Making a Connection with Your Audience to Get them Off the Couch
by
Brett Bumeter
Watching a CNN news clip today, inspired me to look up Katherine Heigl on the internet and that led me to an interview with her and Seth Rogen about their movie Knocked Up. After watching the interview I sensed a bit of a personal connection (for no apparent reason) but that made me want to see the movie.
Now, I had previously thought to myself that this might be a good movie to wait for a cable broadcast, but now I think I may not wait that long and might go rent it. I felt connected and that was triggering me to want to take action. If you make a personal connection with your readers, you to can impel them to act.
Perspective on Why we Blog
I herald from a camp of bloggers that believe that bloggers should not present themselves as reporters. I have nothing against bloggers that are in the ‘news’ business or that break stories or gossip even. I say each unto their own, but I personally connect better with bloggers that write in other ways.
That often means making a personal connection with the blogger and as a passive reader, I can’t make that connection myself. It is up to the blogger to reach out to the audience and connect, most of the time(comments and forums and email aside).
What do you Get when your Readers Connect with You?
There are a number of benefits to connecting with your readers and this can definitely make striving for a connection worth while. These benefits can include:
- Returning readers
- Increases in subscriber rates
- More comments
- Feedback to help you improve your blog or writing
- Help or tips for great new topics
- Referrals to friends and family and other connections
- And of course revenue from both advertising as well as affiliate referrals or even buying your Ninja T-shirt or something
- Support through web backlinks
So How do you connect?
Well first off, you should consider how and when to get personal. This will often times be driven by the subject of your blog. If you write a tech blog, you may not want to talk about your dog or your pregnancy or your kids.
Unless you talk maybe about the latest dog collar buzzer that you can control with your cell phone, or
a 3D home imaging device to watch your baby in the womb, or
how your kids put on a terrific movie with a camcorder and edited it on the Mac, published it through iTunes and made enough money to pay for college.
You need to find the right tie ins and you need to find a way to get personal without getting gross or making your readers uncomfortable. Now, in the early days, you will probably have to practice this behavior a bit as you learn to mix your writing talents and your personal views. Plus, if your personal life style is too far off base with readers, getting personal about the troubles you are having multiple luxury homes might leave some of your readers cold.
The goal here isn’t really to make up some garbage to tug at the heart strings of your readers, but you do want to speak truthfully and from the heart. Most people have a highly attuned sense of balderdash (despite how poorly they may play the game) and can recognize garbage when they read it. They may not acknowledge it explicitly, but they will not react positively to it if its not REAL.
You will know that you are succeeding when you ultimately mix in personal and relevant comments within your writing without having to think about it too much!
Good Luck, and if you have experienced some positive feedback from your readers based on articles like this, please feel free to share.
I’d be more than happy to share a few examples here in the article, so leave a comment or drop me an email at info@top10tech.com
