Communicate with target audience

Posted on 07. Oct, 2008 by Roy in Business

The success of a blog depends on conversation or engagement with the target audience. It is important if you want to develop a community around your blog. There is no doubt about that. And there are no specific rules that you can follow to start a conversation with your target audience. Don’t take me wrong – it depends on your topic and type of existing visitor.However, a lot of people think that conversation equals to number of comments you have received in a specific post or the number of average comments you receive per post. Ok, this is direct conversation. But what about the vast sector of your visitors who do not comment although they have read the post and thinks about your point! How well you are to engage them with your content?

BTW, normally conversation depends on your writing style and content designing (i.e. how you structure the content) and the topic itself.

Finding different medium to communicate with the target audience:

A conversation is not necessarily verbal (when you communicate with your friend over certain topics, only 35% is done verbally and the rest depends on other non-verbal communication channels like body language). When someone is not commenting on your blog, find other ways to communicate with him or her – let them speak. For example, if you are active in Twitter, start a discussion there and promote your post. The same rule applies to other social networks where you are active. I believe that blog comments are not everything as far as conversation is concerned.

Treat your blog post as an IDEA that you have developed and now go ahead in every possible direction to talk about it. Carry this with you everywhere you go. Let people know about it (even your IM status message or email signatures can be a good way to start a verbal or nonverbal communication).

However, there are certain patterns followed by successful bloggers, that you can think about to improve your conversation skills.

Darren has published a good post (collaborative) on the topic (what a great link bait!). You can take a look at that post. But, you must find your own way.