Normally, pop-ups can be annoying. If you’re immediately bombarded with them when you enter a website, it probably puts you off. I personally find it frustrating if they keep coming up when I’m on a site. It’s enough to make you leave in some cases! I think we can all agree that too many of them can be disastrous for any website. You might be thinking that you shouldn’t use them on your blog, but its not quite that simple. When used in the right way, pop-ups can actually HELP to boost your blog. As long as you use them sparingly and don’t overdo them, they won’t annoy people. These are some of the pop-ups you should use on your blog.
Data Privacy And Marketing Permissions
Whenever somebody comes on your blog, you collect information about them. By law, you have to ask permission before you start collecting information for marketing purposes and a pop-up is the best way to do that.
When you are creating your marketing permissions pop-up, keep it as simple as possible. So many sites out there have a convoluted process that requires you to click through multiple pages before you can deny permission, but it only takes one click to give permission to collect everything. Website owners think this means that they will be able to collect more useful marketing data about their users, which is often true, but there are some big downsides too. If you make it difficult for people to remove permission, you’re taking away their control over their own private data and people won’t like that.
Take a look at these GDPR marketing content examples to get an idea of how you should format your permissions pop-ups. Give people lots of options and flexibility, so they feel that they are in total control of your data. This might seem like a small thing but this pop-up will be the first interaction that people have with your website and if it’s a simple one that allows them to remain in control, they will immediately have a positive impression of your blog. In other words, it helps you build trust and start a relationship with your new readers.
Email Lists
Email lists are a great tool for bloggers to connect with their audience and let people know about new content. If you look at some great lifestyle blogs, you will probably find that they have a pop-up asking you to put your email in. Anybody that is subscribed to the list will get new post notifications, exclusive content, and general information about the blog. If you want to get people to give you their email addresses, you need to design your pop-up in the right way.
Firstly, you need to give people a reason to share their email address with you. The promise of updates on your blog will entice some people, but if they haven’t read your blog before, that might not be enough to convince them. So, you should offer some kind of incentive, like a free eBook or a competition of some kind. When you give people something in return, you’ll find that you get a lot more emails.
Think carefully about when the pop-up appears too. It’s not a good idea to have it appear straight away because they’ve already dealt with a pop-up about marketing permissions. Two pop-ups in a row will get frustrating because they haven’t even had a chance to look at the site yet. If they don’t know anything about the site, how do they know if they want updates or not? It’s more effective to wait a while and give them an opportunity to read some posts. Then afterwards, ask them if they want to join your email list.
Direct People To Featured Blog Posts
Pop-ups are a brilliant way to direct people to content that you want to promote. If you have a new post and you want to increase views, add a pop-up with a link to it. This strategy is particularly good for sponsored posts too.
When using pop-ups to promote blog posts, you need to be careful about placement. People will find it annoying if you keep interrupting them while they are in the middle of reading another post. Instead, you can use scroll-triggered pop-ups that only appear when they are at the bottom of the page. This would then encourage them to spend longer on your blog. You can also use pop-ups that appear when somebody is trying to leave the site. The pop up will help you draw them back in.
User Feedback
Coming up with new content ideas is tough. You need a constant stream of amazing posts if you are going to keep people coming back for more. If you’re running out of ideas for blog posts, why not use pop-ups to survey your readers?
A simple pop-up with some questions about what kind of content people want to see will spark plenty of ideas. The posts are likely to do well because your audience has specifically asked for them and people will return to your blog once those posts go live. This is not only a good way to get ideas for posts, but it’s also a brilliant way to build a relationship with your readers. When they answer surveys and you write posts based on their answers, they will feel as though they are an important part of the creative process. They will feel as though they are are engaged with the blog on a personal level.
If you don’t want to create a survey, you can still ask readers to give your posts a rating. This will help you get a sense of which posts work best and which ones are not that popular.
Yes, pop-ups can be annoying and if your blog is covered with them, you’ll struggle to keep readers. But if you use pop-ups sparingly, and strategically, they can actually be a great way to boost your blog and following. I hope these tips have helped!
xx Lauren
