.
Appeal
These types of goals could be a how to series or learning module in the midst of more normal opinion postings. They can take different subject stances to see if this will appeal to the reader. A business oriented blog focusing technical details could introduce a series of post of the philosophy of business rather than hands on techniques. Blogs can engage their audience by changing up the ideas every once in awhile to see how readers respond.
3. Analysis
Using various data analytical tools the blogger can identify trends that they can use to increase engagement. These trends can be listed and then content formed to serve the interests. Varying what they produce based upon statistical data can allow the blogger to reach various segments of their audience. They can discover the visitor type and location and make decisions if there is further information that could be provided to better expand these visitors interest.
Segment
With data about audience segmentation, the blogger can further analyze their preferences to try and engage them more. For general themed blogs this can be important because they approach topics from an overview stance. Possibly, they can start to find visitors that are viewing specific content for longer and accomplishing some beneficial metrics for the blogger. These more productive audience members can be rewarded by the author finding out more about what specifically interests them and providing that type of content. If the blogger feels like it will pull the blogs theme farther away from the core topic they could create a unique newsletter. Then have these readers signup to be delivered more specific content that directly speaks to them. This way, the blogger keeps the larger audience engaged while also providing specialized content for specific niches in their audience.
4. Enthusiasm
A bloggers passion for their topic being presented will most likely show through to the readers. Having interests in what is being presented will make the viewers engaged through the presentation of concepts that they find compelling. The visitors who are taking time out of their day to view certain information will expect unique points of view or fully formed ideas regarding issues that they have to with their life. A writer who focuses on their topic with enthusiasm will probably produce more in depth content or have a specific voice that appeals more directly to their readership. These people can become like fans of the blogger and enjoy the ways they provide their content.
Bloggers can always be searching for various ways to more fully engage their readers. They always search for new ideas for writing, for example, on GetGoodGrade. The process of content creation can reflect their ability to gauge what their visitors want in conjunction with their own enthusiasm for the topic. Writers can read the above concepts to get a better idea of how to most productively engage their blog audience.
