How to end a blog post to keep your audience engaged
If you’re anything like me, figuring out how to end a blog post can feel tough.
More than anything, it’s a mental challenge to overcome the pressure of ending your work in a way that feels good, but also encourages your reader to want to explore more of what you have to offer. That might be your email list, your blog, or one of your services.
Preparation is one of the best forms of overcoming anxiety about any task, so, in this blog post, I’m going to give you (and myself, honestly) plenty of options that you can turn to every time you’re finishing up a blog.
Let’s get into it.
Provide a summary of the blog
While long-form blog writing is probably the most effective type of blogging out there, it is as the name implies, LONG. Your reader may have even forgotten some of the main points by the time they get to the end of the article.
So be a good samaritan and provide a little summary of the most important takeaways from your article at the end of your post.
Your reader will thank you for it.
Encourage a discussion
I truly believe in the power of blogging, BUT one downside of it is that it can sometimes feel a bit one-sided. On social media, you typically get a bunch of different types of comments on your posts, whether it’s a disagreement with what you just said, someone pointing out something you might have missed, or just someone saying they found the post helpful.
So, if that’s something that you’re missing from social media, add a comment section to your blogs and encourage a discussion at the end of some of your posts. You can ask your reader questions like if there was a confusing part of the blog if there is something they’d like to add, or if they have any experiences with whatever your blog is about.
Offer a freebie related to the topic
We all know that one of the best parts about blogging is that it increases the traffic to your website.
And while the ROI of SEO is pretty incredible, believe it or not, it's actually not the marketing strategy with the ROI. The winner of that title belongs to email!
Of course, you can't grow an email list without attention, so using the attention of your blogs to get more subscribers is one of the easiest ways to grow your list without needing to go viral or spend a bunch of money on ads.
Hands down, one of the best ways to do this is to end your blog post by offering a lead magnet related to the topic of the blog.
If someone makes it to the end of your blog, that says a lot about your ability to educate in your niche, so there’s a good chance that your reader WOULD like other ways to learn from you. Might as well be on your list!
Plug your other blog posts
While getting a new subscriber from one blog post would be absolutely amazing, people are a lot less loose with giving out their emails these days.
And for good reason!
Nobody wants to be bombarded with low-quality emails that provide little value. The reality is that after reading only one blog post, your reader may not be totally convinced that your email list is going to be any different.
So, I wouldn't ask readers to subscribe to your email list in every single blog post. I'd ask for a smaller action in some posts. That is a suggestion to read some of your other blog posts that you think would be valuable to the reader.
Let them get to know more about what you have to say!
Encourage the reader to share your content
Let's just say your main intended audience is wedding photographers.
Who are wedding photographers typically friends with?
Other wedding photographers! Yes, we humans like to be with people like ourselves!
So, if your audience is benefiting from the value you’re providing, chances are they’d love to share your content with their friends. They just need a little encouragement.
At the end of your blog posts, you can ask your readers to share your content through email, social media, Pinterest, or any other platform they’d like.
A lot of news websites do this really well, and even have buttons for each platform that you can click to automatically share a post.
You can do the same!
Invite the reader to reach out to you
Although encouraging a discussion at the end of your blog posts is great, you can always take this one step further and invite your readers to reach out to you at the end of your blog posts. You can link your contact page or provide your direct email (or a button to your email).
This is especially a great option if you’re a service business that requires people to trust your message and you as an individual. It would be helpful for them to know that you’re a friendly person and not just some rando on the Internet.
Plug the done-for-you or done-with-you options
Most blog posts are written to answer your audience’s questions. They are typically do-it-yourself guides that capture what you as an expert would do if you were the reader.
But what if your reader doesn’t want to do it themselves? What if they get to the end of the article and think, “Boy, that’s a lot of work. I’d rather just have someone else do it for me, or someone coach me on how to do it to make it easier.”
Well, that’s the perfect opportunity to plug your services as a done-for-you solution or your course/product/coaching for a more done-with-you solution.
Offer encouragement
It's very possible that the blog that you've written is about a completely brand-new topic to your reader. No matter how well you’ve broken down the subject matter, they may feel overwhelmed by all this new information.
So a great way to end some of your blogs could be to just offer some empathetic encouragement and let them know that even if the topic is something that is a struggle at the moment, they can look to you as a guide (whether that’s through other blogs or direct access if that’s something you’d be willing to give).
This creates a real human connection that can sometimes be lost on the Internet.
A little bit of everything
Now when I say “a little bit of everything” I don’t mean to ask for multiple things at once. In fact, it is best practice to typically only ask ONE thing from a reader. People tend to be happier when given fewer options.
However, there are a few combos that make good blog endings.
Summarize your blog + offer encouragement + point to other blogs you’ve written
OR
Offer encouragement + offer your freebie and let them know you’ll be offering a lot more help in your email list
OR
Summarize your blog + plug your services/course/product/coaching
Final thoughts
Aagh! I’m feeling the pressure to make this blog ending really good now. Here it goes.
Everyone has a preference when it comes to ending their blog posts. Some of the ones we talked about in this article are:
Provide a summary of the blog
Encourage a discussion
Offer a freebie related to the topic
Plug your other blog posts
Encourage the reader to share your content
Invite the reader to reach out to you
Plug the done-for-you or done-with-you options
Offer encouragement
A little bit of everything
While blogging can be fun once you get the hang of it, the beginning stages of growing a blog can come with a lot of mistakes and the need for a little course correction. But you got this!
And if you need a little extra help, check out some of my other blog posts on all things blogging!