Blogging can be seen as a profession on its own. But for businesses that are struggling to create an impact blogging is the magic ingredient that enhances user engagement. There are some forms of media where the engagement of the users is restricted to certain levels.
When users watch TV ads they can only talk about it to other people. For businesses, it is impossible to know how many others got to hear about the ad.
But when they view the ad on their social media page they can immediately share it. And businesses can track the performance of the ad by viewing the number of likes or shares.
Such level of social media engagement is what makes blogging an interesting tool to increase your audience and for business owners to gain the trust of the customers.
Using user-generated content is one concept that is catching up recently. When a blogger or even a business on its social media page shares content that is contributed by a user the user would be tempted to share the recognition earned with his circle of friends and acquaintances.
There are plenty of such tricks that bloggers could use in order to strengthen user engagement and to increase the number of shares and thus boost traffic.
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To begin with, making it easy to share your posts
It is highly unlikely that every user who reads your post would have the patience to navigate to the address bar and copy the link and paste it on the platform where they wish to share your post.
So make sure that you embed social media and messaging app buttons on the page. Keeping these buttons as fixed position buttons makes the user’s job even simpler.
So no matter where the user is on the page he would be able to share the article from there without having to move up or down the page.
Understand the niche you are catering to and the target audience. This would help you understand the type of social media platforms that your target audience is most likely to use. So you would be able to integrate all the right buttons to get more shares for your posts.
‘What is in it for me?’
This would probably be the question that every user might have on mind when you prompt them to share the post. Why should they really give some space on their social media page for your post?
If a blog emotionally touches the audience then they would feel a gratification in sharing the post.
If the post gives them some information that is new or some information that is prevalently being spoken about then it gives them a sense of staying up to date. There are several such motivational factors that drive the visitors to share the post.
This level of engagement can be achieved only if you are able to truly communicate with the audience in a language or tone that they easily relate to.
To be able to do this, right from the first post you upload to make sure that you read every comment and take time to answer each one of them. Read similar content or similar blogs and observe the style that is followed.
This would help you create a unique style of your own. And the comments on other similar blogs might give you details about the possible information that could be added to make your blog more interesting and tells you what the viewers expect from such blogs.
This makes it easy for you to give viewers exactly what talks to them and makes it easy for getting them to share the post.
Giveaways and contests
Rewards are the best ways to increase the number of shares. Your rewards do not always have to be expensive ones. If you own a business blog then a simple giveaway or an act of recognition in some form can encourage people to share your post.
There are multiple social media groups that make use of this concept and reward the users randomly provided they add more users the group or share the post in their social media profile feed.
This is one of the most popular ways to increase the shares if you are looking for instant results.
Let your subscribers know that you are always listening
User-generated content is being used by businesses today. You might have come across campaigns that encourage users to share images of them using the products or services offered or even requesting the user to share reviews and reward the users in return.
All such campaigns are focused on encouraging user engagement.
For your blog, you can work on similar lines by creating polls or a separate post that allows users to comment on a specific topic or area that they would like to be covered. The post that you then create would be viewers’ choice of topic and this would get more shares.
Use social media
Social media pages are the easiest ways to get a huge number of shares for blog posts. When you give a gist of your post and include a link to your post on your social media page it allows readers to directly share the post with their friends and even to tag their friends to have a look at the article.
You could also use features like the Facebook Live sessions to connect with your users directly. This would help create a more personal level of interaction and be a good tool for you to understand how to give the audience what they are looking for.
You can answer their questions and also gather information about what to include in your future posts or the changes that the readers wish to see in your blog.
All the measures you take to strengthen user engagement would, in turn, lead to an increase in the popularity of your blog. Your genuine subscribers would be eager to read every post and even share it and increase the traffic.
