Chances are you’re putting a lot of time, energy, and effort into your blog or website. Are you getting the results that you want? Are you achieving your online business goals? If not, you may not be making the most of your website or blog.
Test, Test, and Test Some More
The best way to make the most of your website or blog is to test what works and what doesn’t. There are many different things you can test and ways to test. Test headlines, test calls to action and test different content formats.
For example, your audience may respond more energetically to video content than they do to print content. Or maybe they prefer reviews over “how to” articles. Testing is the only way to know what your audience is responding to. Once you know, then you can adapt your strategies and tactics. Split testing is often the easiest method to test.
Analytics
Analytics are almost a website or blog essential. They tell you who visits your site, how long they stay there and what pages they navigate to. Analytics can also tell you the organic keywords used, or the link used, to find your website. Google Analytics is a free tool that makes it easy to create an account and then literally cut and paste a piece of code into your site’s code.
Just cutting and pasting code isn’t enough, though. You need to also review the analytics and base your strategy and decisions on the information. For example, if you find out that the majority of your visitors come from the south then you might create more content, promotions, and offers that appeal to that region.
Facilitate Engagement
If you’re not encouraging participation, comments, and interaction then you’re missing out. Create systems and opportunities to connect and allow conversation. Blog commenting is a start.
However, the posts need to ask questions and motivate responses. Even more, you want to reply to comments in a thoughtful manner that motivates more comments and feedback. Plug-ins that create forums, chats, and social media participation are another means to facilitate engagement.
To make the most of your website or blog, you want to create a stronger connection with your audience and visitors. By testing, using analytics to track the results, and by creating opportunities for conversation, you’re able to take your site to the next level. It strengthens your relationships with your audience and helps increase traffic, opt-ins, as well as conversions and sales.
What have you found to be helpful in developing your web presence? Are you blogging? I have found that sharing my blog posts on my social media platforms works well for my business perhaps it might help you if you haven’t tried it.
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I find the most difficult part to be facilitating engagement and really building a responsive community. I appreciate the importance of this.
Denise, I have found that sharing my information across multiple platforms gets me quite a bit of engagement. People won’t necessarily post on my blog but they will post back to me on group, business or community pages. I also think that being consistent in however you decide to deliver your engagement is relevant to building an audience.
This is really important for any business owner, and yet so misunderstood. I know it takes me 5hrs/wk to post a video and written blog because my audience seems to like both, and I operate much better in the spoken word. After putting in that kind of time I really need to be (or have someone else ;)) looking at the analytics of who is responding to what to shape future blogs and marketing efforts. That being said, I still need to pay more attention to that and will be hiring someone for the job! Thanks for the great tips Wanda.
Aly you really do a great job video blogging and blogging. Your time and effort really are apparent.
It’s easy when we first begin blogging to think “if I write it they will come.” But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Analytics, cross promotion on other social platforms and engagement are so important in helping blogs find their audience. Great points here Wanda! Is there a plug in you recommend for creating forums?
Cindy, thanks for your question. If you have a WordPress website then I’ve heard good things about Simple Press http://simple-press.com/ and bbPress http://bbpress.org/ for forum plugin’s.
Any time you can make data-driven decisions instead of arbitrary decisions, you’re moving in the right direction!
Wanda thanks for the great tips. I definitely have some room for growth in this area and certainly want to up level engagement with my site and my blog. Your posts are always so helpful.
Elaine, I’m glad you’re finding my posts helpful. 🙂
This is so true. The one thing I would agree with though is there are a lot of people who don’t comment on the actual posts, but might comment on Social Media, or share your links. They are just as valuable as the blog comments and it helps to have that wide variety. I like to think of them as doorways entering our business circle.