Is this thing on? If you are starting to feel like you are blogging to an empty room, or your posts are accompanied by the sound of crickets, it’s time to start focusing on whether or not you are reaching your audience. There are a number of methods that can be used to determine whether you are getting hits, but this does not provide the true picture. When it comes to reaching your audience, this pays off in terms of new site visitors, more sales and better word of mouth. So, how you can tell if you are reaching your audience? How can you improve your blog to accomplish this? Let’s take a look at some great techniques.

1. Measure by sales.

One of the best tests to see if you are reaching your audience is to create a test post. For this example, we’re going to use a corporate blog that has an online store that sells cordless phones. The test post is going to cover the differences between phones with 5.8 mhz, and 3.0 mhz. Inside the post is a link to discount cordless phones with the appropriate link title.

Float a post like this out there and monitor the reaction. If you move a couple products, you’re starting to get there. If nothing happens, you need to figure out what is going wrong.

2. Measure by reader participation.

When you create an emotional connection with your readers, they can’t help but want to communicate with you. Are you getting more emails after certain blog posts, or more comments? Figure out which kind of posts evoke the most response from your readers and then stick with the format that works. It will make a big difference in how you reach your audience.

3. Measure by traffic.

While you can’t use this all the time, traffic spikes can help you determine how well certain posts do and what may be wrong with others. For example, let’s say that you do a post on the top ten reasons why cordless phones are useful. You put it up and notice that you have a lot of traffic coming from Digg or Reddit. This means that one of your readers thought enough of the post to submit it to these sites and that it is garnering attention.

If you don’t have analytics softaware installed on your blog, you need to add this right away. You can use this software to find out where your visitors are coming from as well as which posts perform better than others. Once you have this down, you can begin focusing on what your readers want to read.

When it comes down to it that is the whole point of this exercise. To reach your audience, you have to give them something that they want to read. To do that, you’ve got to do a little testing to see what will work and what will not. Once you know, you will start to see a big change in the amount of traffic you get and the amount of reader participation.

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Originally posted 2008-09-22 05:00:21. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Time and time again, if you are a corporate blogger, you’ve probably heard about the importance of compelling content. What you may not know however is what constitutes this type of content. If you’re not taking the time to craft posts that your readers will find compelling, you may be missing out on a great opportunity. Let’s take a look at a few ways that you can start utilizing these techniques to help increase readership and retain your audience.

1. What is the value of your post?

One of the easiest ways to determine whether or not you have a compelling post is by estimating just how valuable your post really is. Has the topic already been covered in thousands of different venues? Does the post contain information that will somehow help the reader accomplish something? Is your post thinly veiled promotion? Once you know the answer to these questions, you’ll be able to start working on developing content that is truly compelling.

2. How do your readers react to your posts?

If the answer is “I have readers???” you may have a problem here. If you are basically shouting in the wind and you’ve never had a single comment on your blog despite your best efforts to market it, chances are the problem may be a lack of compelling content. This is the type of post that gets people talking, sharing and will help you make the most of viral traffic.

3. Does your post somehow make an emotional connection with the reader?

This isn’t an easy task in many cases. Let’s say that the niche for your corporate blog is washing machines. It can be tough to find a way to make an emotional connection over an appliance. However, it can be accomplished. What do people really care about when it comes to washing machines? Overall price, functionality and whether or not it eats clothes are great stepping stones that can be used to emotionally manipulate your readers (in a good way.)

4. Does the post make your readers want to know more about you personally?

When you create compelling content, you create a relationship with your readers. Once they start writing you personally, you can be assured that you are developing a good audience that is engaged by what you talk about. You may not be writing hard promotional copy with your corporate blog, but what you are doing is building that friendship – the easy way.

Compelling content can be subjective, but generally, it involves an emotional response that is evoked in the reader, and that someone can benefit from, even in a small way. Whether it’s through laughter, tears, or a feeling of “I’ve been there too” compelling content is the secret to success with corporate blogging, especially when you are first starting out.

You’ll be building a reputation as a corporate blogger that can be incredibly useful in the future, no matter what industry you may be working or writing in.

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Originally posted 2008-11-14 05:32:44. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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