A live blog post provides continuous coverage of an event, similar to live tv/radio coverage. Since the mid-2000s, live blogs have increased in usage. In addition to text, other components are used, such as pictures and video. This method of blogging keeps people aware of what is going on in a particular situation.
You finally got your live blog up and running, and you enjoy that it’s intuitive and easy to use- and you’re excited to see how much syndicated content is coming through. However, now the problem is to maintain a regular, engaged audience.
If you’re concerned with how you will increase traffic and engagement for your live blog, you’ve come to the right place. This article will provide you with 5 tips to help you see how live blogging can help you boost engagement. Live blogging truly is a wonderful tool for your website.
Always be Prepared: Don’t Make it Up as You Go
Perhaps you’re one of those people who just wings everything. You make things up as you go along. However, coming up with material for your live blog that ways is not the best practice. You want to plan your words before you write them.
While it’s true that live blogging is meant to broadcast live events as they happen, and there’s often very little chance to prepare, there are likely to be moments where there’s not a lot going on. You must have relevant material prepared in advance at this time. This can be general knowledge on the topic at hand and reliable contacts that you can reach out to if you need extra help.
This makes your blog more exciting and keeps your visitors engaged with supplementary information from photos, stats, quotes, articles, etc.
Always be Relevant: Make Sure that Your Live Coverage is Valuable
One of the unique qualities of live blogging is its networking nature. This is because while you are covering an event, there are many others providing coverage and many more that are watching as the event unfolds.
Before you dedicate the time to create a good live blog, you must make sure that your coverage provides something that no one else does so that you can capture your audience.
You can accomplish this by checking out the content that is being shared within your network. This will show you what other agencies believe is relevant for your followers. In addition, this will help you determine the stories that will capture- and keep- the attention of your audience.
Always be Accurate: Verify Information before Posting
When you post anything- live blog or not- it’s critical that you verify the information you are posting is 100% accurate. If you are covering a live event and some facts are disputable, or there are varying perspectives of an event, you must be really careful.
This is a common problem during elections when it seems like anyone and everyone has an opinion and makes it known. This is when you must have procedures in place that allow you to verify the truth of what is being stated.
Likewise, suppose you are covering a situation that is particularly volatile such as riots or demonstrations. In that case, there will be a wide variety of perspectives regarding the events and themselves and the reason behind the events. You must take the time and make an effort to confirm the facts about what is happening.
In any situation, it’s best if you have a reliable reporter/reporters that can verify that information is accurate before passing it on to you. If you don’t have someone you can rely on, check with the syndicated content in your network to determine the information is agreed upon by most sources and publish that.
Always Stand Out: Provide Rich Insights to Your Audience
One of the most common mistakes people make with live blogging is simply noting what is happening. Unfortunately, this leaves your blog without value. Instead, it would help if you gave some significant thought to aggregating, filtering, and posting only insightful and important content. In addition to this content, you should offer some personal thoughts on what is happening. Some of the things to consider include:
- Is this information essential or not?
- What insights do I have on the topic at hand?
Additionally, you might consider supplementing your live coverage and thoughtful analysis with multimedia components. This will increase the quality of your coverage and can come in the form of social media links, audio, or video.
Always be Social: Encourage Visitors to Join the Conversation
A live blog is an ideal opportunity to interact with your visitors due to its multimedia structure and the fact that they are continuously updated. Therefore, you must make sure that your visitors can comment and share your posts. This will help them feel connected and involved- and they can also offer additional inspiration for content.
Conclusion
Live blogging is a form of blogging that involves continuous updates during a live event. This is a lot like live radio/tv coverage – but it’s digital. This allows you to reach out and interact with your visitors. Live blogging will increase your engagement as long as you keep these things in mind. You can visit https://viafoura.com/live-blogging/ to learn more about how to use live blogging on your website to maximize engagement and grow your audience.