5 Quick Hacks To Boost Your Blog Engagement

No one wants to produce content that makes you feel like you are talking to yourself. The purpose of creating blog content is to draw your ideal audience to your website and get them to connect with you. Many people struggle with getting engagement on their site, but it's all in how you approach it. Today, we going to break down a few quick hacks that will help you boost your blog engagement.

Figure Out What Kind Of Engagement You Want To See From Your Blog

First things first, we need to figure out what kind of engagement makes the most sense for your brand. Engagement takes shape in a variety of ways. You may get so caught up in generating comments, that you forget that you'd rather strive for social shares or email list signups. So, sit down right now and ask yourself what kind of engagement would make sense for your brand. It won't always be the most obvious kinds of engagement, and that's okay!

Each post you produce can and should have a different kind of engagement that you want. Start answering the question of what engagement you'd like before you hit schedule or publish on each blog post. Do you have the proper steps in place to get those engagements?

1. Cut Down On How Much Is Happening On Your Blog

Have you ever gone to a blog that was doing a lot? You know, the blogs with a million pop-ups, slides you have to click through, or every picture known to man on one page? Those blogs don't get engagement. Instead, they get a frustrated audience who wants to click off. Those slideshow blogs may get page views, but they don't get real engagement. Those popups probably annoy your audience. I could go on and on debunking those annoying pages and why they don't get true engagement.

You may have seen a popup on Amanda Cross Co. for my email list. I am very particular about the type of popups I allow. I have one popup that leads you to my mailing list, and it’s an exit intent popup. That means the popup only shows up when people who view my page show signs of leaving.

If you want to use slideshows, popups, or any pictures to illustrate your points, be careful. People want their information, and they don't want to jump through hoops to get it. If you are trying to build an audience who is excited about what you post, keep it simple.

2. Install A Share Bar To Convince People To Share Your Content

Most websites don't make it easy to share your content. You can have all the Pinterest ready pictures, optimized social cards, et cetera. It doesn't matter if your audience doesn't know how to share your content. I like having a share bar on my website that gets people to share my content.

I use a service called AddThis to create my share bar. It's completely free and easy to set up. You can customize it to match the colors of your website so that it blends into your site. Look at an example of this in the picture below or look at the side of my site for an example of how it works. Once your audience is ready to share, it's as simple as clicking one of the buttons.

3. Create A Lead Magnet So People Can Opt-In

If you'd like to see more email signups, you need a fantastic lead magnet that will get people excited to sign up for your email list. For a lead magnet on Amanda Cross Co., I made an eBook called "The Seven Pillars To Content Marketing Success As An HR Technology Company." This eBook is a perfect lead magnet due to my niche.

You need to create a lead magnet that attracts your ideal audience. If you could tempt anyone to your email list, who would it be? Who are your ideal customers?

When creating a lead magnet, you want to do something simple. Don’t pick something that will take your weeks to complete. Your lead magnet should be complete within a week.

You could do something like a(n):

• Checklist

• eBook

• Email Course

• Cheat Sheet

• Audio Podcast

• Video/Masterclass

• Webinar Replay

• Demo Of Your Product

• Template

• Planner/Calendar

Whatever you offer as a lead magnet, you want to make sure that it's useful for your readers. There is no reason to subscribe to your list and download your content if it doesn't help your audience.

Related Reading: 69 Highly Effective Lead Magnet Ideas to Grow Your Email List (Updated) by Optin Monster

4. End All Your Content With A Call To Action

When you end every article, you should end it with a single call-to-action. What is the next step for readers who finish your content? Do you want them to comment on your blog, check out your product, subscribe to your email list, et cetera? End your content with one main takeaway. You don’t want your audience to be confused about their next step.

When your audience is confused about the next step, they will often take a different direction that you would hope. Instead of subscribing to your email list, they may visit Pinterest or go to lunch with a colleague.

Your call-to-action gives your audience the opportunity to get the next step from you. What do you want them to do? It only takes a few minutes to wrap up your content with a call-to-action so take steps to do it.

5. Commenting On Your Blog Shouldn’t Be An Olympic Sport

Have you ever been excited to comment on someone's blog, only to be hit with a Captcha that you can't quite figure out? Are these letters even a human language? What am I supposed to type here? I can't tell if this tile counts as having a vehicle because only half a car is in this tile! Captchas can be nauseating and unhelpful for the true, human commenters on your blog.

In my opinion, you should use behind the scenes methods to cut down on spam instead of making your audience do it. So, here's what I do: let everyone comment whatever they want, and I make blog comments moderated, meaning I have to approve them before they get posted to my website. This puts the onus on me to weed out spam comments. I like this method a lot more because it stops true commenters from having to jump through a million hoops to comment.

The truth is, I don't want to stop genuine comments from being on my site. I also don't want to give spammers a chance to comment on my blog to talk about who knows what. So, I make sure that I moderate my comments myself. I post the good comments that aren't spam and add to the conversation. I trash the bad comments that are spammy or weird. This takes work on my end to moderate my comments, but I'd rather do the work than make my audience do it.

Conclusion

Blog engagement is not a one size fits all type of thing. What you consider engaged, a business in the same industry may not. You have to work with your team to realize what engagement means to you. Once you understand what engagement looks like, give that information to your content team whether you have an in-house team or you hire a freelancer like me.

Comment Below: What’s your best tip for increasing blog engagement?

How Obsessing Over Traffic Is Stopping You From Building A Profitable Company

When creating a website, we are taught that traffic is king. We are always chasing after higher traffic numbers because we think that makes us successful. Today, I am going to talk about why you shouldn't obsess over traffic for your business. In fact, I am going to argue that obsessing over traffic is stopping you from building a profitable company.

Traffic Doesn’t Build An Engaged Customer Base

Traffic doesn't build an engaged customer base. Just because people visit your site, doesn't mean you will have a bunch of customers banging on your door to buy from you. An engaged customer base comes from more than building traffic.

To build an engaged customer base you need to understand who your customers are, what they need, what they want to buy from you, and then you need the discipline to create that thing. More traffic isn't always the answer. The answer is being smart about understanding the potential customers you already have.

Let’s focus more on one statement, “what they want to buy from you." Your customers might be a group of mothers. You could sell them baby clothes in a boutique, but what do they want from you. If you are a career coach, they want career coaching advice. If you are a boutique, they want clothes. Don’t try to be everything to your audience, focus on what you are good at.

You Are Not A Lifestyle Blog

When I am not working with my clients, I am working on building my lifestyle blog The Happy Arkansan. On The Happy Arkansan, I am a stickler for numbers. I am always trying to get my numbers higher because that's what's important on that blog. If I don't have the numbers, I am likely not reaching my affiliate sales and advertising goals. Furthermore, if I am not reaching my numbers, it's going to be hard to convince brands to work with my blog.

On Amanda Cross Co., my goals are very different. I am not focused on the numbers. I am focused on building a community here that will lead to sales of content packages. I don't need thousands of views here; I just need the right views.

You don’t need all the views because you are not a lifestyle blog. Your goals are different.

I don’t want to negate the importance of traffic. More people coming in at the top of your sales funnel is always great, but don’t think that more traffic will increase sales automatically. You’ve got to do the work to sell your product and build your email list too.

Some Goals Make Much More Sense For Where You Are As A Business

When it comes down to it, some goals make more sense for your business and the content marketing that you do for it. Put a lot of thought into the goals that you have for your website so that you can put the right kind of effort into building your company blog.

5 Goals For Your Company Blog

Next, let’s chat about five goals that you can have for your company blog (besides traffic) that will make more sense for your brand.

Build Your Email/Text List

When it comes to marketing, you can't always make a sale on the first visit someone makes to your website. Sure, some people will purchase right away, but most people need time to decide if they'd like to buy something.

Building your email or text list is the perfect way to keep in contact with your potential customers and sell your services to them over time. You can continue to communicate with them as time goes on and promote your services, latest blog posts, et cetera.

If you want to utilize content marketing to build your email/text list, start with where you are. Write down your numbers in a document. Where are you when it comes to email subscribers today? Promote your email/text list across your website and on every blog post. Utilize lead magnets to build your list and get people excited about signing up.

Keep tabs on where your email list stands after every month. If you can dig deeper, figure out which blog posts are leading to more email signups. If a blog post is underperforming, go back and change things around until you optimize it for email list signups.

Schedule Product Demos

If you own a software company, you may want to schedule more product demos. Even physical product companies may want to schedule more product demos depending on your product. Start by getting your numbers down: how many product demos are you scheduling right now?

Create a plan of attack to promote product demos for your company. If you want to schedule more product demos, you may want to experiment with pre-recorded videos versus one-on-one demos. If you do switch to a more impersonal demo structure, create a way for potential customers to email you detailed questions or set up a system for your salespeople to email anyone who requests a demo video in a specific timeframe (say, within 72 hours of requesting the video demo.)

Product demos have changed a ton over time, and you can utilize your blog to schedule more demos today.

Related Reading: 5 Ways to Get More Product Demos For Your B2B Or Enterprise Software Service

Sell Products/Software Packages

Next, you can use your blog to sell more products/software packages.

We all know that the rule of seven can stop us from making sales right away. People want to visit your site and get to know you a bit before they purchase a product. That doesn't mean you should stop trying to make money on your blog, however.

Pushing certain products or services on your blog is okay. You don't want to avoid selling altogether, after all. You never know, someone visiting your blog might want to buy something right now, but what do they purchase?

Do you have a small item that you can put up for sale? Maybe you have an old webinar that you can repackage as a paid product or a trial that you can monetize in some way? When it comes to selling in your blog posts, keep it simple and never sell more than 1-2 products per post. Too many choices can give people anxiety and make them decide not to purchase at all.

Build Authority/Name Recognition In Your Niche

Another goal you may have is to build authority and name recognition. Being an authority in your niche will help you a ton when it comes to acquiring customers, speaking at the best conferences, and creating a company excels online.

Building authority is about more than pushing out content, though. It's about creating creative content that grabs people's attention and gets people talking. What will people say about the content you are producing on your website?

Create innovative content that puts a new spin on concepts in your industry. You don't need to produce content to cause controversy, but don't be afraid to make a statement. Don't regurgitate what everyone in your industry has already said. Your blog is your time to shine and showcase your company.

Related Reading: 5 Powerful Ways To Build Authority In Your Niche

Improve Search Ranking For Your Website

Last, but not least, one of your goals may be to improve search engine ranking.

Ranking in search engines is a great goal to have because it helps you find customers who might otherwise not know you exist. Being friendly with Google will never lead you astray. Many people think that search engines are complicated. They are not simple, but they are far from difficult to manage.

It takes discipline. You have to be willing to sit down and learn the best practices associated with search engine optimization. I rank for many keywords on my blog The Happy Arkansan. One of the most critical parts of that process for me was familiarizing myself with Google Search Console. Once I found out what Google Search Console was and how to submit my site on it, my ranking started growing steadily ever since.

Conclusion

Today, on the blog, we talked all about traffic and why obsessing over it is stopping you from building a profitable company.

Once we established that traffic isn't everything, I spent some time detailing five other goals that you could have for your business blog besides traffic building.

Traffic is still vital to the growth of your company, but you shouldn't obsess over your traffic numbers. There are better ways to build a successful company, and I wanted to help you realize that today.