Why Engaging Your Audience Is The Most Important Facet of Successful Blogging
I've said it before and I'll say it again…
Sometimes I have a huge ego when it comes to writing and blogging. I find that this ego is both necessary and detrimental to my mission (as well as the mission of all bloggers).
On one hand, you need to have a "chip on your shoulder." Like most things in life, when you start out, you are going to be pretty miserable at the craft.
- When you first learned to walk you fell over some many times (thankfully we don't remember that trying time).
- When you first learned to talk to the other/same sex, you probably made a fool out of yourself (hell, I know I did).
- When you first began messing around with Legos you made only objects that resemble a 3-D Jackson Pollack painting.
Even think about the first time you wrote your name. My mother still has a Christmas Tree ornament that I created for her from my Kindergarten class — it has a small picture of me that was glued to a doily and had my name written across the top. The "J" looked okay at best, the "O" was probably the only letter I did correctly seeing as it's not that hard to draw a circle, and the "N" I don't even know how to describe the Sanskrit character or Hieroglyphic I was trying to mimic.
My point is, when we start something, our ego or maybe some deeply rooted pride tell us the first time we attempt something that we should expect the "Road to Glory" to be paved gold — especially when it comes to blogging.
I remember the first time I hit "publish" after I had finally wrote my first valuable blog post.
- I worked a few afternoons on the perfect title.
- I researched the topic until my brain started to smoke.
- I offered ample evidence and mixed in a few personal anecdotes to add an emotional flare.
I edited and checked for various spelling errors and after a few more moments of deliberating, I finally pressed "publish."
I expected the heavens to open up and bring me to the blogging promised land.
I thought I was going to be greeted by the likes of James Altucher, Ryan Holiday, and Tim Ferriss.
I thought they'd be waiting for me, they'd be dressed in their stark white robes, lined with gold lapels, meeting me at the gates so they could hand me my very own Smith-Corona that would unlock the mind-bending vernacular that was waiting dormant at my fingertips.
What I truly found was merely crickets.
No one had taken note of the article. I didn't get any claps or any comments.
I kept refreshing my feed.
Maybe something was wrong with my profile…
Maybe something was wrong with my connection…
I made up all the excuses I could to figure out why I wasn't getting any traffic.
Why you're not getting any traffic
After letting the dust (or lack there of) settle. I started to ask myself why I wasn't getting any traffic.
- I had this belief that my articles were well written.
- I felt that I was helping the reader solve potential problems they may have been having.
- I was writing damn near everyday.
I started to take note and inventory of what the successful writers were doing.
When I label these people "successful writers" I don't necessarily mean the Ferriss's or the Goin's like I stated above.
These are the writers and content creators that had perhaps a few thousand followers, claims of a burgeoning email list and at least some type of supplemental income from their blogging efforts.
One thing all started to be parallel when I started to research them.
They all responded to and engaged with their followers — especially from day one.
"I’ve done it since the very beginning. Whether you have 500 followers or 500,000, the biggest mistake you can make is not engaging with your community. Say hello, say thank you, ask them who they are and where they are from. All of this matters. You’re not some stupid Instagram account or brand. You’re a human being. Start acting like one." — Gary Vaynerchuk
So much of blogging (I guess I'll just speak for myself here) has been a cocktail of research on a topic, mixing that with my own personal experience and a dash of formatting (pictures, titles etc) only to publish and sit in my Ivory Tower and wait and expect the influence to roll in.
I was thinking that I was someone incredibly special and my words would speak for themselves.
This just isn't the case — especially when starting off.
What we see in life is the 20K or perhaps 125K followers that various writers have when we sign up for a platform such as Medium. We then read the scores of articles by these writers.
We start to get a sense of their voice.
We see their research.
We get a sense of who they are.
But we don't see the drudging through the mud that they started with. We don't see the years of grinding and spilling their guts out on the keyboard day in and day out while probably working at a job they hate.
We don't see what is under the tip of the iceberg.
How to build more influence with your writing and brand
Now let me add a little transparency and context.
At the very moment of writing this article I have:
- 136 articles published on my Medium page
- I am a contributor to 3 different publications (The Startup, The Writing Cooperative and The Ascent)
- I have 176 followers
- In the Past 30 days I have 9,216 views, 2,899 reads, and 275 fans
Now — let's look for a moment at what my last month's numbers were:
Furthermore, I manually went into the backend of my stats and calculated my response views from the last 30 days:
- 507 response views over 36 total responses
What were those numbers from last month?
- 16 response views over 1 total response
The engagement is clearly non-existent in the month prior.
The truth of the matter is — no one cares about you when they have no idea who you are.
You can write the greatest article known to man; however, if you don't offer any indication of who you are as a human, you aren't going to get much of any traction — especially when starting out.
Let's go back to what Gary Vaynerchuk stated above: "…All of this matters. You’re not some stupid Instagram account or brand. You’re a human being. Start acting like one.”
Over the past couple of weeks alone, I am confident I have started to build a rich, engaging and influential community.
I know I have people that I can call on and would call on me to collaborate with, share successes, try and solve problems, and stop by to say "hi" (shout out to Jesse Kerema, Emet Baker, Joren van Schaik, and maria milojković).
I truly believe this is key to not only building your brand but also solidifying yourself as a trusted voice among your audience.
- An audience wants to connect.
- An audience wants to solve problems.
- An audience wants to be heard and recognized.
It's funny…
After all of this time being consumed by my ego and being locked away in my Ivory Tower I was blind to the three points stated above.
It was so simple and right in front of my eyes that I (the writer — also the audience at times) wanted the same thing as the audience:
- I want to connect with people.
- I want to solve my problems and help others solve theirs.
- I want to be heard and recognized.
We're all people on this planet looking for something.
When we use these tools at our disposal, we can help accomplish all the things above.
We can help expand the human consciousness and the world and lives around us.
All we need to do is reach out to the people around us and say "hi."
We need to ask a question and be generally interested in the people who may be generally interested in us.
I am going to follow up with this article after some time has passed (I've never done anything like this before) to see how much water this thesis holds.
I'm unbelievably confident that engagement with the audience is the "secret sauce" to success as a blogger.
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