{"id":312,"date":"2018-03-21T22:16:34","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T21:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skytechng.com\/blog\/blog\/?p=312"},"modified":"2019-10-06T22:17:21","modified_gmt":"2019-10-06T21:17:21","slug":"the-ultimate-guide-to-improving-user-engagement-on-your-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skytechng.com\/blog\/marketing\/the-ultimate-guide-to-improving-user-engagement-on-your-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Guide to Improving User Engagement on Your Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit: Drew Hendricks<\/span><\/p>\n

As a blogger, it can often be pretty disheartening from day to day to grind away at content and see nothing tangible in return. Sure, you can look at analytics and see traffic numbers, you can run ads and get some money, you can sell products and earn sales. None of that, though, is quite as direct and as viscerally satisfying as a comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Blog comments are interesting. On the one hand, a lot of times, they\u2019re barely even worth reading. They could be spam, or barely better than spam. Sometimes they\u2019re insightful commentary, but that\u2019s a rarity. So why do we feel so good when we get them?<\/span><\/p>\n

Comments are a direct, immediate sign that people are reading our content and seeing enough value in it to respond. You get the opportunity to be introduced to readers of your blog and members of your community. Heck, you get to work on building that community, without the need to take it off-site to a forum, discussion group, or social network. It\u2019s your own little slice of society.<\/span><\/p>\n

So how can you boost the chances of people leaving comments on your blog?\u00a0Let\u2019s discuss various tips and tricks.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

1: Make your Content Clear<\/span><\/h3>\n

Have you ever visited a site and seen an ad floating along the bottom, a row of ads along the side, a banner across the top, a pop-in in the bottom corner, a full-screen overlay, and the actual content you wanted to see missing in action? I have, and let me tell you; they\u2019re the worst.<\/span><\/p>\n

The worst part about these kinds of sites is that they rely heavily on clickbait and on traffic from social networks. They get shared around by influential people like George Takei, because they\u2019re willing to pay them for the exposure. They make a ton of money with no redeeming qualities, a bunch of content stolen from Reddit, and pagination out the wazoo.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Example<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want actual comments, to build an actual audience, and to succeed as a brand as something more than just another Buzzfeed replica,\u00a0you\u2019ll want clarity on your site.<\/strong>\u00a0You want it to be clear where your content begins and ends, and you want users to be able to smoothly transition from reading your content to leaving a comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Plus, the kind of over-saturated ad-laced sites like I\u2019m talking about are subject to Google penalties. It\u2019s been\u00a0in effect since 2012<\/a>, though sometimes it doesn\u2019t seem like it.<\/span><\/p>\n

2: Make your Content Excellent<\/span><\/h3>\n

Sometimes I feel like I shouldn\u2019t need to say this, but there are still thousands of bloggers out there who just\u2026\u00a0write boring content every day.<\/strong>\u00a0They sit down and they bang out the absolute bare minimum for a post, and they call it good, and they do this day after day after day. Their blog never grows, their business founders, and they wonder where it all went wrong. You know? It\u2019s like some tropical bird with dull colors and a hoarse voice trying to attract a mate. That\u2019s one bird that isn\u2019t going to have fertile eggs, I\u2019ll tell you that much.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Boring<\/span><\/p>\n

What does it take to make good content? That\u2019s not the kind of thing I can explain in one sub-section of one blog aimed at one small portion of running blogs in general. Instead, I\u2019ll point you to a handful of resources you can look into and figure it out yourself. Try these on for size:<\/span><\/p>\n