It takes work to get your content out there for others to see. Whether by social networks, social bookmarking, message boards, and more, it all is based on how you deliver your message. That is how social media works. If you have people who are visiting, you will retain a few, but possibly have some that come one time and never glance back.
What do you do to keep them coming back?
Ways to Reach Out To Your Visitors To Keep Them Coming Back
Well, if your site has valuable information, you may need to make sure you are delivering it in an understandable way. Not everyone thinks and understands as you do. That is why there are so many tutorials out there for doing one particular thing. That is why there are so many articles out there that seem similar, but somehow have told the message differently and have include information that another place may not have covered.
Here are some ways to reach out to your visitors and hopefully have them coming back.
If you have a graphic and web design site, perhaps reach out to the community and feature artists from time-to-time. Be varied and specific about the different types of artists as not all are the same, and you can play with this by featuring artists by their particular genre of graphic or web design.
Have a auto-responder type script built into your comment system or something like the Thank Me Later plugin for WordPress blogs. The plugin literally sends a thank you to your visitors for commenting and invite them back to your website or to subscribe to your rss feed.
Readily leave a contact or some type of feedback form for visitors. Encourage them to give suggestions for future topics to cover. Also, for a little ‘pay it forward’ type action, give credit to those who send topic suggestions that you end up blogging.
Make sure to not be afraid about mentioning your blog topics when a conversation comes up in your social network streams and message boards that are relevant to what is being discussed. It is on-topic. However, do not make it seem as if you are pressing your opinion upon them. Just make sure to say why you are including the link, especially how it connects to the current topic.
Have a visible RSS feed or some type of opt-in form easily available for your visitors to be able to subscribe to your blog.
Include a related post script like Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) for WordPress users. In using something like the YARPP plugin, you can keep your visitors enthralled with related topics if they are needing more information.
Encourage visitors to give feedback within your articles by commenting. This extends the conversation so both you, and your visitors can learn from each other.
Occasionally have a survey that asks feedback about specific things on your website or social handles. Don’t give out the same survey. Focus on an area you’re trying to improve, and make the survey all about that.
These are just a few suggestions I am listing off the top of my head. What other ones can you think of to reach out to your visitors and have them keep coming back?
Hi…good information…hmmm i am not getting any more points out of my head right now 😛 but u have listed some grt points out there…quality info is always top priority…encouraging the visitors for suggestions for future topics is a good idea as u said.. …
Regards
Aniket
Thanks for the great suggestions. Another tip I learned from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger is to actually personally email or skype a member of your e-mail list to thank them for being a visitor/reader. Also, we can follow our readers on Twitter or Facebook and also comment on their blogs.
Hi Nile,
I am always looking for new ways and concepts to build up my site. So these tips are very helpful. That is the whole point is to keep them going back for more. Thank you for sharing, TTYL
Hi Nile,
These are all great suggestions.
These days it is getting harder to get opt ins. A great way to increase this is to run a competition with a valuable prize, offer some relevant information for those who subscribe, but make it mysterious and valuable, or just plain bribe them with an offer they can’t refuse!
Email blasts to your readers are one of the best ways to get them coming back. I get up to 30% of my suscribers reading my new posts. I see it as a spike after I send an email blast! You can do this with Social Media too, if you have a loyal following.
Hey Nile, You have some great content here. There are so many helpful tips that I will be bale to use and share with others. I will definitely send people to view your content. Thanks Again.
This is a GREAT article. I need to be doing pretty much all of these things and haven’t been doing one. I know what’s on my to-do list for next week. You just wrote it for me. Thanks!
it was really nice post! thanks a lot for sharing 🙂
Thanks for sharing,
Great Post with lots of ideas to get back our visitors and i am sure these ideas will works nicely for us.
Cool tips Niles. Some of those are on my blog and I guess filling it all up with those plugins will certainly bring more life to my blog.. Thanks
Hi Nile its an awesome post ……….you have given really good Tips it would be really useful for me to create blog with a nice content in it .your ideas are very innovative .keep up the good work. Thanks for sharing
A social network is a social structure that maps out the relationships between individuals. Technically we all belong to one giant social network, but we also belong to smaller, tighter social networks defined by our families, our friends, where we live, where we work, where we went to school, our hobbies and interests and much more.
Hi Nile, I love reading your blog. You have a lot of helpful ideas and suggestion. Thanks for sharing this wonderful concepts how to attract more traffic and to keep them coming back . Keep up the good work.
I haven’t added the thank me later plugin and have actually been wondering how people are sending me a thank you email after i comment…now i know, and i will make sure to add it! Thanks for the info :0)
Hey, Niles. I’d like to thank you for mentioning the Thank Me Later plugin. It sounds like something I am keen on implementing on my own site very soon. Gratitude still rocks, you know.
The tips are great, but don’t you think a uniform Thank you letter would be considered spammy?
I am not sure if I, as a user would like to get such a message every time I comment or something…
God Morning Niles
Thanks for the great information, very well put, I’m not using the thank me later as of yet, have to keep that in mind
Wish You and Your Loved Ones a Very Merry Christmas and a Great New Year
Sharon
Thnkas for this valuable tips. i have been having this challenge of keeping my readers. i may have let say 40 visitors a day and the nest it will reduce to say 15.
I will try your tips and get back to you to share if thing work fine.
Of course I knew about commenting being part of the TSA community, but I didn’t think of the other suggestions so thanks for that.
I often get into discussions on forums and those give me great ideas for future topics, and since those conversations mean that others are concerned about those things they will be attractive when I post that new blog post!
This is excellent advice. The auto responder is really an interesting idea I would have not thought of.
Niles,
I am not fond of automated responses. But I like your suggestions for encouraging readers to return. And defintely it is important to have an RSS feed.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
hi niles,
you have my point of view,we all want our reader come back to us. Anyway hi im new here
Thanks for the great suggestions Nile.
It is not easy nowadays to seduce readers into giving access to their inboxes. We really have to give them a clear incentive to do so and not allow our lists to stall. I should always be promoting and keeping the connection to my existing subscribers.
Great tips Nile. Thanks for mentioning the Thank Me Later plug-in. I’ve been meaning to install that on my blog and your post reminded me to do that – done 🙂
I’m so glad I stumbled onto your site today, Nile. Setting up a way to “thank” my commenters and the related posts were BOTH on my to-do list, and I was going to be researching which plugins folks recommend!
Thanks for doing to hard work for me! : ) I’m going to look into these plugins and hopefully have them up and running on my blog shortly!
Hi there,
You have brought out some Excellent points to have on our WP blog. I will have to do some housework on mine to measure up to your standards. :)…which are great standards!
it’s important to capture peoples information, but I do not like those annoying drop down that you have to click away to read the blog……just saying.
Your blog is very nice!
Thank you for the value packed post,
Lynn
it was really nice post! thanks a lot for sharing,i learn a lot from you
hello
to came ur visitors back it is one of the most toughst job to do that.but u have shared very nice methods how to Ways to Reach Out To Your Visitors To Keep Them Coming Back.
Awesome post! It is difficult to get your readers back to your blog unless you have all the above in tact. I am currently working on it. I am working on my own opt-in that would be a free video series, then a call to action. It is a lot of work when one thing has to fit into another and getting it working like a perfect machine! I’m getting there…
Thanks for the information making a blog more effective.
Donna
I am always working on it… even after nearly 10 years of blogging. As your site grows, sometimes you might end up delaying on replying, which I sometimes do. You will do it! 😀
Hi Nile,
As usual, excellent tips to enhance our blog and have visitors hungry to visit again. The plugins you mentioned are excellent and do engage your visitors quite well.
For me, a couple of other things that work well are to try to reciprocate by visiting the blog of your commentator and commenting on their blog.
Also, when you reply to a comment on your blog, it extends the conversation, especially if you use a “comment reply” plugin so the commentor receives an e-mail of your reply.
Keep your suggestions and tips coming,
Marc
That is true. Kim and I were discussing this over lunch and I told her I would cover some of the aspects of building a community around your comments and reaching out to your visitors. My next is tackling the design and concept of the “Thank you for commenting page” as I have been running into quite a few of those lately. The thought is good, but all of the elements that I would recommend having are missing or not congruent to the person’s site or brand.
Thanks for these wonderful tips NIle, I’m also wondering how to keep the contact ” alive” so what I think I will be adding is a PS to my auotresponders inviting them to keep in touch with me telling me what topics they would like to have developped on the future FREE teleclass.
I’m also wondering how to have juicy and interesting auotresponders,may be renew them twice a year what do you say?
Thank you!
I will be adding a section called “Ask Nile”. I speak at a lot of conferences, especially WordPress conferences and it is important to me that people have a means to be able to ask some of those burning questions.
Perhaps in those autoresponders from time to time, give a freebie or share an interesting video you think others might enjoy in relation to your site’s focus… especially around holidays. Just an idea that popped up.
Great tips Nile. especially the Thank Me Later plug-in. I’ve installed it and its really usefull!
This article clearly explained how to convince our visitor to keep back on our site. This is a little bit complicated things because based on my assessment, only 3 of 10 of our viewers keep on coming back. Thanks for the great info , with this I can improve my site with lots of suggestions
Hi Niles:
One of the best ways to keep readers coming back is writing great and relevant content. Also, having plenty of visible ways to subscribe is helpful. I am always amazed when I go on a blog and you can’t find a way to subscribe to it.
Kevin
Content is king… definitely. Without it, what is the purpose of a site? I agree on the subscribe issue. A lot of my clients I try to urge them to having a valid RSS feed and integrating it into a newsletter.
Nice post – and point well taken. I’ve invested a LOT of time commenting on other people’s blogs in exchange programs and that’s about run it’s course for me because so few of the participants in those groups actually live up to the recipropal part of that “exchange”. Quality content has always been important, but people still need to FIND you. I don’t think there is any magic formula other than a diverse marketing plan and lots of hard work
Excellent advice, Nile.
It’s always far more economical in terms of time and effort to take good care of visitors who are currently on your site, than to spend all your capital trying to attract new visitors.
Repeat customers are far more valuable than new prospects in the long run.
Return visitors are great. They show that they are interested in what you want to say and dare I say.. like you. I have met a lot of people, and even a lot in person at conferences, so it really is a delight to talk to them, whether on my site or on their site. 🙂
Really great tips to come back… especially the 4th tip its true…im going to use these tips in my blog themes..thanks for sharing it…
Thanks for the great tips, Nile. 🙂
I don’t have anything to add at the moment, except to say I really like Marc Korn’s suggestion in his comment, about returning to the blogs of those who comment on MY blog, to comment on theirs. I’m still not the best at responding to comments on my blog, but I’m working on it… and how much better to go to that person’s blog later and return the favour!
Willena Flewelling
Definitely, returning comments in the post and at the person’s sites are really important. Sometimes people just leave their comment and believe they are done… but blogs can be much like forums, especially if you have that reply feature integrated. 😀
great tips on reaching out to your site visitors. including the related posts is crucial because the reader might have left the site immedietly after reading one post if the related posts that may interest him were not there.
Hello Niles, Great post! These tips are really helpful. I love the second one especially to mention a blog post in a tread conversation. Often we shy away from sharing our content while in a tread conversation because for some people it could be considered spam…but the way you explain it makes sense. If you have engaged in a conversation and you then let people your intentions..it comes across simply has someone who wants to help.. Love your tips, Thanks for sharing and congrats on all your action here on TSA and being #1 commentor and syndicator! Way to go!
Great tips for getting people coming back to your blog. I love the return visitors. They are the ones that appreciate what we are sharing with them.
Great tips. Social media is no different from conventional business. People are looking for value for their time.
You have given value with this article and therefore I will be coming back for more 🙂 – thank you.
Great tips, thanks for sharing. I forgot all about the thank-me-later plugin. Off to install it now 🙂
Nice! You have some great points, and I had never even heard of the “Thank Me Later” plugin. I’m fairly new to WP blogging (unfortunately, because it rocks) and have been amazed at the number of different things you can get plugins to do!
Thank you for these tips, and I’m definitely going to look into “Thank Me Later!”
I do most of these things already, but I have been thinking about putting something in my posts about asking for comments, but I’m worried that if no one comments, other people will see that and think no one comes to my blog. What do you think?
Ohh I like the featured artist idea. Gave me a bit of inspiration for one of my sites.
one of the easiest ways to get people interested in who you are as it is a fresh content delivering and real picture of what your company is all about. This also helps your website in the way that it seems you are always updating your site. Blog articles should be easy to keep up with and you can pick a range of subjects to cover. Want to make more money, market through articles on your blog and keep your visitors coming back for more.
Yet another related post plugin is very effective on my blog. Weeks after I installed it my blog’s bounce rate lower and comments have increased in some of my post.
Build your website links on related and relevant websites, blogs and forums. Built social media profiles and add relevant friends in it, share useful and informative niche related content on your profiles and pages. These are helpful tactics to get targeted visitors and keep them back on your website or blog.
Great tips. I also put some latest or top music or videos and ask your visitors to put some comment for it. like some funny video in your blog post, and try how much visitors and comments you will get? Besides that, you can also put some flash games, quizzes or puzzles in your web site.
cheers 🙂
I think one of the main things is to give frequent (preferably free) offers either by way of newsletters or other communication. Send a trailer of the goods and the sales will follow.
Some people will never know how marketing works. But this article will help them a little…maybe!
I am always looking for new ways and concepts to build up my site. So these tips are very helpful.Built social media profiles and add relevant friends in it, share useful and informative related content.