Author: admin

Are you having trouble building readers and followers for your blog? As a blogger myself and when I teach the format to adults at the Praxis School of Entrepreneurship, I stress that building a healthy following for any blogger takes time and effort.

But the best way to increase traffic to your blog is to understand better the challenges, needs and wants of your targeted reader. UK-based copywriter and colleague Henneke Duistermaat recommends that writers ask these five questions, as they strive to increase their readership:

(1) Ask yourself: How can I write for my (ideal) reader? If you can imagine someone close to you as your reader and you aim to engage that person with personal and persuasive comments, you will more easily generate captivating ideas for your posts. This reader might be someone you’d call by phone, share a joke with, or whose criticism of your writing you would seek.

Whether this is an imaginary person or a composite of various people, try to understand their dreams, struggles, difficult decisions and empathize with their experiences. What industry topics do they follow, what mistakes have they made, what questions to they have that go unanswered and how could you change that?

(2) Ask yourself: Why would someone read my blog in the first place?
Keep in mind that even an enthusiastic follower will be motivated by what’s “in it for them,” by how you can solve their problems, increase their success and direct them to greater professional happiness.

When you consider what the purpose of your blog is, in the first place, you will recognize how to help your reader and how to focus on engaging and inspiring them.

Henneke recommends that we try to complete the following sentence, each time we plan a post: “My favourite fan reads my blog because I help them_________________________.” For me, many of my followers are small- and medium-sized business owners who read my blog because I help them to communicate more clearly and thereby to close more sales more profitably than they would without me.

How would you complete that sentence?

Once you know the purpose of your blog, it becomes easier to become a must-read resource in your niche.

(3) Often bloggers fall into the habit of writing for themselves or of just cranking out content, when they instead should ask: “Does my reader crave  more knowledge on the topic of this posting?” If not, get back to the drawing board.

(4) Can potential followers find you? If you’ve written quality content in your blog, you must also promote it, which often feels like an “energy drain,” or “time suck.” Consider being active on someone else’s blog (to gain profile), make connections on social media platforms where you can meet fans or followers. Over time, as your blog develops, measure your Search Engine Optimization numbers, to find out more of the choices of your demographic.

(5) Ask yourself: Do I reach out to my readers to build long-term relationships? In particular, do I invite them to join my email list? Do I have opt-in forms on my website? Do I ever send them a surface mail note with an article that would interest them? Do I share some of my personality in my writing and show empathy by providing inspiration and encouragement?”

Authentic engagement with our prospects and clients matters more than clicks, or likes, or shares over social media.

If you consistently try to engage your readers and serve their needs in what you write; and if your content helps them to know, like and trust you, then your authority will grow and your inbox fill up with prospects’ inquiries.

And now it’s your turn. Are you an unhappy blogger? Try asking yourself the above five questions to help you correct the course of your blog.

With clear strategy and a bit of effort, you should notice a difference. Please share your experience with me, on my “contact” page: As a blogger myself, I thrive on your feedback!

I’m always intrigued by the arguments of Seth Godin and read his books as soon as they’re published.

His approach to marketing, as he writes in This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See (New York: Penguin 2018), focuses on one “big idea”: great marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problem (especially to increase its finances). He writes, instead that “[t]hey use marketing to solve other people’s problems. They don’t just make noise; they make the world better. Truly powerful marketing is grounded in generosity, empathy and emotional labour.”

We see the needs of our prospects and clients and work hard to meet them.

By contrast, we’ve all read about or watched dishonest marketing practices—whether an excoriating talk on the pharmaceutical industry, promoted on Facebook; or through investigative reporting, as in CBC’s “Marketplace.” Some people (for instance, some academics) associate all aspects of marketing with “snake oil” salespeople. These critics assume that all marketing is chicanery; and in the past, there has been much evidence of dishonesty. “Crooked” marketers, as in any profession, do still exist. One leads our neighbour to the South, with fresh lies, deceptions and predictable hatred and fear that unfold every day.

Yet for the last 25 years, Godin has argued for marketing work that gives people “the tools and stories they can use to achieve their goals.” So the “snake oil sales” approach to marketing is dying, if it’s not already dead, a throwback to the time of industrialization when workers were but “cogs in the wheel.” He urges those who sell that it’s “time to stop lying, spamming and feeling guilty about [our] work. It’s time to stop confusing social media metrics with true connections. It’s time to stop wasting money on stolen attention that won’t pay off in the long run.”

Marketers build connections between themselves, their products or services and consumers: we encourage consumers to use a product or service or to make a donation and each action is a part of the story we share with them. Instead of being “marketing-driven,” forcing a narrative over consumers, the best of us are “market-driven,” meaning that we see and listen to our customers, “bend” to them (accommodate them), to improve the quality of their lives.

We think about “the hopes and dreams of our customers and their friends . . . listen to their frustrations and invest in changing the culture.” Storytelling is a huge vehicle for this kind of marketing. And in this way, Godin reassures us, “being market-driven lasts.” There is longevity and integrity in stories.

Last week, at the opening of this new year, I rebranded my communications and marketing business as “Storytelling Communications,” positioning the experiences and needs of SMEs and individuals at the heart of every story I research and write. I do that by preparing website copy for a security start-up; by revising a resume for a new Canadian who is failing to get traction on the job market; or by leading workshops on how to blog better or prepare media releases that get accepted. I write and edit so that my clients (whom I vet for their integrity, as they do me) will succeed.

This is not chicanery and involves no snake oil. The practice of business writing and editing is a service and a calling, no less than Geophysics, Cardiac Surgery or Politics.

So when you next encounter evidence of disreputable marketing, or the  complaint that customer service has fallen to a low worse than ever before, please remember that many marketers deplore these things, too. Such stories hurt not only the consumers they exploit, but also the reputation of those of us who serve you. And who persevere with empathy, generosity and hard work.

And now it’s your turn: have you participated in sales/marketing exchanges that fail to meet your needs? Do you speak up to challenge the narrative created by that producer and to get your story fairly told?

Please write in: I’d be delighted to hear from you.