Engagement is a term that is thrown around quite loosely these days when it comes to social media KPIs. But then brands fail to question what engagement metric is truly of value to the brand. If someone just likes your page, is that of value? If someone likes a post or leaves a comment like ‘Nice’ or ‘Good’ or the dreaded ‘Hi’, does it help the brand? Or will you want the user to share your content with his friends and followers? Can that make a difference? Before we discuss ways to make content engaging, let us analyze what engagement is of value to you. If you or your brand owns a blog, what metrics help you decide whether your users are engaging with you? Here are the top 6 metrics that leading brands measure Time spent on the blog No. Of users sharing the blog on social media Valid comments on the blog Clicks on call to action links in the blog Giving a backlink to your blog Bounce rate Each of these metrics relates to engagement. But all of them are of different value. For example, we would rate shares on social and backlinks to be the top two metrics that prove that the blog has nudged an action from your reader to endorse your brand/view. On the other hand, a click on the CTA which drives users to buy your product (in case of an e-commerce site) or fill a lead form (especially for B2B sites) is the most valuable action your user can take. Time spent on the blog and bounce rates are general measures to keep a check on if the users are finding your content useful and whether the title and the content are in sync with the user’s expectation. Did you wonder why we did not set ‘views’ as a metric here on how many people read the blog? That’s because that is a KPI for the content you put out in marketing the blog. It does relate as a KPI for the title of your blog but that’s where it ends. Another metric that can stem out of your content and is a great one to measure is how many people subscribe to your newsletter after reading your content. They like it and want more of it. They are a niche audience, perfect for lead nurture and will eventually come handy when you have something to promote. The first thing you need to figure out is what engagement metrics count for you. It will be great to eyeball them all every month as a standard practice. Now, let’s get down to best practices that can drive each engagement metric. 1. Improve Social share engagement for your content Depending on the type of your content, the first thing is to know where it is likely to be shared socially. The simplest thing to do is install a plugin that pushes social shares to the forefront. Some show the number of times the post has been shared by others, which promotes mirror behavior. Others have the social share buttons on the top, bottom, and side scroll of the page so that it is readily available. There are other plugins that allow your text selection on the page to be converted into a tweet tagging the brand handle. Others paraphrase important sentences from the content into tweet bits to make it a no-brainer to think about what and how to share. Last but not least, a line below the content requesting share doesn’t do any harm. You can experiment and evaluate to see which tool works for your audience. Keep it simple and that should be it. 2. Get backlinks for your content Backlinks used to be the secret weapon in the SEO arsenal. It’s now much harder than it looks. You have to be the most authoritative content provider on a topic to get a good few backlinks for it. You may have to go the old-school way of asking people to link to your site too. There are some common types of content that get the endorsement. They are great listicles, good content that people can’t easily re-write or copy because you have indisputable research behind it. It can even be one that is high on humor. Such content gives the endorser some value to link to. Backlink.io’s crazy article about 200+ SEO factors considered by Google is a great example of this. It is not something that you can just get up one day and write. It requires in-depth research, industry knowledge and more than a few days of time commitment. (See how he just got one more backlink!) 3. Add an easy call to actions What do you want your readers to do when they are reading your blog or right after. The attention span is too short and you need to get them to do something quickly. If you are a local business, you want them to call or visit you. Display your contact number prominently and add a map to your location. You can give a first visit incentive (BOGO offer) or even a discount to pique their interest. If you are a B2B site, putting out a white paper, eBook or research with industry data is one of the sure shot ways to attract a prospect lead’s attention. They are more than willing to share their email id to get free access to valuable information that helps with decision making for their business. Another great example is how travel sites do it – create amazing wanderlust articles and then subtly push in a package option. If you are a B2C e-commerce site, doing listicles and product comparisons is a great way to subtly sell to your customers. Don’t forget to add a UTM code to your links to know which link is driving the most leads/conversions. 4. Add comments on the blog Though commenting is a feature that gets counted as engagement, how can you as a
