Blogging can definitely be a great way to earn, no doubt about that, however, of the thousands who will be blogging and sticking to it, only a handful will eventually be enjoying their holiday in the Bahamas and any of those pristine islands in the Caribbean anytime they choose to. Compared to working a 9-to-5 job for life, it can certainly seem worth giving blogging a go.
A glorious example of such a millionaire-blogger that toured the world is Johnny Ward, an Irishman in his 30s who’s made $1 million in just 3 years. His perennial goal is to visit every country on the planet. Come to think of it, with his over 200+ websites, the digital nomad should make it happen.
But first things first. Before you can even hope to travel the world, you need to connect with your audience. If not, you’d be etching words into your blog that no one will ever read. Without a strong following, blogging can turn out a measly income.
Fortunately, there are simple tricks you can employ that should boost your storytelling like no other. If you look closer, you should be able to be as relevant as the most successful brands in business using these methodologies. Listed below are 4 top tips to help you connect with your audience.
Know Your Audience
Assuming things can lead to your downfall here. If you want to satisfy your audience, you need to know who they are. That may sound rather simple, but you really are not doing your blog a favour unless you put time and effort into digging deeper. In this regard, you need to do some audience evaluation to really get to the heart of the matter.
Some things you need to do are:
- Create content for your audience. When your audience is all seniors, you may want to focus on travelling, health and retirement. If the crowd is all millennials, topics like self-development and entrepreneurship are ideal. By using vital market research data, you should be able to get a general feel on the characteristics of your crowd.
- Surveys. If you’re not sure who’s been reading your blog, do a survey. Ask them pertinent questions but keep them short. The longer it goes, the lesser their interest in it.
- Keep your eye on analytics. As you know you can track your website visitors and what they’ve been doing while on your site using Google Analytics. Plus, you get a report on vital information: location, age, and even gender. That should be a good start for you. Look at your most popular 10 posts and create content around them.
Understand Their Needs
It’s simple actually. To generate reader interest, write about things that your audience wants to read about. In short, satisfy their needs. If they’re into pets, then you should write about dogs and cats. If they’re into finding a new house, then the house buying process is your chosen topic.
Your ability to empathize and understand them goes a long way in being able to satisfy their needs. So to begin your journey, find out what are topics your audience is searching for online. Do some research on what are the things such a person would want to know? Google Trends and keywords research should help you.
Further, you should make your audience feel they’re taken care of. If you want to deepen your skills getting into an empathetic leadership training and workshop should bid you well. By doing so, you let empathy for your audience become apparent in your write-ups. In the long run, you boost your website’s growth while creating a more sterling brand in the process.
Use Language Familiar to Them
You mustn’t talk in a language that’s foreign to your readers. This sounds simple. But you need to take a long hard look at the words you’re using, the sentences you’re committing to each page. If your audience is engineers, are you technical enough? If your audience is the common American, are you sounding less academic and more mundane in your presentation?
Be conversational and deliver your message in a way that your audience will be able to understand them. For starters, use the second person “you”.
Be Wary About Time
There are a lot of things going on in a person’s life every day. And your audience will have different questions from one day to the next. It’s important then that you fit your blog posts to the times. Ask yourself what would my audience need this Christmas? That’s assuming the holidays are upon us.
When you’re sincere in helping, making that connection should be a walk in the park.
You may also wish to read: How To Make Money Blogging.
