7 Blog Ideas To Engage Your Readers

When you have a business blog you have the opportunity to engage with your audience and create a two-way-communication and dialogue. It’s a source of communication between you and your readers. A good blog engages its readers and encourages them to get actively involved. When your audience is engaged you’ve succeeded in creating a bond and that equals loyalty.

Not only do you need to create engaging content that’s fresh and unique, you also need to present your content in alternative styles. As we all know, people learn differently. Some learn by reading and comprehension, some learn through visuals and others learn through audio. So it’s really important that you offer alternative ways for people to “read” your blog.

Here are some ideas to help keep your content fresh and engaging:

1. Contests And Giveaways

Contests can help you attract new readers and reward people who interactively engage with your blog. Contests create hype, they attract attention and give your audience an incentive to engage with your blog. It also helps reactivate stagnant people on your list. If your contest is created correctly it will help drive people to sign up to your list which in turn will increase product and service sales.

Some additional benefits of creating a contest include:

Generating new leads
Driving traffic to your blog
Increase in engagement, comments, and following
Gain insights into what people are looking for
Provide value to your audience

If you create a contest you need choose the right type. Some ideas include:

Photo contests
Video contests
Writing contests
Voting contests
Skills contests
Challenges

It’s important to outline:

The rules for the contest
What they need to do to win
The date the contest ends
What they’ll win
How they’ll receive the prize

Once you’ve created the contest be sure to post it on all your social media channels. The goal of the contest is to drive traffic to your blog, increase engagement, followers and ultimately drive your sales.

2. Case Studies

Case studies help people understand the niche you work with and the problems you help solve. More specifically they explain the process you take someone through to achieve specific results in their business.

Case studies are great because they can:

Attract readers
Increase trust and credibility
Showcase clients success
Educate customers
Demonstrate the benefits of using your business
Establishes your value

When creating a case study you want to make sure to include:

1. Your client’s background, the industry they’re in, the problems they were struggling with and the impact it was having on their business.

2. What had they already tried before hiring you and what results did that achieve?

3. Break down exactly, step-by-step what you did to help them, how long did it take?

4. Include as much data and statistics to back up the whole story

5. Illustrate the success your client experienced and the impact it has had on their business

6. Use images, infographics and bullet lists to display the case study

The purpose of the case study is to be clear about who you work with, the problems you can solve and how you can help them achieve the results they desire. Make sure you share it on your social media channels too.

3. Customer Success Stories

The beauty of customer success stories is they showcase a real-life “before and after shot” of working with you. They provide evidence of the outcomes you can help your audience achieve. Most importantly they provide social proof to prospective clients of solutions you’ve provided to other people “just like them.” This is a great way to directly demonstrate what your business can do for people. Similar to case studies, customer success stories work as testimonials for your business.

There are different types of customer success stories you can use including:

A written story
Video story
An Interview

All of the above mentioned are forms of storytelling. So in order for this to be effective, you need to make sure there is a clear structure and the story positions the client as the hero – not you. However, through your services, you helped them achieve the success they desired.

When a customer thanks you or tells you how your business helped them, ask them if they’d mind being featured on your blog. If they prefer, keep them anonymous. Don’t be afraid to ask past clients for their success stories.

4. Creating Lists

Lists and checklists are great for engaging your readers because they’re easy to read and digest. You can make it simple by using bullet points or you can build out the content by creating paragraph lists.

Your audience will love them because checklists are useful and they can engage by adding in anything you’ve missed. So if you’re creating a checklist don’t make it exhaustive. Make it easy for people to reach out and comment by mentioning things you haven’t put on the list. It also makes people feel useful and valuable if they can contribute.

Popular checklist topics include:

Top 10 Hacks
Top 10 Benefits
Top 10 Mistakes
Top 10 Must Haves
Top 10 Latest Trends
Top 10 Myths

If you use a list or checklist make sure the call-to-action at the end asks “Have I missed anything from the list?” or “Do you have any other ideas we can add to the list?”

5. Creative Ideas For Your Products

One great strategy is to write blog posts that show people how to use your products in creative ways. This not only informs them with new ideas but also demonstrates the benefits and versatility of what you offer.

If you have an information product you can chop it into bite-size pieces and offer it as a 15 or 30-day challenge. When you create a challenge you can add a FB group and invite people to the challenge and use the FB group for accountability.

You can use the challenge bite-sized content and create videos for each piece or use the challenge content to create a slide deck. Use the slide deck to talk through the content and voila – you’ve created a video mini-series.

Look at the products you’ve created and consider how many ways you can slice and dice your content to come up with something new and valuable for your reader.

6. Videos

If writing isn’t your thing you’re in luck! You don’t have to write to share your message. You can create videos instead. Videos are great because they’re visual and appeal to a different style of learning and absorbing information.

You can create video intros and outro’s in line with your brand. You can buy these types of videos through Fiverr.com and add them at the start or end of any video you create to provide brand continuity. You can create welcome videos, record your blogs, talk about topics of interest to your readers or you can even have a rant. Videos are a great way to connect with your audience. They get to see how you look and express yourself.

One of the bonuses of doing videos is you can have a “do-over!” In other words, you can practice until you feel comfortable before releasing your videos. If you can get past being camera shy, videos have a much higher perceived value when it comes to purchasing content too.

7. Infographics

Infographics are a mix of design, text, and data put together to create a visual representation of information. You can make your own infographic using free online programs, like Canva. Canva has infographic templates so it’s very easy to create one.

Here’s an example of a Canva template you can simply type over, change colors and swap out the image:

Infographics are best used for mapping out steps in a process without having to write an essay to explain it. As the saying goes ” a picture is worth a thousand words.”

The added benefits of using infographics include:

Demonstrates your credibility on a subject
Adds brand consistency by adding your logo and branding
Appeals to visual learners
They’re easy to share on social media
Boosts SEO which increases traffic to your website

Conclusion

Good blogs keep content fresh by adding in a mix of the above suggestions. Try it out for yourself. Vary your blog posts and keep your eye on traffic analytics. Your stats will tell you what works and what doesn’t. Keep trying out new ideas to see what engages your reader so you can create more of what they enjoy.