The first blog was made in 1994, yet it wasn’t until 1999 when the word blog became what it is now. Blogs are deeply integrated into our society covering a wide array of topics from travel, fashion, marketing and sports.
Hubspot has found that over its lifetime, one compounding blog post (meaning organic search increases their traffic over time) creates as much traffic as six decaying posts. With that in mind, if you have been putting out blog content but you’re wondering why nobody is interacting with it then read on!
NO SCHEDULE
If you’re a first-time blogger it may be hard at first to stick to a regular content schedule. With no maintenance to your blog or regular content schedule, readers can get easily bored or swayed over to competitor blogs. However, by making sure you’re continuously feeding your readers with content, it will establish a relationship between you and your audience. These blog posts don’t need to be long, instead, focus on quality, not quantity.
When first creating your blog, make sure you have your goals defined. How many blog views? How many interactions (shares, comments and likes)? Who is my target audience?
All of these goals and metrics will help to incentify you and give purpose to your blog.
Once these objectives are laid out, start scheduling which days of the week you will allocate to write the blog content and which days you will upload it on. Remember to mention when you will upload your next blog at the end so your readers can look forward to the next one!
AESTHETICS & VISUALS
First impressions are everything in life, and websites are no different. It takes a shocking 0.05 seconds for users to form an opinion about your website and in turn, that determines whether they’ll stay or leave. Therefore, having a visually unappealing site will increase your bounce rate (the percentage of single-engagement sessions) and exit rate (amount of overall exits to your page). In other words, your blogs will gain little to no traction and become ‘dead weight’.
Quick fixes that you can do to improve your blog site is to structure your layout so that readers attention are focused, stick to a core colour theme and typography style, and lastly add some imagery or visuals to help break up your content.
CONTENT
Even with an established content schedule and stunning blog site, bad content will always make readers leave. If you’re relatively new to blogging, it may take a while to find your feet, and don’t worry, writing your first blog will definitely take some time, but that’s all part of the journey. So, just make sure to gain some feedback on your blogs from fellow co-workers or friends before you post them.
You can always review your metrics as they will give an indication as to which topics are more popular and relatable to your audience. This may help to give you an idea as to which types of content to focus on.
WEBSITE OPTIMISATION
Sometimes the reason why people aren’t interacting with your blog can simply be because your blog isn’t loading quick enough. A 2009 Akamai study found that 40% of users will leave a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load. Therefore signifying the importance of a good website loading speed. Tips to do this are to disable any plug-ins/add-ons and to optimise your imagery file sizes.
Other areas of website optimisation that will aid the visibility of your webpage are to include backlinks (a hyperlink on another site which will link back to your main site) to other trusted sites and to use keywords throughout your blog content. The more links from well-known sites you have, the more search engines, like Google, will start to recognise the importance of your site. This means your site will rank higher in Google search results. A good marketing agency will be able to help you to reach out to journalists or popular bloggers and share your content which will help to improve your site visibility.
Finally, maintaining your blog is never easy but with all these tips and suggestions, hopefully, you’ll be able to help regain interactions and awareness of your blog!
