Take a serious look at your blog. What do you find? Do you find an attractive page that encourages viewers to interact and continue reading, or do you find a cluttered page that is challenging to navigate? Creating an appealing, attractive and interactive blog can greatly improve your chances of long-term success.
Here are some tips to help you make your blog more appealing:
# 1: Write Quality Content
Building an appealing blog is certainly not easy, but it is not complicated either. Put simply, content is king. When designing your blog, you should have a basic idea of some identifying information about your intended audience. Do you know what age group would be interested in your blog’s content? Would it appeal more to men or women? What occupation or income level do the majority of the people reading your blog have? Answering questions like these can help significantly boost the appeal of your blog, as well as the amount of interactivity it encourages.
# 2: Connect with your Readers
Once you know who your intended audience is, it becomes easier to develop content for that audience. When developing content, make sure that it connects with the reader; write so that the reader will find the content useful to their lives. Establish yourself as a useful and reliable authority in your field, and your readers will return to you again and again.
It is very important to use analytical tools on your blog. This way you can establish an understanding of who reads your posts. Google Analytics is a free tool that is easily installed on your blog. If you are using WordPress, there are plenty of plug-ins for this. By studying your analytics, you can start seeing the demographics of your audience and seeing which particular posts they found useful. This feedback is essential in knowing which way to move forward with your blog.
# 3: Create Scannable Content
Avoid writing write long, dense articles; your readers should be able to easily scan your content.
There are no strict rules when it comes to how long an article must be. More importantly the article should be easy on the eye. Break up long paragraphs with subheadings as reading long paragraphs on a computer screen, specially on a mobile website, can be off-putting. A good rule of thumb is to keep paragraphs under five sentences long with no more than 20 words per sentence. The subheadings you use should be descriptive so the reader gets drawn into the article when scanning the subheadings.
# 4: Guide your Visitors
Now that you have great content for your blog, it is important to lay out the content on the website in an attractive way. Did you know that you can guide your viewer’s experience on your blog? Make the most important features of your blog the most prominent to ensure that your readers find them. A great way to do this is to offer similar articles at the end of your posts. If the reader enjoys a particular article, you can suggest a related article. This is a great way to get visitors to spend more time with your blog and dig a little deeper into your content. Related Posts for WordPress – is a plugin that helps you link related material on your blog.
# 5: Create a Custom Logo or Figurehead
The most important place on your website is the upper left hand corner. Use it to display your site’s well-designed logo. This will assure the viewer that they are on your website; this can help allay security concerns, which are a common reason for a lack of interaction from readers.
# 6: Use White Space Creatively
Make creative use of your blog’s white space (the area between graphics and text on the webpage). Many bloggers fall into the trap of trying to cram in too much visual information on a page. This can be quite tiring on the eyes, and gives your blog a busy and stressed feel. Spread your content out, be minimalist with the design. Lead your readers to your content creatively by making good use of navigation and not by dumping all the information under their nose.
# 7: Use Quality Graphics
Do make use of graphics on your webpage to dress it up, but keep them to a reasonable size and quantity. Cluttering the page with excessive and sloppy graphics can be a major turnoff for your readers. There are many graphic designers at hand these days on websites like fiver.com and they can be quite cheap, so there is no excuse for having sloppy or out-dated graphics on your blog. In addition, you should always try to make your graphics or images search engine friendly. After all, great images can drive traffic to your website too!
# 8: Facilitate Interaction Mechanics
Finally, make it as easy as possible for your readers to interact with you. Set up plugins to make commenting on posts simple and easy, as well as widgets to let people easily share posts on their social media profiles. Connect your blog to your company’s Facebook page and other social media page as well to make it easy to continue the conversation.
Static websites and cluttered blogs are fast becoming a thing of the past. It also has never been easier to implement cheap or open source solutions to make your blog interactive with your users. With the advent of social media, information is commented on and shared like never before. Encouraging your readers to interact with your content by making it as easy as possible for them to get to the right information is essential.
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Aditi
Hi David,
I think that the main aim of creating a blog is to interact with people. Getting your blog updated with regular post as well as interacting with people definitely proves to be a betterment for your blog. All these tips that you have provided in your post are definitely very important for all of us to know. I like the first and second point of writing quality content and connecting with your readers. These acts as the backbone of a blog. Isn’t it?
Thanks for the share!!
Bhushan
To make a blogs more interactive everyone should firstly have fresh content.we should interact with readers as a friend.Info-graphic make the blog very clear and attract readers eye.
You are too good on these topics.
Ryan Biddulph
Hi David,
Engage persistently with your readers. Grow an interactive following. Smart tips here.
Few engage persistently. Those who do gain a responsive fan, a friend, and another member of their promotional army.
Listening makes you attractive. People like for their voice to be heard. People prefer to be listened to, to voice their opinion, to interact with bloggers.
It takes minutes to check and respond to comments. Do it. Each day. Set up a 2 way channel of communication. Prosper.
Create content. Fresh, usable, targeted, problem solving content.
Individuals seek solutions to their problems. Be the person who provides the solution. Attract more readers.
Thanks!
RB
Sanjib Saha
Hello David,
A great and helpful post. How many ever times we read similar article, we keep learning always. All the tips are completely true and proven.I would like to add a point here. Being consistent on your blog is equally important. The articles of your blog should be relevant and meaningful. The visitors for look for these every time they visit your blog.
Regards,
Sanjib
Faissal Alhaithami
Graphics play an important role in making text come alive. We humans are actually visual creatures. Good content coupled with high quality images can definitely work wonders to increase interaction.
Thanks for these tips.
Very good post I think the best response I have received is with quizzes or polls. People want to chime in on stuff if you present it right.
Graphics are good but infographics are great as a matter of fact this post would make a good infographic to pass around the web. Thanks for sharing.
Jon
Great tips, I also like ( if possible ) offering as many different types of content as possible on a blog. I like including screencasts, podcasts and blog posts to give visitors a lot to choose from.
Robert Koenig
People love lists. It’s scannable, as you recommended, easy to read, adds white space and each point can have a little graphic. Plus, lists are easy to write up.
RaviSingh
Hi David,
Excellent post! Blogging is worth to reach your customers and increase your business usability on Internet. But It should be quality. Just posting content on blog does not work properly. I like Building an appealing blog.
Thanks for sharing great article.
well nice to see you have put content on your top list and am I seeing no social media usage in your list? what do you say about facebook comments integration in the blog?
Jens P. Berget
Great tips David. What you’re saying about engagement with your readers is very important. When you start having conversations with them, they’ll stay at your blog for longer and they’ll keep exploring what you’ve been writing.
Karen
I find that ending my blog post with a question increases reader interaction. I used to never encourage readers to leave comments, thinking that they will if they find my posts compelling enough. But when I started making “closing sentences” into questions, more people started to leave comments.
I follow these rules for the most part but I still am not getting the traffic I want or need. I am starting to think my San Diego Auto Detailing blog may not be a good idea. Anything you guys can suggest?
Aakash
Hi DAVID,
Amazing tips. you have done a great research… and the facts and tips are really informative. To presents Quality Contents and create appealing blog because these are attracts users to read entire contents. It leads for low bounce rate of your website.
Thanks for sharing amazing post.
David
Good content attracts more visitors and helps generate traffic that converts. But more important is making a good rapport with the visitors and that is only possible when you interact with them through comments and reply to their doubts in order to clarify them and also appreciate their input.
Chris
Hi David,
interaction with blog readers is very important. Your tips are great. I can add only one to your list – place “call to action” in your post.
Thanks for sharing,
Chris
akhilendra
great tips, i have seen the encouraging readers to comment is a very good way of increasing the interaction and building a community around any blog. Use of plugins like Commentluv really helps in doing that.
This is a great tips to follow! Well the ” Guide your Visitors” is a great idea since most of our visitors are always looking for some informtion that might help them and in this way we always need to ask them and help them on what we know.
Ben
Love your ‘scannable content’ tip. I think people’s attention spans really need to be catered for, and people just aren’t willing to read thousands of words…
Pressa
Thanks for the post. For the graphic part, if possible can you write a article where to get royalty free pictures?
erda
Very good post I think the best response I have received is with quizzes or polls.Good content attracts more visitors and helps generate traffic that converts.
Wonderful tips, thanks for sharing. I personally write on controversial topics to build the interaction, Writing on these sought of topics ultimately brings high volume of participation by the readers & there is lot to discuss on. Obviously Good & fresh content always attracts readers.