Catch the Blogging Bug
Blogging. Everybody’s doing it.
It seems that blogging is the ‘Dear Diary’ movement of our generation. But why are we all doing it? For our own personal memories? For fame? For posterity?
Whatever the reason, the increase in personal blogs has rocketed in the last five years and as a cheap way to share views and disseminate information you can’t get better. And finally where young, hip out-of-work students lead, the world of business follows.
Blogs for business are now, quite literally, big business. Easier for search engines to find and rank, blogs are being used to improve web site ranking and act as ‘gateways’ into a business’ main site.
Blogs are generally perceived as more objective than traditional sales literature, can be less formal and can be wider ranging than a simple list of products and services. With information typically presented in bite-sized chunks, blogs are easier to read than a page of heavy web site text and are more likely to be shared around with other web users. They are also designed to stimulate thought, provoke comments and encourage discussions. They can be used by businesses to filter information to their potential customers. By building up a regular following, your web presence will begin to improve bringing the associated benefits of more business.
And blogging really is addictive. Once the initial hump of writer’s block has been successfully clambered over the floodgates open and suddenly you’re dying to share. Used effectively as part of your online marketing strategy, the sky’s the limit. Don’t believe me? Just try it! Ask eSterling to set you up a simple blog. You never knew you had so much to say!
Keeping Visitors On Your Blog
So you have a blog, its in the search engines and fully optimised – heck you’re even getting traffic to it! But how long are visitors staying on your site? How many pages are they reading? Are they coming back and revisiting the blog on a regular basis?
To often visitors come to read your blog and bounce, that is they only read the page they landed on. You want them to do more, to read additional posts, leave comments and revisit the site time and time again. I guess the question is how do we engage readers so that they get to see a little more of your hard work.
If you can hold the readers interest by encouraging them to read more then you stand a better chance of showcasing your skills, services and authority in your chosen subject. The more a reader gets involved and comments on your posts the more likely they will return to the site and engage further in conversation.
Here are a few tip for keeping readers reading…
1. Make sure you link to related posts
Simple really, if a user has found your site via search engine then the chances are that they are interested in the topic of your post. It stands to reason that they may also be interested in any similar posts you have in your archive. Rather than expecting them to search your site for related content (witch, thanks to advances in search engines most users will not do) why not put a link to any related articles your have already published, just pop a link in the post.
2. Show off your popular posts
If you have an old post that went down well then don’t be afraid to showcase it. Compilation posts can be a great way of holding a user’s interest and get them looking around your blog. Often webmaster will take the post of the month from a year ago, sometimes they will take the most discussed posts – it’s up to you.
3. Concise and descriptive introduction
When writing the intro to your post make sure you clearly portray the topic of your post as well as descriptively summing up what the post covers. It is often a good move to add some sort of hook or question to get the reader intrigued about your post, remember controversy is king here. Remember often the introduction is displayed as a snippet to entice the reader to view the post.
4. Write a series of blog posts
Often we like to keep posts short, more often than not posts are less than 800 words long which is good as it does not over load the user and scare them off. This can mean that complex topics are either avoided or not covered in full, to get around this consider writing a series of posts on your topic. As long as you make it clear to the user that the post they are reading is part of a series then you can expect return visits each week as the reader digests each post in your series. A user that has read part 1 of your series is very likely to want to read parts 2, 3 and 4.
An added bonus is that you will have more pages all linked together, that are indexed in the search engines and therefore stand to get more traffic from the search engines for your given topic.
5. Design a blog that presents additional posts effectively
Consider how you can use design to display additional post from your archive, you may wish to include a side bar that present other blog posts either related, popular, recent or most discussed. Perhaps you would like to include a list of categories of authors. You can even explore javascript roll overs or and pop-ups that provide snippits of related content from other posts you have in your archive. Have a think – the possibilities are endless.