Interactivity

I found the article Five Ways to Make your Website More Interactive to be very helpful and interesting when trying to come up with ideas for websites. When reading the article, I tried to think of how I could incorporate the advice into my own website, and thought the article had some great and simple ideas that would be easy for me to pull off.

Specifically, I really like the concept of having links and widgets to my social media accounts on my website. Having readers be able to see how I am as a person on a day-to-day basis is a great way to gain interactivity, because it builds a more personal relationship between me and my readers. I follow all of the writers of the websites I read, and it genuinely encourages me go to their site more often because I feel like I know them and want to hear more of what they have to say. Building a relationship like that with my readers is something I definitely want to do.

I also want to incorporate user-generated content for my site, and I think the best way to do that is allowing comments on my posts. Having people comment on my posts will help me gauge reader's reactions to my content, while allowing me to respond to them and build a connection with them. Comments can also help me monitor the quality of my content. If I see that I'm receiving predominantly negative responses to my posts, then I will know that I need to work on something and make a change.

Lastly, incorporating giveaways could work well with the theme of my website. I thought about the possibility of holding giveaways for whatever album or movie I am discussing at the time to help get readers excited about checking my site. I could make certain guidelines, such as, "you must comment _____ to enter the giveaway," or something similar to make it easy for readers to get involved with the site, and hopefully make someone happy by winning a cool prize!

All of these forms of interactivity can be easily measured to see how effective they are. I can monitor how many new social media followers I gain, check for comments on my posts daily, and gauge how many people enter my contests and giveaways. All of these interactivity methods are simple, yet effective, and I appreciate the article for giving me some great ideas on how to improve my website.