It’s great to be a social networking butterfly, but you also need to know how to bring those social skills home to your own blog. Welcome to the sixth installment of my Seven Most Important Blog Lessons Series. If you didn’t catch the first five parts, here are links:
- Seven Most Important Blog Lessons Series – Lesson One: Consider Your Audience
- Seven Most Important Blog Lessons Series – Lesson Two: Building a Business Takes Time
- Seven Most Important Blog Lessons Series – Lesson Three: Consistency is Essential
- Seven Most Important Blog Lessons Series – Lesson Four: Be Predictable
- Seven Most Important Blog Lessons Series – Lesson Five: Be Social
In this article we’ll talk about how to start and participate in conversations on your blog. There are two parts to this: (1) writing blog posts that spark conversation and (2) using tools that allow people to easily and interestingly interact with one another – and with you.
Writing Posts that Spark Conversation
Before you begin blogging you should know why you are blogging. Chances are that, at some level, you feel you have something to share. And, hopefully, that something will be interesting to other people. Of course, I’m speaking about blogging as some form of business activity and, as I said in the last article, you can’t blog in a vacuum and succeed.
It’s impossible to get anywhere if you don’t build a reader base and one of the best ways to do that is to write articles that cause people to react and act. You must learn to write about your niche in a way that causes people to agree, disagree or feel something strongly enough to comment.
In order to write response-provoking articles, you need to know your readers’ pain points and their points of interest. If you can figure those out then you can regularly deliver content that speaks to them. If you can’t figure out your readers, you’re pretty much screwed when it comes to getting them to interact with you and other readers on your blog.
I don’t mean to be so harsh, but it’s the truth. And, really, if you aren’t creating content that makes people react, act and interact, then what’s the point? Sure, maybe you just enjoy doing it. And that’s fine, but from the standpoint of this series – a business standpoint – you’re wasting your time if your readers aren’t interested enough to even throw an “interesting post” at you every now and then.
Not that you really want a bunch of valentines. I’d rather have 30 comments tell me I’m dead wrong than 5 “good job”s. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it when people tell me they like my blog. But with each post I write I try to bring in some sort of element that will provoke a real response from my readers.
Tools to Enable Easy Interaction
One of the reasons why I so strongly recommend WordPress to bloggers is because it makes it so easy for people to comment. Not only are the basic comments user-friendly, but there are tons of plugins that can improve them. I personally use five separate plugins just for my comments.
I consider comments one of the most important parts of your blog. Not only do they allow you to get feedback and share a bit of link love, they also gives your readers an easy way to let you know what they want. They may not always express their needs explicity, but if you pay attention you’ll often be able to pick out your readers’ needs and wants by the comments they leave. You can then use these to deliver better, more relevant content.
If you can make your comments section a place for real conversations, then you are doing your job as a blogger. You are also setting yourself up to make money and achieve success online. If people care enough to comment on your articles, then they will probably care enough to buy an information product from you. An active comments section is also a sign to advertisers that your blog is probably a good bet to get visitors to their blogs or websites.
The key to all of this is content. You’re not surprised are you? Content is king, right? Though some folks disagree with this, I still believe that it is the element that will make or break your blog. If you can’t write content that pulls readers in, then your blog is destined for … nothing. But if you can make your comments section a buzzing hub of activity, then you’re on your way.
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