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One thing you may have noticed while running a blog is that even the most comprehensive articles don’t guarantee any feedback (positive or negative) from your readers. You may be wandering why your blog readers don’t contribute more to your blog and why so few of them actually leave their comments on your posts. That may be because you didn’t write reader engaging posts.

Writing reader engaging articles may be a hard thing to do as it requires leaving some space for your readers to interact with you, the writer. Believe it or not, they also want to contribute to your blog, share their thoughts and opinions and be part of the community. But if you don’t leave the space for them, how can they communicate with you?

So to help you out to connect with your blog readers even more here are some tips you should consider while writing posts:

Ask a Question

This is the simplest way to leave space for your readers to contribute to the discussion on certain topic. Ask for their opinion or their experience on some subject. Did they also have similar problems as you? How did they overcome those issues? Just ask them.

This is also a great way to generate new ideas to write. Your readers may have different views than you and therefore may give you a new ideas to write. You also get the chance to get to know your audience more, see what they are thinking like and what do they expect to read on your blog.

Questions also make you look more like a human. Sometimes you may want to look like a guru in your field, pretending to know everything. Asking a question will show to your readers that you also depend on them and their experience and that there is still room for their contribution to the discussion. You also show that you value your readers opinions and that they do matter to you.

Give you own opinion

News get spread really fast. If you want to inform your readers about the latest changes in the industry remember to include your own opinion about the topic. Don’t repeat what has already been written. Add something new from yourself and ask your readers for their opinion (see how those two points interact with each other).

Continue the conversation

Read and answer to all comments from your readers. Let the conversation flow. Ask more questions, answer to your readers questions. Make it naturally evolve. If you see that readers interact with each other, don’t break the conversation. Instead make it stronger.

Definitely don’t remove the negative feedback. Never be afraid to stand behind your story. If you cant defend your theory, that means you don’t believe in what you write. Your visitors will notice that and may go away.

Don’t reveal every aspect of a story

Leaving some intriguing and fascinating path for readers to explore is a good way to start the conversation. You may want to give your readers all the information from every point of view. And this is not bad thing to do, you try to help your readers. But leaving a space for your blog readers to follow on their own will enable them to express their own views and opinions.

Writing a comprehensive articles is as important as leaving the article open to other points of view. You may intentionally skip one part of the story to see if your readers can pick up that missing piece and get involved in the discussion.

Run a poll

Polls are a great way of engaging with your blog readers as it lets them participate in the topic and respond to it in an easy way. They also remain anonymous helping them to have their say without being put on risk of revealing their identities. It also allows you to see the interests of your audience and write more compelling posts in the future.

Be controversial

Now, be careful. Being controversial may bring many new visitors and start a long and engaging conversation but it may also be potentially risky. Controversy is something usually short time and you should expect that after some time the visitors will not be interested in the topic anymore and will leave the conversation and your blog.

Reward your readers

Show your appreciation to the readers that contribute to your blog. You may reward them with a star system that shows how many times did they commented on your blog (number of times they comment next to their name is also a good idea). Give discounts to the top commentators, show off the top 5 or top 10 commentators in a sidebar. You may use a special WordPress plugin like “Lucia’s Linky Love” that will reward frequent commentators with a “dofollow” attribute.

There are many other reputation systems available that will reward in some way the most active contributors to your blog and at the same time attract more people to engage with your blog articles.

Show your readers some love.

Make it easy to contribute

Don’t require registration before commenting. It’s annoying and its limiting the number of people that will comment on your blog.

To sum it up here is what Jakob Nielsen has to say about users contribution to social websites:

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

By incorporating the above tips you may make this proportion to be working better for you and your blog.

How many times do you contribute to the blog of your interest? Do you read all the comments or just the post itself?

This is an entry for Blogsessive’s Group Writing Project & Contest. Supported by U Printing - Business Cards and Blog Design Studio.