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There are several techniques to increase the potential of your readers' engagement and garner their continued interest;
but in brief, here are five pillars:
The first and most important rule -in my modest opinion- to keep in mind is the very basic rule of "content is king". Always make sure that your content is relevant to your target audience, adds something to them, reflects an effort that is being involved in its careful preparation and selection, and compromises between quality and quantity.
The second important rule is related to interactivity. To engage is to leave your audience a space for their own thoughts and reflections. Avoid imperative statements and traditional narrations; and focus rather on experience based narratives, real life situations, potential and open-ended scenarios; and similar content.
Add value to your content, through supporting it whenever possible with relevant documented and updated/interesting statistics, charts and info-graphics. Always mention your sources because this will increase the credibility of your content and reflect the highly appreciated values of integrity, trust and reliability as part of your image.
Market!.. Reach out to your audience. These days publishing a post by simply making it visible on your website is not enough. With rare exceptions, internet users today scarcely open url websites on a daily-regular basis to check for updates, as they expect that worthy content will reach their screens through social media and specialized feeds. Market your content, but appropriately, through such websites and services; but do not over do it so as not to imply to the user that you are imposing your content on them in a way or another.
Last but not least, is take the readers feedback seriously; and by feedback I mean direct and indirect feedback. The direct one being the comments received, the shares, the emails and direct contact regarding the content and the posts; and the indirect feedback is much wider but equally important, such as the views/reads of each post, its sharing rates, the audiences that liked it most, and how it reached them, etc... thus you can tell more specifically what content appeals most to your target audience, and what marketing tools and strategies are the best to reach out for this targeted audience.
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It is a question that needs much elaboration and can take forever, but I hope this helps.
Update your blogs regularly.
