Boosting engagement and conversions on your blog can have huge benefits for your marketing in terms of increasing organic traffic, building an email list, and fostering a social community.
Educating visitors on your site is also a great way to engage those customers who aren’t ready to buy or reach out to your team yet.
How do you spark engagement on your blog and keep visitors going down the customer journey, though? Making small tweaks to your blog design and testing new features can go a long way.
1) Upgrade Your Blog Layout Design
The quality of your website design definitely plays a role in engaging visitors and this applies to your blog as well. One of the most important aspects of a blog design is to make sure it is user friendly. The content should be categorized well and easy for visitors to find the resources that answer their key questions.
There are numerous WordPress blog layout options available. When looking at different design upgrades, find a layout that works best for your type of content. If you have a lot of video content, you may want to look at video gallery options and highlight videos on your blog.
If upgrading your WordPress blog layout is too large of a tweak at this time, you can take other steps to elevate the design of your blog. Choose striking imagery for your articles. Since most blog pages have a grid layout or showcase numerous posts together, using high-quality images for the featured blog post images can improve the look of the page. Make sure all of the featured images for blogs have the correct dimensions and resolution.
2) Add a Prominent CTA to Blog Posts
Calls to action serve as directions for visitors, guiding them to the next step on your site and in the customer journey.
When adding a CTA to a blog post, create a custom graphic that has a headline text and place this graphic within the blog post. The CTA may depend on your marketing goals and the content of your blog content. You may want to feature your primary CTA in the blog post, such as getting a free consultation or making a purchase.
Alternatively, you can guide visitors to download an e-book, sign up for a newsletter, or sign up for a webinar. You can tailor the CTA based on the content of the blog post as well.
Another way to make sure the CTA is prominent is to place it above the fold and not too far down in the blog content. Remember that visitors tend to scan and scroll as they read content online, so you want the CTA to stand out from the rest of the text.
3) Feature Blog Posts on Your Homepage
Another way to engage visitors with your blog content is to feature a few of the articles on your homepage, which is typically the entry point for most visitors. Web design trends have shifted where visitors tend to scroll quickly, so the homepage acts as a secondary navigation where visitors scroll and select options to navigate to internal pages.
You can set up the homepage panel to feature the latest blog posts based on the publication date of the post. If your content is more newsworthy and it’s best for visitors to read the latest content, this could be a good setup. Another option is to feature three or four of your most popular content pieces. Linking to some blog posts from the homepage can also have some SEO benefit in terms of onsite optimization and internal linking.
Lastly, showcasing some articles on your homepage can build trust and credibility with customers because it demonstrates that your business is a thought leader and expert on these subjects.
4) Promote Your Money-Making Blog Post
Most businesses have one piece of content that is their “money-making” blog post. Look at your analytics and social media analytics to see which article may be most visited and shared by your customers.
Once you identify your best post, promote it as much as possible on your website to boost engagement. One way to promote the post is to set up a banner notification at the top of your site or at the top of the blog page. This can be done with a WordPress notification plugin.
Another option is to set up an exit pop-up form or message. An exit pop-up appears when a visitor starts to leave the website and it can be a great way to recapture visitors or potential customers.
Lastly, if you have live chat or a chatbot on your website, you can utilize this technology in a similar way as the exit form. With most chat systems, you can set up custom prompts where visitors see a message or prompt in the chat while visiting a certain website page. Instead of a generic prompt such as, “Can I answer any questions,” test out a custom message where you guide visitors to your top resource.
When testing these different methods, start with just one option and see how it performs. Avoid frustrating visitors with numerous pop-up messages and prompts as they navigate the site.
5) Offer Social Sharing and Subscribe Options
Engagement can also mean fostering a sense of community and your blog can serve as the central hub. Offering social sharing on each blog post is a great option to encourage users to share content to their social media platforms.
After adding and making the social sharing buttons prominent, do more testing to see how your blog posts look when shared to articles. There can be some issues where the featured image of a post may not appear properly when the post is shared to a certain social media platform.
If you want to encourage visitors to subscribe to a newsletter and join your email list, make it very easy for visitors to sign up with a CTA or form at the bottom of every article. You can also encourage subscribers by setting up gated content where you offer one valuable piece of content as a download. That way visitors can provide their email address and subscribe in order to get access to the downloadable content. Having a large email list can be very valuable for marketing and converting potential customers into clients.
Photo by Andrew Neel