Digg
StumbleUpon
Technorati
Sphinn
Mixx
Reddit
FriendFeed
MyBlogLog
Twitter
BlogCatalog
Blogging Tips - Blog Tips - Engaged Your Readers: Adapt and Improve Your Communication Strategy
Engaged Your Readers: Adapt and Improve Your Communication Strategy
written by Hans
June 23rd, 2008Welcome to Catchtheposts! I hope that the content of this blog will be helpful to you. Don't hesitate to use the contact form to send me your comments, feedback, suggested topics or questions. Thanks for visiting!
If you're new here, you may consider to subscribe and receive all new tips for free. Updates may be delivered on your feedreader or directly on your mailbox!.
Photo by Kah Zanon
Relationships are the basement and the foundation of blogging. Thus, if you want your blog to be successful, you first need to create true relationships to support your project. For those of you who didn’t read my article The Secret to Developing a Popular Blog published on SEJ, I would recommend you to read it to understand the whole story about developing a successful blog.
The article presented above shows you the basic concepts and the big picture of a successful blog. In the present article, I would like to focus on a precise and essential element to be successful: the communication!
As you probably notice, I added some space on the front page of my blog. I labeled this space “Latest News on CatchThePosts!”. My goal is simple: establish a more efficient communication with my readers. As a part time blogger, I’m conscious that readers may have some interrogations about me and my blog. This is especially right because I don’t publish anything if I don’t have enough time to create quality content. I already said this in the past and I think this is something appreciated by my readers. Quality is part of my personal values. Period! As a consequence, I don’t know in advance if I will be able to publish. This may lead to some periods of irregular post.
So, how could I reduce the bad effect of these periods? I think that the answer is on the communication! What about informing my readers about why I can’t publish? About what I’m doing? Or about what will come next? What about helping them to have a clear idea of what they could expect from me? I think this is legitimate questions that may be answered – at least partially – by my new section “Latest News on CatchThePosts!”.
Of course, this is my personal case study. You probably live something different. However, the question stays the same: How are your communications with your readers? If you care about engaging your readers, you would need to question your communications. An engaged reader is a reader that feel his/her membership to a specific community. How could your readers feel that membership if they are not aware of what happen on this community? They have to feel them on the game. In that context, I think that communication is the key!
Let me know how you improved your communication with your audience. It’s always a pleasure to read your feedback and your comment!
If you like this post, please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Also, if you like what you read, I’ll really appreciate if you could share it on Delicious, StumbleUpon or Digg using the links below. Thanks!
answering technical questions people leave in comments has worked well for me. but i also try to blog about tech stuff that i know people have problems with or will need the answer to. i try to post about the results of technical research i do at work and at home in hopes of assisting people who have the same problems.
Thanks for sharing Marc!
I write a personal blog, just started recently, and I am still tweaking with the purpose part of the community I am building. I post a lot about writing, which I figure might be a draw to a writing community, but some of my highest responses have been to non-writing stuff that I share. Very interesting adventure so far!
You are right: blogging is quite an adventure!
I really hope you’ll be reaching your goals! It would be interesting to know where your traffic come from…
Working on better communication is great for a blog or any other online business… If you are going to need to network to build better relationships then that will just have to be done!
Thanks for your comment!
Hans,
I’ve worked in a so many different organizations over the years, yet I’ve seen the same fundamental problem occur.
When the customers (they can be internal, or external customers, or consumers of the service) are not kept informed it leads to bad feelings.
Letting people know what’s going on usually makes them feel a little more at ease, even if the news isn’t especially good. I think most people find it stressful not to know what’s happening.
So if your readers get used to quality content on a regular basis and suddenly it’s not there for some time, they wonder why and it’s an upleasant feeling. It’s like nobody cares about them and they feel let down.
Transient visitors won’t engage in that way so it doesn’t matter too much to them, but the regulars - the ‘core’ audience - have a personal stake in it because they’re paying with their time and attention.
Amin, I totally agree with you and this is where I want to work with my audience. On one side there are my audience with their own expectation and on the other side I would like to fill them all with respect to my personal reality. I really think it’s possible with a great communication. Of course, I count on my audience to give me some feedback or comments about me and my blog. Never hesitate to ask!
I need to work on better communication with my readers too.
Good luck to you on Bloggers Idol, found you via dailyblogtips. Love the pictures on your site very vibrant
Thanks! I hope you’ll be following me!
If you ever need something, just ask! Hope to see you around! BTW, you blog looks very good! Keep up the good work!