Tips to increase your engagement

The shift has started, the focus is no longer purely on numbers and how many page views and followers you have. More and more, as bloggers (and influencers) we are being asked to provide engagement stats. Brands want to know how many people are actually reacting to you and your information.

So what now? A while ago it was all about numbers, numbers, numbers, so we all furiously worked on that, now we are being told that is still important but not as important as engaging.

I have always, even when it wasn’t cool, maintained that building a connection with your readers is so much more important that having the highest page views. For me, those emails where a reader identifies with what I have said or where they ask my advice, those are more important to me.

Brands had to get to the point where they want something back from working with you. They want people to actually buy their product or use their service and if your post is only getting 2 likes but you have 12 000 followers – is that happening?

Back to the point, how do you increase your engagement?

You need to know where your audience hangs out. Where are the people that you want to read your blog posts? Are they reading your posts through a reader like Bloglovin? Or maybe they are in Facebook groups? Or does Twitter drive your traffic. You need to do a little investigation and find out where they are. I know I have a few readers who are extremely loyal to my blog, they read it regardless of whether I post to Twitter, Facebok, Instagram or nowhere at all. But for me, the rest of my audience is on Facebook primarily and secondly Twitter, so I focus on those two platforms.

Then obviously you need to be sharing the content they want. Both this point and the first one, require you to have a very good understanding of your niche market. You may be putting out really great content but if it is not what your audience want they are not going to engage with you.

Be consistent. If you post daily, post daily. If you want to post once a week, do that. It doesn’t matter when you post but it is more important that you are consistent. I have a reader who reads HarassedMom during her lunch break. On the days I don’t get a post up by then I miss her comments and she misses my post for that day. This applies to where you share your posts as well. If you post to groups and other social media accounts be consistent about it.

Reply to comments! This is a great way, particularly on your Social Media Accounts to boost engagement. If someone leaves a comment reply, engage with them. This is a great way to create discussions on your Facebook and Twitter accounts and potentially could lead to further blog post ideas. It is a great way to get to know your audience, find out who they are and what they want.

Post engagement style posts to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Ask questions and advice, interact with the people who have liked your page or who are following you. This shows that you are interested in their lives as well and that you want to hear what they have to say.

Comment on other bloggers posts and share their content. The thinking that in sharing another bloggers posts means you could potentially lose readers is nonsense. Readers are capable of reading more than one blog and perhaps another blogger deals with an issue that you can’t or have no experience with.

Be present and authentic. It does mean a little more time and effort but be online to post and interact over and above just dropping links and posting pics of blog drops and awesome things you are doing. Be real about your life, posting only the good is great but we all have bad days where things don’t go as planned, share a little bit of that as well. It helps to make your audience relate to you a little bit more.

Images and videos, especially personal ones work really well when trying to increase your engagement. People can relate to them and whenever I share videos of my kids they always get a lot more views and likes that just the images and definitely more than just text.

Thinese are just a few of the ways you can build engagement but the biggest thing to remember is that it takes time. You can probably build a following pretty quickly but to increase engagement takes time and effort.