Image by: Colin
By Dexter Lunde
If your business has a website, you know that you have to keep it up-to-date. That’s one of the ways that you can keep your website relevant in the wide expanse of the internet, amongst the millions upon millions of websites out there. Let’s say that you don’t sell products on your website. What if you specialize in a service? How are you supposed to keep your website updated with new information?
Answer: blog. A business blog is important for any service website. Not only does it allow for more content on your website, it is also a great place to showcase your knowledge in your field.
One of the ways that you can measure customer and viewership (besides page views) is by how engaged they are on your website. Do they comment on your posts? Do they “like” your posts on Facebook? After putting hours of work into your blog content, you want to make sure that your customers and readers are reading it, right?
If you aren’t getting that many comments on your blog (or none at all), here are some tips and some things to look into (on your website).
#1) Content
What prompts viewers and customers to comment on your blog posts? Great content. Seriously, if no one is commenting on your blog posts, you may want to take a look at your content. This isn’t the only reason, of course. Content and marketing are the main reasons for lack of engagement. However, this is an important issue to discuss.
The content that you come up with must be relevant and new. Talk about the latest trends in the community (if you are a small business in a tight knit community). Talk about the latest trends in the business. Talk about the latest changes in your company. Write features about local business owners.
You don’t necessarily have to stay within one circle or market. Venture out. If you have a new business in your building, reach out and do a feature on them. Build a partnership with them. While you’re doing that, you can build trust and loyalty with them and their consumers as well.
#2) Take a Look at Your Site
Perhaps it’s just hard for your viewers to comment because they don’t know how. If your webhost doesn’t support comments, check into Disqus. It is easy to install and runs smoothly. It also has a clean design and it is a great way to help your consumers comment on your posts. I’ve personally run it on my blogger.com site as well as my WordPress site.
Remember that people are very visual. If your site isn’t all that appealing to the eye, viewers probably didn’t stick around to comment on your posts (or read them).
Don’t be afraid of white space. Break up your paragraphs so that there is a maximum of five lines of text at a time. Any more than that and your readers will mutter TLDR (“too long, didn’t read”) and keep on scrolling.
Don’t over clutter everything. Ads are important because it can help you keep your website up and running. However too many pop-ups, distracting features, and ads will alienate your readers. It will overstimulate their senses and they’re run away screaming (without having read your work or commenting).
#3) Marketing
This one is pretty obvious (also, I’ve briefly mentioned it already). If your marketing techniques aren’t bringing your viewers to your website, it’s really not that surprising that you’re not getting comments. In order to have people engage in your work, you need to lead them there. Double check your marketing efforts. Look at how much traffic your website is getting. You may need to double these efforts.
#4) Mix Up the Content
Adding different types of media to your website is a great way to get people to visit. Offer free video tutorials. Post it to YouTube and link it back to your blog. Add images to your blog posts. These will break up the long paragraphs.
Pick trending topics to talk about. Watch the local news, check out what’s trending on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. If there is something that you can incorporate to your business and would be interesting to your target market, make sure to write about it.
Don’t make it your personal blog. There should always be a distinction between your personal blog and your business blog. On your business blog, you shouldn’t talk about personal topics unless it is something that is going on in your personal life unless it is big and will affect your job (“We got a new team member at John’s Sporting Goods! My wife just had a baby!”)
Tell stories and use conversational language. Don’t make it sound too technical because that will put a divider between you and your readers/customers/viewers.
#5) Ask Them
Ask your readers provocative questions. What did you think of this topic? What are your thoughts on the market? What would improve that experience? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Put in polls and surveys. If you ask them, they will come. And if you ask them to answer a simple and interesting poll, they may want to justify their answer by commenting.
So how do you encourage readers to comment on your site, guys?