Have you ever been ‘talked at’ instead of had someone ‘talk with’ you in a real life conversation? It doesn’t feel good to have someone talk AT you.
It leaves you feeling like you might as well not have been there at all.
Blogs can be like that and in this post we explore the power of asking questions on your blog and I share 7 types of questions you can ask to increase reader engagement.
The 7 questions are:
- What Do you Think?
- How Do you Feel?
- What Will You Do?
- What is Your Opinion?
- What is Your Story?
- What is Your Experience or Example?
- What Have you Been Working On?
Of course there are plenty of other types of questions – what type do you ask and how do you find people respond?
Note: you can get the full sized version of this video at YouTube here.
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This is true.and most of us are willing to share our answers on the web because of invisible from real life.What is more, I think we can add some investigation chart or little game to get them engage.What do you think?
Thanks for sharing the 7 questions which I think is very useful to get readers attracted more to the blogs or websites.
Keep going.
This is a major problem that I’ve had on my site. I only get about 100 to 200 visitors per day to my bbq recipe site but nobody ever comments or submits their recipes. My question is this: how do you engage the reader into participating when there is no dialogue or there is now way to tell what the mindset of the viewer is?
I just want to add that people in blogland generally feed off of raw honesty and they want to see that you have the guts to be authentic. Many readers live repressed lives and reach out to community for someone who’s willing to share the deepest parts of the hidden soul…and most of that stuff is the ugly stuff…l
Like:
Overpaid celeb resentment
Infidelity
Political Outrage/Politics
When you show that you have guts that is honestly one of the ways you gain a following…Q&A works but you’ve got to be authentic…not empty….
great post
Your sharing is very kindly
And I learn a lot
thanks
That is a nice trick to ask a question. I use that in my article writing aswelw. Certainly keeps them wanting more!
Extremely helpful, thanks. Will use it in the practice when necessary.
Hi, Darren
What a K.I.S.S. post :)
Thanks for the tips.
I’ll try to improve my blog post from now onwards.
I’m on Twitter
http://twitter.com/ElvinTiong
Hi Darren
You say something and made me more understand it easily than the past.
Something between the line on your talk and show me how to grow and groom it, I think I got many ideas from this post, thank you and thank you very much.
As usual .. One of those ‘goldmine” video post and lots of great tips :)
Thanks
Ev.
Good post,
Really some points can help me a lot, thanks darren
I have a blog about my design and sewing primarily. I would love to engage my readers more. Last post I asked if anybody knew what this flimsy, gauzy material was called. It did send in more comment. Still don’t know what the fabric is called though. Great post! http://lara-serbin.blogspot.com/
I sometimes like to finish with a debatable opinion or quote to finish, and that normally generates a good few comments. Good video btw.
@ Tony: I’ve started many conversations with complete strangers while standing in line at the grocery store! I use simple open ended questions like:
– “how long have you lived in this area”?
– “Are you ready for ___ holiday?”
– Comments about the weather, etc
– How busy the store is or isn’t
Anything to get them to speak. Once they do, I ask more questions based on what they say (that’s obviously on their mind). It’s amazing how quickly people open up to you if you show interest in them… not you. The less I talk and the more I listen, the more engaged the other person is.
There’s an old saying: You have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that ratio!
nice pooling then
HI
These questions are really good and we can get some good information to these questions.
Great points! This post has helped a lot! Thanks!
I try to ask those questions – obviously different depending on the topic and the style of the post. But they doing seem to work very well. Asking the right question does not mean more engagement.
The first hurdle is to ‘solicit’ a reader’s attention to your blog – a frikken big hurdle if you ask me. Then you need to hook them into the post all the way to the point where you ask the question and they are thinking – ‘Hey, that’s what I was going to ask’
I have been using this tech. in my articles and it has been working great. thanks for the common sense info!
Suprisingly, worked for me!
Gives me alot to think about.
This was a very interesting post. I have been doing everything in my power to figure out how to drive more traffic to my blog. I’ve been struggling tremendously on just figuring out how to get it all set up. I have been studying night and day reading other blogs and articles and so on looking for tips to increase readers on my blog… I am going to start implementing this strategy yesterday!
It has more than seven answers but above all is the design of the Blog and your pics as well.
My lover
When I was young ,I watched a film called《Top Gun》 by accident. Ah, I was crazy about Tom Cruise. He is the first idol who I worshiped. I left a deep impression on Tom Cruise’s military uniform and his cool image. That time, lots of boys and girls were infatuated with him. I simply can’t control myself to love him. I always think him whenever and wherever I was. Then I was ten.
What was wrong with me? His cool style appears in my mind. He wore army uniform。.Especially, he was too cool with the sunglass. Besides, I find out that his sunglass was different from others. It was designed simply and elegantly. How excellent it is! I image that what wrong with my wearing sunglass was。Later，Coincidentally，when I went to travel ,I came across a man with sunglass who looks like my idol. what ‘s more, the color of their sunglass was same. To my surprise, the two sunglasses were renowned to the world. It wasRay-Ban. I can’t wait to buy Ray-Ban!
There’s no doubt that a good writing style will get you the comments you need. But important to all that is also, like you say, how you engage the reader to participate.
It’s obvious I still have a lot to learn. But I’m always open to learning from the pros.
This is good information and keeping the blog open with questions is an excellent way to engage readers. Questions spark interest and allow readers to give their opinion
Most of us are willing to share our answers on the web because of invisible from real life.What is more, I think we can add some investigation chart or little game to get them engage.What do you think?
A great way to engage readers. It is so hard to engage a reader for more than a few minutes – there are so many “pulls” on a person’s time. This is a nice list of questions to hopefully spark a conversation. Questions spark interest and allow readers to give their opinion. Great post.
I think your whole blog in general is the best advice that I have ever got! It strikes me as astonishingly honest and I am suprised that you give it away freely as so many that I have seen dont – keep it up!
http://www.makebigmoneyonline.net/
Which is true, I have once read a book of guerilla….. which tackles all about the strategies in blogging that behind all of the optimization, behind choosing the best keyword, behind back links, the most important at the end is the content. because it is not the link that the visitors want. The visitors wants the content. very good post
wallyibong.blogspot.com/
bohzo (hello)
I do not even have a comment section, from what i have read on your site it sounds important, have a great day and thanks for sharing.
I feel nothing is more annoying than being “talked at” like Darren said… I feel a blog is supposed to engage 2 or more people to discuss a topic and when you get lectured to… you feel like you are listening to a “know it all” or your college professor…
If only there were someone there on my blog to ask these questions to
This is indeed my dream today. To make my blog popular and be viewed by the world. how can i do that? to follow your advices.
Actually I have read the e-book in one of the most popular bloggers here in the philippines and it helps me a lot. I was just thinking then that blogging is just making money, But i was wrong. It is all about passion at the end,
That even everyday, you are searching for the best keyword, it is still best to go back from your real intention. To share to the world your thoughts.
http://wallyibong.blogspot.com/
hi darren, actually i’m a new one for blogging word. but, after i read some your tutorial, i find a good way how to build a blog. i think we need hard work and should be creative. i’m trying to get a good way.
Truly this is a good post and it will definitely help beginners increase their user engagement, but i truly don’t think it is so useful for advanced bloggers. You may have to use different ways.
Thanks for the great tip. I’ve always struggled to get readers to participate on my blog I’m going to implement these and see what happens.
thanks again
Thanks for the tips, until now I have been focusing on teaching and have overlooked this extremely important piece of the puzzle. This info has made me look at things from a completely different prospective.
Cheers: Brad
Thank you for sharing this info. I to have spent some time struggling with some of this stuff. I found your post and info to be very helpful. Thank you.
From the 7 questions, I am pretty sure few would have been asked by every popular blogger but all 7? well, I am not very sure. However, I for once am sure to make sure that I will asking all the 7 questions.
Thanks.
This is a very useful post plus some of the comments are good also. I’ve started to ask some questions – tho few still answer the question directly but I will keep at it. I think its a good way to encourage conversation.
I used to allow comments on all of my posts until I began to experience a problem with spammers. Now I only allow them on certain posts.
With that said, one very effective way to get people to leave comments has to do with posting an image and asking people to share their thoughts on what they see in it. You can ask questions like: What does this remind you of, if anything at all? Have you had an experience that relates to what you see in this picture?
Note: it is best to use images that are inspiring and uplifting for this. You can even put an encouraging quote above them.
Perhaps this idea will help some of your readers.
Great post, I built my following by asking questions on Twitter, and kind of fell out of doing that. I need to focus more on going back to that process to engage more people.
I will also make sure that I begin asking questions in my posts. Thanks for your video.
I would like to know if people enjoy reading my content and what I could do to make it more informative.
Thanks again
i also think It is very hard to engage a visitor for more than a few minutes,most of them seems have no interested in my information or just another something.
Excellent tips. I think engaging readers is best way to get traffic. I also want to know what are free traffic sources for newbies.
hello there ~_^
i’m on a same page like flypig. Hard to ‘earn’ a visitors to my blog nowadays. Maybe it’s my content or my template or my bad grammar(english)…
however, i’ll try to use your tips , and start asking question… make it more like a conversation style…
happy blogging… have a great day
.What is more, I think we can add some investigation chart or little game to get them engage.
Thanks. Just starting out devoloping a member site and I am documenting the process in an open blog at startawordpressblog.com. I did not think about asking questions to encourage participation and, most of all, help.
I appreciate that. I am a first timer with owning a domain. I am beginning to have lots of troubles getting this thing how I want it. I will take your advice, thanx.
That was an excellent questions to start a very unique and catchy kind of blog post. It is just up to your creativity on how you will present it, right? Thanks for sharing this.
Those are excellent questions to start a very unique and catchy kind of blog post. It is just up to your creativity on how you will present it, right? Thanks for sharing this.