Could you imagine yourself reading a blog with just a bunch of endless black text? Sounds so dull right? No one likes it that way.
It doesn’t matter if your content is pretty useful, if that post is pure massive chunk boring texts, you won’t get many followers on your blog.
Because of this, you must create and add engaging elements to promote your blog. Here are 4 ways to create engaging content for your followers. No need to do ALL of them on a post, so try to incorporate at least one of them each time you write.
Interactive content
People always love things that create interaction. Interactive content makes your blog more interesting to your readers and as a result, it will encourage them to stay longer on your blog. It will then drive up your revenue and enhance the reputation of your website, thus causing it to rank higher in the search engines. Quizzes and surveys are a great form of interactive content, and this can help you to improve your website too.
Social media and user-generated content
Having a live feed of comments people are making could encourage people to visit your site more often and get involved. Posting the reviews people have given about your blog will also create good quality content that people are interested in reading. You could even invite some of your regular readers to be interviewed for your next blog post.
Humorous illustrations or comics
This type of content can be created for any type of blog, and it’s a great way of providing something that has real personality and is totally unique to your site. Of course, it does depend on your niche, but why not experiment? Variety is the main thing that keeps people interested in a blog, so you may not want to post this type of content all the time, but including it every now and then will help your website along.
Videos
There are tons of ways to make videos. If you’re camera-shy, it doesn’t mean you have to stand in front of a camera and make a 10-minute video of yourself talking about your business or its products. You can either ask somebody else to take part in creating the video with you, or create it using just text, images, and a voice-over. You might need to pay that somebody but videos are one of the top ways to bring in more traffic and keep people on your site for longer.
Loved the ideas. Imagine a quiz where folks get to invent the news of the day. Oh, wait- that’s too much like current politics. Or, maybe a humorous insult. Darn- that’s already happening every morning around dawn. And, that involves social media, too! I guess we’re just left with videos because it’s hard to compete with someone who has all that free publicity.
(I just couldn’t resist, Paul. It was my way of showing folks how effective your ideas really are!)
You know, Roy… I am right there with you! You can’t make this stuff up!
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the training course yesterday. It clarified a few things for me.
Along the lines of this post, I remember my first blog entries were just text.
That was back when we were using #ubc. ( not University of British Columbia)
After a week or so I figured out that even grabbing a small image and adding it to my blog made it stand out amongst the other stuff on the social media pages like Facebook and Twitter.
Glad you enjoyed the training, Doug!
Yes! Images go a long way in capturing the attention of your readers and helps break up large amounts of text.
My goal this year (I’d like to say this month) is to add a video to a blog. I have the idea already, I just need to get passed the fear that I’ll flub it up half way through or sound weird. LOL But I’m gonna try it!
You can always use a video you find on YouTube!
Thanks Paul. I added a few more pics to my blog today and will heed advice to add video. It’s not hard to do, but sometimes a gentle reminder is just what one needs.
I need to do that as well!
Hmmm, I haven’t experimented too much with the Humorous illustrations or comics, you’ve got my wheels spinning about what type of content like this I can add to my site. Thanks for the suggestions!
You are welcome!
all of these sound like ones i can, and should work on for my blog.. the comics and illustrations are ones i should try first (and fulfil my drawing resolution too)
There you go, Vidya! Two for the price of one, huh?
I used to make videos with pictures and text and background music but then that company stopped making videos. So I need to figure out other ways to make them without having to be on camera. ‘Cause that is not likely to happen. 馃檪
You can do screen capture videos where people just see your screen ( if it is more of a lecture style lesson or a demonstration of how to do something on the computer). Jing is a free program for videos less than 5 minutes. You can also check out Screencast-O-Matic.
a good reminder here, thank you
it is my intention to use videos and i haven’t gotten to it yet
Ditto on that, Shane! I need to up my video game as well.