How To Engage Your Readers

Posted September 22nd, 2009 / By Matthew Moran in Tips & Tricks, Writing

Building a blog, creating the content, driving the traffic and generating the revenue is hard. It’s easy to get frustrated when you learn that’s only part of the equation to a successful blog.

The final part, and perhaps the most critical, is engaging your readers on a day-to-day basis. Today, the era of two-second attention spans, it’s easy for readers to get distracted and move on.

With that in mind, I offer the following tips on how to catch your readers hook, line and sinker.

Good Great Content

This seems to be a no brainer, but you would be surprised at the number of people out in cyberspace who think any two sentences slapped together equals great content.

If you’re interested in maintaining an active reader base that cares about your writing, then put some time into it. The formula is as simple as: you get out what you put in.

Know Your Audience

Here’s a fundamental step that’s all too forgotten by far too many bloggers. As an author, you have to know your audience. That includes not only their passions and interests, but also their depth of understanding.

You can’t write a beach blog and expect Sarah Palin to read it. Likewise, if you don’t write about what your audience cares about, then your traffic will dry up faster than a mirage in the desert.

How do you know what your audience cares about? It’s as simple as asking, but that’s another topic we’ll come to in a moment.

As I said, keep in mind the background of your target audience. If you’re writing for a group of college professors, it’s probably a good idea to skip the basics and move on to what you have to say.

In short, write for your readers’ benefit.

Outreach

This is a broad topic, but it’s jam packed with things you must do in order to engage your readers effectively. Outreach means asking questions, digging deeper and networking.

Social networking like Facebook and Twitter are solid ways you can engage your readers in conversation. Moreover, they allow you to get to know your readers, which in turn will help you write for them.

A great way to engage your readers is asking questions. This can come in the form of an “exit question” at the end of a post, which will encourage comments or in the form of a poll or contest. Try a giveaway trivia contest or raffle. The more you give to your readers, the more likely they are to give back to you.

Don’t Talk, Converse

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when it comes to engaging readers is that they don’t want to be “talked to.” Today’s web users want to and expect to have a conversation with you.

They want to debate, argue and disagree. They want to chime in and contribute. As a blogger, it’s your job to encourage that and cultivate an environment where that’s possible.

Still Want More?

If you’re still looking for ways to engage readers, here are some valuable resources to consider. See where they overlap with my ideas and tell us what you think in the comments.

• 10 Tips for how to engage your readers
• 7 Ways to Engage Readers of a Business Blog
• How to engage readers and build an amazing community around your blog
• How to make a person follow your blog forever
• A 60 Second Guide to Engaging Your Readers *(Writing Tips)

Matthew Moran is the author of The Omni Blogger. Follow Matthew on Twitter.