Is your website’s engagement far below where you’d like it to be? Are you thinking ahead to strategies to increase engagement with your yet-to-be-constructed website?
photo credit: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels
In either case, you’ve got to think in practical, actionable terms. Following these six tips to increase the frequency and enthusiasm with which your website visitors interact with your domain could be just what you need to reach your goals online.
1. Put Social Sharing Buttons in Highly Visible Locations
This is a 15-minute job that could dramatically increase website engagement all on its own. All you need to do is place social sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and any other properties your visitors use when they’re not engaging with your site. For maximum visibility, put them in the headers and footers of each subpage or blog post. Include a written prompt (something along the lines of “click to share”) with the footer buttons.
2. Focus the Site’s Topic on a Niche With Narrow But Deep Appeal
This strategy isn’t universal. Not every web publisher has the luxury of creating and maintaining multiple websites about specific niches, each with a narrow but deep appeal to a particular subgroup of potential visitors.
On the other hand, this strategy can be dynamite in the context of a broader digital marketing operation. With clear appeal to people with a relatively common name and others interested in the meaning and history of common names, this website about people named Chris or Kris Duggan is a great example.
3. Bring Back the Comments Section and Moderate It Aggressively
Ah, the dreaded comments section. Bringing it back sure sounds risky — but is it really? Not if you moderate it aggressively. Truth be told, many web users prefer to engage on-page than through Facebook or other social media channels.
4. Post Blog Content on High-Visibility Channels Like Medium and LinkedIn
It’s very unlikely that your blog is as visible as popular social media channels like Medium and LinkedIn. Cross-posting blog content on those sites — with a link back to your website of course — is a good way to ensure that, early on at least, it’s seen to the degree it deserves.
5. Invite Influencers to Post Guest Blogs on Your Site
Another blogging tip: asking relevant influencers (like prominent people or tastemakers in your industry) to post blog content as guests on your website. This is an ancient strategy by digital standards, but it works surprisingly well.
6. Invest in Short But Creative Videos
You guessed it. These are the sorts of videos you’d love to “go viral,” or at least get a respectable number of social shares. Use them to convey actionable information in fun, casual fashion.
Stick With What’s Working, Toss What’s Not
More important than any of the individual tips discussed in this article is the process by which you evaluate whether those tips actually work. In other words: You won’t know whether your narrow, nichebound focus or your aggressively monitored comments section is helping or hurting traffic, engagement, and other metrics that define digital success.
If you take away one kernel of wisdom from this discussion, let it be that measuring and testing your website engagement strategies is absolutely vital. When it’s clear that a particular strategy doesn’t work as expected, be quick to toss it out and try another. That’s progress, not failure.
