Here is the scenario: you have a WordPress site that has a Blog. You regularly update and write about the topics on trend for your audience. In your opinion, you provide great educational material however you only receive some or no engagement. No comments, no likes and no shares on social media.
How are you to know if anyone found this topic helpful? How can you leverage your audience to understand if you are creating content that was helpful and engaging enough? Interesting enough that they had to leave a comment or share? Here are a few helpful and easy tips to create engagement with your audience and encourage them to leave feedback, good or bad. Then you can work towards creating more content that is specific and well received time and time again.
Enable WordPress comments
Firstly, make sure that comments have been activated. Might seem like an obvious thing but if you are new to Blogging, you may not have realised this is something that has to be manually activated. For WordPress; Go to Settings> Discussion, then check off the “allow people to post comments on new articles box”
If you then visit one of your blog posts you should see that comments are now available for your visitors.
Pose questions for readers
Throughout the Blog post, pose questions which can probe the reader to put themselves in your shoes or even share their experience with a similar situation. Get them to share their experience with the same issue and their resolution to it. Talk about it knowledgeably but at the same time, also ask if others have experienced it in the same way or any different.
A way to create this kind of engagement is by creating a call to action. For instance, if you want to hear about their experience, ask them exactly that at the end. i.e. If they had a similar situation resolved in the same way for them or if they have been in the same predicament and done things differently. Ask what the result for them was? Really encourage readers to share their trials and tribulations through a similar situation.
User contributions to content
Another way you could encourage readers to engage on your Blog is to ask for contribution to your ‘seemingly’ unfinished post. This is particular good for posts where you have listed your steps in a number sequence. The trick here is to ask your readers to add on to the list. Making them feel that they are contributing to the article for the good of other readers.
You must also interact!
Lastly, make sure you are getting back to your readers comments in time so they know you took the time to review. You should receive an eMail when a new comment has been made on your website, follow this up, reply and keep the engagement going!
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