Does your content engage your readers?

6 Replies

The most important job of your content strategy is to engage your readers in a continuous manner. This is how they remember you. This is how they become familiar with you, and what you can offer them.

In order to engage your readers, you need to talk and listen and respond, instead of just talking at them from your lonely, isolated part of the universe. Ask them questions, and give them answers, or even probable answers, when they ask questions. Don’t just focus on establishing your authority — although that is important if you want people to listen to you — but along with that also talk in their language and be approachable.

In order to engage your readers in conversations,

Encourage them to interact on the comment section of your blog

The best way of letting people interact on your comment section is to let them share their thoughts. If you have, say, 10 points to discuss on a particular topic, publish just 7 and let the remaining 3 come from your readers. Does this leave your post unfinished? Wait for a couple of weeks, and if nobody talks about the points that can make your post complete, you can always update it.

Publish sometimes things that are relevant to your users even if they’re not directly related to your product or service

Is there some public debate going on on your part of the world and you would like to know what your readers think about it and how it impacts them? Take for instance global warming and rapidly melting polar ice caps. It may not help you sell more network security devices or get you more web hosting customers immediately but it will certainly provide you with an opportunity to reach out to your readers and convey to them that you are not merely interested in promoting your business. Varied topics also encourages those people to come forward and express themselves that are though interested in your field but have got nothing much to say.

Highlight suggestions made by your readers

Sometimes readers/visitors raise very important issues and they need to be highlighted. Talk about them by updating your existing blog post or writing a new one. Give full credit to the reader who gave you the idea and if he or she has a website, link to it. This will give an incentive to your other readers too.

Make good use of social media

Some of your readers may be active social media users. They may like to share their thoughts on Twitter and FaceBook rather than posting them on your blog. If you find it difficult to express what you have to say in the limited number of characters, write a small post on your blog and then just mention the link on your stream.

What more can you suggest?

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6 thoughts on “Does your content engage your readers?”

  1. imjustagoyle

    Fabulous advice! This sentiment was echoed loudly at izeafest in Orlando this past weekend. Chris Brogan and Liz Strauss both emphasized this – engage your reader, don’t give them all the content or they have nothing left to say! Ask questions! Blog posts don’t need to be long and wordy, they can be as simple as a quick thought with a question which invites your readers to respond.

    Love this! Thanks for sharing.

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  3. Jenny Pilley

    I think you raise some valid points here in regards to how to attract your target audience. There are many ways in which people can find out certain information and there are those who often turn to blogs to find answers and solutions. One area I agree with, that may not be practiced all that often with blogs, is writing about current news outside of your industry. It is difficult to know whether it is worth posting things that are purely based on current events but you make a great point and it definitely an area people should address when updating their blogs.

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  4. Dr Kiran Bala

    Thank you very much Amrit ji. your tips are very useful. I will try to make use of them. I have posted poems on my blog. Recently my hindi poetry book was publishd “Dil ke baatein” poems from my book are all on my blog.
    Regards
    Kiran

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  6. air max shoes

    There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That is a great point to bring up. I offer the thoughts above as general inspiration but clearly there are questions like the one you bring up where the most important thing will be working in honest good faith. I don?t know if best practices have emerged around things like that, but I am sure that your job is clearly identified as a fair game.

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