Many blog creators fail to keep up communication with their readerships. This leads to missed comments, unanswered questions, and fewer conversions. It’s not enough to simply create blog posts; many readers want to interact with you in some capacity.
Chatbots can help with this, because they mimic human conversation. These tools can provide customer support and answer questions. Plus, they can encourage more direct engagement with your blog and its community.
In this post, we’ll talk more about how to use chatbots to enhance your readers’ experience. Let’s take a look!
The advantages of using a chatbot
A chatbot is a piece of software designed to simulate human conversation. Chatbots are used in many ways, such as for customer service, marketing, and even healthcare.
Some of the primary advantages of using a chatbot are:
- They keep people on your blog longer. Chatbots promote user engagement, and you can craft personalized messages to each visitor.
- They allow you to make comments and answer questions in real time. This helps you to build trust and credibility with your audience, because it looks like someone is always there to help.
- They help you generate leads. You can use a chatbot to prompt your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, or you can offer a free ebook in exchange for their contact information.
- They help you to build a relationship with your readers. You can use a chatbot to suggest additional content of interest to the reader, based on what they’re currently looking at.
- They can help you to collect data about your readers. This information can be used to segment your readership and create targeted content that appeals to them specifically.
- They save you time and money. An effective chatbot can automate many of the tasks that you would otherwise need to do manually.
The good news is that setting up a chatbot on your website is simple. There are plenty of tools available that are both affordable and user-friendly.
4 ways to use a chatbot on your blog
Of course, just setting up a chatbot isn’t enough. You also need to make sure you’re using it as effectively as possible. With that in mind, here are four of the best tips for how to use chatbots on your blog.
- Promote your blog content
- Prompt readers to sign up for email updates
- Automate customer support and answer common inquiries
- Provide special offers or discounts to readers
1. Promote your blog content 📢
Just because a visitor has arrived on your blog doesn’t mean they know what to do there. Especially if your blog is large or complex, they may not be sure where to get started.
A chatbot can make the first-time reader’s experience much smoother. A quick pop up welcoming readers can direct them to the best content to get started with. This personal touch makes readers feel at home and demonstrates that there’s a real person behind the blog.
For existing readers, your chatbot can prompt them to check out some of your lesser-known content. You can even provide automated personalized recommendations based on what they’re currently reading, or other data about them (such as their location).
2. Prompt readers to sign up for email updates 📧
Running an email campaign is an excellent way to keep readers invested in your blog and coming back regularly. However, your email list won’t grow if you don’t make it easy to sign up.
You’ll want to start by adding a prominent Call To Action (CTA) to your blog. However, you can make even better progress by adding a simple prompt to your chatbot script, asking visitors to sign up for updates on new blog posts and other news. This is an excellent way to grab the attention of readers who are already highly engaged.
You can also use your chatbot to offer a freebie in exchange for an email address, such as an ebook or free course. These types of incentives encourage readers to sign up, and come across as more natural when organically worked into a conversation.
3. Automate customer support and answer common inquiries 🖱️
If your blog has a large readership, you may have to answer a lot of questions. In that scenario, you’re likely to see a handful of common queries showing up over and over again.
It can take a lot of time for you and/or your team to deal with all of these questions manually. Yet they can’t be ignored, since readers who don’t feel listened to or cared about aren’t likely to stick around for long.
This is one of the easiest problems to solve with a chatbot. You can set up your chatbot to recognize certain keywords and phrases, making it easy to automate answering of common questions and offer hands-off customer support.
You’ll be able to save a lot of time, while still providing visitors with the help they need. Plus, you can still have your chatbot direct readers to your human support team for less common and more complex queries.
4. Provide special offers or discounts to readers 🎁
Last but not least, you can also use a chatbot to offer special discounts or coupons to your readers. This helps to build loyalty, and encourages people to keep coming back to your blog.
For example, your chatbot might point readers towards a free ebook or white paper that expands on the topic they’re currently reading about. Alternatively, if your blog has membership features, you could encourage non-subscribers to take advantage of a free trial.
Conclusion 🧐
A chatbot may seem like an ecommerce-focused tool, but it’s actually one of the most handy tools a blogger can use. It saves time and money by offering an interactive experience to your readers, while also promoting your content and reaching your audience in a more organic way.
🤖 Here’s a quick recap of four ways you can use a chatbot on your blog:
- Promote your blog content. 📢
- Prompt readers to sign up for email updates. 📧
- Automate customer support and answer common inquiries. 🖱️
- Provide special offers or discounts to readers. 🎁
If you know of any unique ways to use a chatbot on your blog, please share them in the comments section below!
