How interactive elements can help your blog

Engage your readers by giving them something to do.  Reading is passive experience for a reader.  I once read that when a reader is finished reading an article on your blog, they look for something to do; for example, comment or share on Facebook, etc.

Here are a few things you can include on your blog to give your reader something to do.

Enable Comments

Yes, this is obvious, but I included it just in case.  Have a place where readers can comment on your entries.  Encourage discussion by asking a question at the end of your post.  It can be any kind of question – from sillier, fun questions to more controversial, thought provoking questions, depending on your blog.

Subscriptions

Start an email newsletter, and include a place on your website for readers to sign up for it.  Put this somewhere off to the side, but near the top of your page so people will notice it.

Make sure that you actually have interesting content to share with your readers, of course.  And definitely do not spam them!  That will only turn them off from their site.

You can try to code the newsletter yourself and send it out manually – a good idea if you are tech savvy, but many of us bloggers aren’t.  Fortunately there are some pretty good newsletter and email marketing websites out there.

I’ve used Constant Contact – they were pretty easy to work with and offer great customer service.  While they do offer a free trial, you will have to pay a monthly fee to continue using it.  So, if you want to find something else, here is an article for some more top newsletter websites.

Feeds

Users can also subscribe so that when you post a new entry, they will receive an email update or an update on their RSS Feed.  Probably one of the most popular services is Google Feedburner.

Forums

If you want to use forums on your site, you should probably already have a decent amount of traffic.  You can find some message board services for free.  Make one for your blog to allow your readers a place to meet and discuss your posts. When designing the layout, be sure to have it look just like your blog so that readers will recognize it and know where they are.

Polls

If you have room to use this without cluttering your blog, then include a poll widget on the side of your site.  You can use this to ask your readers questions, from things like ‘what would you like to read about’ to something specific about a most recent article.  For example, if your blog is about movies, ask something like “what did you think about Inception?”

Widgets

Widgets are programs you can put on your blog (typically you see them in the side columns of a blog), and can be anything from an advertisement to a poll to a game. All you have to do as the blogger is copy and paste the code onto your site.