Reader engagement is crucial to growing your business.  Reader engagement allows you to interact with your readers and find out what they are interested in learning and what ways they want to learn.  Reader engagement allows you to get an insight into your readers.

Reader engagements is a discussion, it is a two-way communication. 

Think about the last time you were talking with someone and realized the other person was talking AT you and not with you.  I know for me I wonder why I was even trying to talk to this person when they were not even slightly interesting it what i had to say.

Sometimes blogs can be that way, don’t you agree?  Yes, I am here to teach you but I also want to interact with you either in the comment area, via Twitter, via email, or even via Skype.

Let’s look at a simple way to get your readers engaged.

Questions???

Yes, questions can increase reader engagement.  Not just any old question.  You need to ask open-ended questions.  Open-ended questions are questions that make the reader actually think about their answer and encourage conversation.

Examples of Open-ended Questions

• What do you think?

I recently received an email from a reader with a great question, so I thought I would share it with you and get your opinion.

The question was “As a blogger, where do I draw the line of how much free content I should put on my blog versus creating and charging for a content packed e-book?  Should that ebook be exclusive information that is not posted on my blog or should it be an edited and nicely formatted version of my best posts?”

What’s your opinion about this question?

As bloggers we tend to focus on a catchy headlines and valuable content.  After all, these are very important to get and keep your readers attention.

What drives, excites, or encourages your readers to leave comment(s) on your blog posts?  What, you don’t know.  You spend so much time writing your blog post title and writing your post content, then you wonder why nobody leaves comment?

The Need For A Call To Action

Another important area that bloggers need to focus is the “Call To Action”.  You need to tell your readers what you want them to do after they read your blog post.  When it comes to prompting your readers interaction, how you finish your blog post will make all the difference.

Think about when you visit another blog, what prompts you to leave a comment?

You need to think about what will get your readers talking about your post once they have finished reading.

Depending on how you concluded your blog post, there is a good chance that your reader will do nothing but leave your site.

If you do not prompt your reader with a “Call to Action”, your reader may think wow that was a “good post”  and then click to another site.

The other day I had a reader that is not in the Alex Jeffreys coaching program email me and mentioned that I referred to Oil Rig Hopping in my post about How I Drive Traffic but he did not know what it meant.  At that point I realized that I did not explain what oil rig hopping is, so I thought I better create a post to explain exactly what it means.

So, What is Oil Rig Hopping

Sorry but this has nothing to do with the recent oil rig explosion in the Gulf Coast.

Oil Rig Hopping is the process of getting free traffic to your blog and who doesn’t want free traffic, right?

My coach and mentor, Alex Jeffreys, uses this analogy when providing a way to drive traffic to your site.

Here are the basics of the analogy.  An oil rig attracts algae, algae attracts clams, clams attract small fish, small fish attract big fish, big fish attract bigger fish, bigger fish attract sharks.  Of course you cast your line(s) with you hook and bait to catch the fish.  You ultimate goal is to catch the granddaddy of them all the shark.