The other day I was typing away at this post on keeping your Instagram authentic when out onto the page came this phrase: your readers are what keeps your blog relevant. By that I meant, if you’re trying to grow your blog, you’re really trying to connect with more readers—you can’t do this without ‘em. I realized there was more to that phrase, so I thought it would be a good topic to post about today.
When it comes to staying relevant, our readers tell us a great deal of what we need to know. Their blog + social comments, emails, what’s being pinned and shared and saved—it all tells you about your content. This is why engagement is still important with blogs. Further, because engagement has declined (everyone knows that comments are harder to come by than they were in 2011!), the engagement you get on other platforms like social media is vital to consider.
Don’t put growing your audience over cultivating the one you already have
It’s actually the key to growing. If you’re promoting a blog, you want to gain followers. But if you focus on that instead of connecting with those you do have, you can start to come off as robotic, and even lose followers. The audience you already have, whether it’s 300 or 3,000, are the ones seeing each post you work hard to publish. By noticing what they like and comment on most frequently, you can tweak your strategy. This helps you grow too, because chances are what they want are what other people want.
Encouraging your readers to speak up
It seems like what people say online is either abrasive (no thanks!) or super subtle, but there are a few tried and true ways to get readers to talk about what they want to see, what’s important to them, and what maybe isn’t working so much.
Create interesting CTA’s. By now most people know that the question at the bottom of each post as well share buttons. Since it’s an old “trick” (I genuinely want to hear feedback, so I LOVE the CTA), you can easily come off as insincere when asking. Make sure to ask interesting questions that not only touch on your personal story but how it relates to others.
Conduct a survey. The results you get from conducting a quick survey are huge for understanding audience. Be both specific and open ended to get better answers. I suggest leaving a spot for people to add additional comments, and definitely ask people to be specific about what they come to the blog to see most.
Ask questions on social media. Because a lot of engagement has gravitated from blogs to social, you can ask blog questions on places like Instagram + Facebook. Ask questions about ideas you’re playing with or relevant news that relates to your brand—if people are interested you’ll hear about it, and can use it to create original content for your blog.
Is ALL content going to be pinned, shared, and commented on equally? Of course not. And even the stuff that isn’t “viral” (ew, that word) is often still worth having just in a different way. A lot of our tutorials didn’t get near as many clicks as some of our fun roundups, but given that people who want to learn design and coding will likely start by typing in a Google search, it’s really helpful to have, and has proven to help us reach a wider audience.
I realize I’m not necessarily telling anyone anything they don’t know here—readers are obviously important to a blog—but seeing how this works, how visitors are coming and keeping you in check, is helpful in the grand scheme of things.
Have you received any feedback from readers lately that surprised you? We’re always surprised by how many comments we get on our posts related to Instagram.
Vanessa says
Nowadays, blog comments are exceptionally rare. I remember back in the LiveJournal days when blogs would get upwards of 20 comments per post! Now I find that instead of leaving me comments on my blog, people will tweet me instead. I don’t mind at all because I actually prefer chatting to people on Twitter.
Angela says
Yeah, it’s nice to be able to connect on social media instead. Especially since not all bloggers were particularly good at responding to blog comments, it seems like you get a faster response on twitter/fb/Insta etc!
Caitlyn says
I’m just getting my blog started out and I’m sort of unsure if I should use my personal instagram and twitter. RIght now that is what I’m doing so my friends can stay updated… I started a facebook for my blog, but not sure if it’s something I really want to utilize…
I’m wondering where you draw the line between your personal life and your blog. Mine’s a lifestyle and style blog for a simplified life. I’m heavily focused on capsule wardrobes right now because I’m trying to get mine started. I mostly post cat photos on my personal instagram (hehehe)… but thinking maybe I should start fresh?
What do you think?
-Caitlyn
http://www.catonthemoon.xyz
Angela says
Love your blog design Caitlyn!
I’m glad you brought this up because we’re planning a post next week that covers some of it – so hopefully that will help. While I promote my blog on Instagram + Twitter, I also use them for personal accounts. But if you do this, you have to be careful about curating it well enough that your followers won’t lose interest. I would probably post my cat photos every day if it was JUST a personal account! You might want to just create a separate one so you can still catch up with friends.
Cath Cox says
I agree with the importance of engaging my current audience. Do you mainly use questions as CTA’s? Thank you!
Angela says
Generally we just ask questions to encourage the conversation – you could also link to relevant posts at the end, but we have that built into the design (“related posts”) now luckily. I personally always want to know what the person reading thinks, which is why questions are helpful even if only a few people answer!