There is no secret sauce to getting more interactivity on your blog. Blogging simply takes time and effort (T&E). You are only going to get as much out of your blog as you put into it. It’s simple math really.
Sure, there are tons of websites and fly-by-night SEO businesses that promise you a certain number of page clicks and comments or your money back. The problem is that most of those are not organic. They are created by bots and fake accounts.
YouTube has recognized this problem and has actually started the process of deleting “phantom” accounts that have been giving people automatically generated comments and page views. This has created an unfair advantage to people using illegitimate resources and makes things less fair for original content creators. Don’t be one of those people, gain your audience organically.
Gaining an audience takes time and it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. One of the most important things about gaining and audience is interaction. If someone takes the time to read what you’ve written and leaves you a comment, you should practice common courtesy and thank them for visiting! Your audience is the most important part of your blog, and if you show them respect, they might respect you!
If you are only writing on your blog and not sharing the link to your posts with other people, either via comments on blogs of similar interest, “web rings” or social media, people might not know it exists.
Be sure to put a URL to your blog on all of your profiles across the web. Depending on the content you write, you might want to consider leaving it off of professional networking sites like LinkedIn, but only if your content is objectionable to future or prospective employers.
When you are sharing the link to your blog with others make sure you are adding value to it. Simply posting a paragraph from your post and a link to your site won’t work. Trust me, I’ve tried it.
Give your post a little tease, make a call to action, do something to engage the audience and entice them to the link. Most importantly though, be honest. Link baiting under false pretense is a huge turn-off.
Once you start getting people to visit your blog find out what they like. Use services like Google Analytics to find out what pages they are viewing the most. Maybe you should focus your content on those types of topics.
At the end of your post, consider leaving a question. Multiple choice work the best. This is a call to action to your readers and an open invitation to interact with the post.
As your blog starts to gain traction and your reader numbers start to grow, consider creating an opt-in e-mail newsletter using a free service online. This way when you post fresh content, you won’t have to rely on your interested readers stumbling upon it or noticing it on their RSS feed. If they’re really into your blog and sign up, they will get the updates right in their inbox!
The most important thing to remember though is to be yourself. People are intuitive and can tell when you’re putting on a show. Being genuine and being yourself is the new way of the web.
If this is something you are serious about make sure you are writing about something you enjoy. People will be able to tell instantly just by your tone.
As your blog grows you will inherantly become a better writer and your audience interaction will continue to grow. If you give up or slack off, the opposite will happen. Like anything else, blogging gets better with practice.
So what are you waiting for? Start blogging!
“Do you have a blog, what is it about? Do you have a “Recommended Links” section? This is a great way to get like-minded individuals to swap links with you. Leave a comment below with the URL of your blog and the subject matter and see who else you can discover writing about things that interest you. Who knows, maybe swapping links will help each of you grow!”
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