What do you prefer Eyeballs or an Engaged Audience?

Everyone is always searching for traffic on their site. They want as many eyeballs on a blog or website as they can get. Many individuals in 2011 still create link bait and try to create a site that is full of keywords trying to trick search engines.

They are so focused on getting numbers of people to their site or effort and end up making the blog or website lose its purpose. Yes if you get more people and you are playing a numbers game the probability of many of them engaging might increase temporarily. But it does not make it any easier to make these users take action on your site.

Everyone Wants Traffic

Don’t get me wrong everyone wants more traffic on his or her site and blog (I do too). But I want more traffic on my site where people  want to engage with me and are interested in what I am writing about. I want individuals who genuinely share what I wrote, who comment, who might be interested in buying any of my services, who might be interested in donating to any of the charities I mention, and mainly individuals that want to take further action.

To get people into the mindset of being interested in the content you publish, the following has worked for me:

Relevant Content

Create Content that is Relevant to the people you want to reach or have common interests with. Make sure people can relate to what you are writing about.

Keep It Simple

Simplify your wording so everyone can understand. If you are writing about a technical aspect, please provide other references so everyone can clearly get an understanding of what you are writing about. I see on many occasions how people write for themselves (I am guilty of doing this. I apologize now for the past and future instances).

Share with those who have common interests.

You probably have them on your social networks, friend, or family member. Make sure you let those that are around you know what you are doing. Don’t try to push everyone towards your effort try to get his or her interest.

Respond to Requests In a Timely Manner

Read and react on the feedback you get in your comments or left on other platforms about what you write. On many occasions you can create content based on what has appeared in those comments.

Set up and analyze the analytics of your website or blog.

You can even go a bit further and see what people are clicking on when you share a link. This will help you determine what people around you are interested in reading and can help you align your writing around those subjects.

There are many other ways to engage people via your writing and published content. I wrote a few so you could get an idea on how I would quickly approach it.

It’s Your Turn Now!

How do you approach publishing content that can make people take action and become closer to you, your efforts, brand, and a more solid relationship?

photo credit  by net_efekt