6 Tips to Make Your Blog More Engaging

Advise anyone? Sure, there’s endless supply of it, twist the tongue and it comes out! A homeless man gives you advise on home loans, everyone becomes a doctor when there is a medical problem and every other blogger gives you advise on how to blog successfully. Let me cut to the chase!

When you have a really good idea, you try to start big. The enthusiasm is at its peaks, the adrenalin rush is always there and you are all geared up to give it your best from the word go. But somehow, it just doesn’t happen the way you imagined. Things just don’t seem to go the way you want and all that enthusiasm and excitement is gone in a jiffy. There are two reasons for this; One, you imagined it way beyond possible limits, unless there is a huge investment, two and probably the more common one, inappropriate ideas from fellow bloggers. Mind you, I said inappropriate, not wrong. Why?

1. Some ideas presented by experts are too tough to follow, when you have just started blogging.
2. Some ideas don’t focus on the foundation, they just storm into advanced tips.
3. While some suggestions are good too, they try to enhance pageviews rather than making it more engaging.

It is important that you make a strong start to your blogging career such that it’ll have a lasting effect. I mean, I’m not the messenger of the blogging god but these are the tips I would like to suggest to make your blog more pageviews with increased engagement..

1. The Theory of ‘Blog Selection’ – No matter what niche you blog in, it has its own group of established blogs. Let’s compare it to the theory of natural selection itself; the ones with better characters survive (survival of the fittest) and the others are thrown into the ‘sea’ (not literally of course!). The sea is what consists of majority of bloggers starting afresh. You have two choices here, learn to swim to the shore or wait for a large wave to lift you up and put it ashore, which can never happen practically. This is where you have to be more patient and show perseverance. Try to ‘inherit the advances characters’ from the better blogs; meaning, learn how they do it, like the way they write their content, to what extent they use the social media and so on. Don’t go straight to the big ones like inviting guest posts, news articles and press releases. The former can be very tough to get at first and the latter two are ‘not engaging’.
   The Result – Writing good content is definitely engaging (if you follow their approach) and the way you communicate on social media too can be engaging. Your readers will appreciate your straightforward and honest approach and try to keep up the conversation.
2. Meeting the Google Standards – This is very easy. Play fair with Google and you will certainly score. Simple, don’t plagiarize, write original and good content, acknowledge the sources if you have used bits of their content, make proper use of meta tags and don’t spam, never ever! Follow the ‘give respect, take respect‘ policy and you will be right on track.
   The Result – Your blog gets higher SERPs consistently and readers will start noticing your blog often. If your blog has sitelinks, then readers will recognize the efforts you put into your content and also its originality. This compels them to liven up the discussion on your blog!
3. No fancy, No flashy – I personally think this where several bloggers try too hard to impress their readers. They use fancy jquery sliders, disturbing ‘floating share buttons’ that block the content, flying twitter birds (this I find absolutely ridiculous) and a host of widgets below the post. What for? To attract every reader to return to your blog again? In the first place, 90% of them turn back, 9.9% try hard to just get through the content and 0.1% may subscribe to your content. Clean the clutter, show em’ straight to the post content and a social widget maybe with related posts. If the readers like your content, they will take the time to go through the entire page and search for more quality content and that is what you, me, your rival blogger and everyone does. It is better to swim ashore rather than waiting for the ‘tsunami’.
   The Result – Creating clutter-free pages makes your blog easy to access, making it more engaging. In fact, clutter-free post pages demand more comments.
4. Guest Blogging – When you start your new blog, the push from within to write quality content is always there. Save some of your best content as guest posts. It is best if you start early; you get solid recognition, chip in with some quality links (make sure they are apt) and answer comments on those posts too. Don’t use guest blogging, just to get links from other blogs, try to deliver the message and stick to quality, it always helps.
   The Result – Your recognition will skyrocket, there will be more returning visitors to your blog. There will be more subscribers, more comments and more submissions to your blog itself. I find this as one of the best way to make your blog more engaging.
5. ‘Stumble upon’ Plus, Facebook and Twitter – These are the major forces in the social media that can drive ‘engaging’ traffic to your blog. As I’ve pointed out, it depends on the way you present your blog on the social media. Don’t spam with links and don’t mislead people with the description to the links. it’ll have a negative effect. A nice description would be to give ideas as to what the readers can expect on that page and how effective it can be to their work. If you are loyal to your readers, they too shall be. if not are compelled! Of course, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delcious too are important for social media attention. Pinterest too can catch the eye!
   The Result – If you are convincingly returning your reader’s expectations, engaging activity on your blog is a certainty. Your reach on the social media increases and you get a lot closer to the shore.
6. Look for action to get action – This is a very commonly suggested tip; comment on other blogs, join blog directories, exchange links with blogs from the same niche, befriend like-minded fellow bloggers and so on. Engagement on your site may not be guaranteed, but if you are loyal and don’t mislead, you will score.

This is what every blogger wants, to know that their content has value, that it has been read by several readers of which some of them have joined the conversion; Ah, so satisfying!

Of course at the end of the day, original and quality content is a must. If you don’t have this, it is like trying to swim with no hands at all.

I’ve picked up the conversation enough now, time for you to join in and share your views and opinions. You disagree with any of these? Sure, let me know; I’ll clarify if you didn’t get it right!