How engaging is the content on your blogs?
The answer to that question is easily answered by looking at the number of comments your postings are generating on a daily basis. If your comments section is empty day in and day out, it might be time to revisit your content development techniques.
Here are a few tips for upping the engagement factor on your blogs (with a tip of the hat to Neil Patel).
Create High Quality, Engaging Content
This might sound like a no-brainer, but plenty of bloggers ignore it entirely.
No one wants to comment on half-hearted, phoned-in content. Just think about it for a moment. If you can’t be bothered to write something that’s interesting and engaging, why would your readers take the time to comment on it?
Engage with Commenters
Readers who comment on your blog are looking for a response and each and every one of them deserves one. Even better, each of them deserves a response that’s actually engaging and interesting.
There’s absolutely no excuse for leaving comments hanging by themselves. Even the weird comments, the ones that seem to make zero sense, are worthy of a, “Thanks for reading and sharing that information with us.”
The more insightful comments should be met with comments that solicit more information (re: more comments). Phrases like, “What do you think?” and, “Can you think of any other examples like that?” not only invite the original poster to chime in with more information, they invite other readers to do the same.
Finally
There’s really no down side to creating content and comments that engage the reader and challenge him or her to post their own opinions. Not only does it create reader loyalty, it raises your overall SEO profile. Best of all, it costs nothing more than your time.