Done right, the business benefits of blogging are boundless. In fact, 57 percent of consumers report reading blogs and nearly two-thirds of them are swayed by what they read. And yet, so many websites have terrible blogs, or lack them altogether. It's a shame.
Luckily, a nifty feedback tool exists called Qualaroo, and can help generate a nearly endless list of ideas for your blog simply by asking visitors what they'd like to read about. Let's take a closer look on how to bolster your blog idea generation process with a Qualaroo survey on your blog.
Getting Started with Qualaroo
The best way to create a helpful blog with a lot of readers is to start by asking readers how you can help them. Qualaroo (formerly KISSinsights) facilitates this process by placing simple, non-obtrusive questionnaires on any page of your website. Pricing starts at free and sign-up is limited to a few basic steps.
Sign up for free website questionnaires at Qualaroo.com.
Creating a Survey to Generate Blog Ideas
Once you're set up with an account, you need to place the Qualaroo code on your blog. It's a process you only need to do once regardless of the number of surveys you create in the future. The steps listed here are for a Squarespace website, but you can modify as needed for your own blog if you're not using Squarespace.
From the Qualaroo dashboard, click on the View code link in the account listing area.
Next, copy the snippet of code to your clipboard. As the Qualaroo help text indicates, we're going to paste it into the <body> section of your website.
Copy the Qualaroo code to your clip board. This code is asynchronous, which means it won't add to your page's load time when you install it.
Find the area of your website's administrative controls that allows you to insert template-wide code into the <body> section of your site. The best place to insert this code on a Squarespace website is by going to Settings -> Code Injection -> Footer.
Note: You can place the code in the footer of your <body>, not right after the <body> tag like Qualaroo suggests.
Creating a Survey to Capture Ideas for Your Blog
Once your Qualaroo code is on your blog, you can create your very first survey using the shiny green button from the dashboard.
Custom surveys are always an option, but there's actually a survey perfect for generating ideas for your blog straight from the list of pre-canned questionnaires. Scroll down and select the question, "What topics would you like to see us write about next?".
Qualaroo provides a large list of ideas for other surveys to put on your website in addition to your blog.
Next up, define the pages of your website on which you want the survey to appear. If you want the survey to only show up on your blog, enter only the part of the URL that is common to all your blog posts (e.g., "http://www.bigpictureweb.com/blog/") and be sure to check the box to Show survey on any sub-page in this section.
Tip: Enter "http://www.yourwebsite.com/" and check the Show survey on any sub-page in this section to make the survey appear on every page of your website.
You'll want to consider these points as you continue to choose from the many helpful options that accompany each Qualaroo survey:
- Don't spam your surveys to everyone who lands on your pages. Be polite and wait for a while (e.g., 30 seconds) before asking for feedback.
- Only ask for feedback once per visitor
- Consider scheduling your surveys, especially on large sites, to avoid letting too many surveys run at one time
- People who complete your survey are engaged visitors. Use the custom Thank you message options to further leverage the attention of your most engaged users.
- Consider how the survey appears on your website and use the options available to adjust accordingly
Click Finish when you're done fiddling with the survey options to officially launch your new favorite tool for coming up with ideas for your blog.
Reviewing Responses to Qualaroo Surveys
Qualaroo will send you an email when the responses start to roll in, and you can access survey responses for any questionnaires you create from the dashboard. In a few short days you'll wonder how you ever lived without Qualaroo at all.
Qualaroo survey responses are an ongoing source for new blog post ideas.
Far too many websites go bare because their owners run out of blog ideas. Don't let this happen to you.
Take a few minutes to set up a Qualaroo survey on your website and you'll be receiving your own list of blog post ideas in no time. If you get a suggestion you find particularly helpful, I'd be honored if you'd come back and share it with us in the comments below.