Reframing Your Blog for Reader Engagement

This post is part of an ongoing series on the specialty boutique industry called What Every Indie Knows. If you’re an active or aspiring shop owner, a creative who sells work to shops, or a passionate indie shopper, you’ll find this series interesting. Drink deeply and please share your own perspectives in the comments!

Photo by jin.thai courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

Blogging about your indie enterprise can get boring and repetitive.

I hear from a lot of indies — both retailers and artists or designers — who say they are bored with blogging. The act of typing words into a Compose screen, uploading a few photos, and pushing Publish has lost its luster. And the indie “default post” — a long photo post of “here’s what just arrived at the shop” or “here’s what I just made” accompanied by perky, you-know-you-wanna-buy-this captions — is feeling far from fresh.

Been there.

When I blogged for my shop, THE BLISSFUL, I regularly went through bouts of do-I-really-have-to-put-up-a-new-post-again? My blog was even featured in Tara Frey’s book for beginner and intermediate artsy/craftsy bloggers {not an affiliate link} — which I would recommend for indies, but particularly those who gravitate to the modern/vintage/romantic/retro revival aesthetic — and even at the time I was interviewed, I was feeling the undertow of blogging stuckness. The fun of photo montages of the week’s new arrivals quickly wore off for me. And because this was a public blog, I didn’t want to prattle on too much about the shopkeeper’s life. At the time, I wasn’t at all comfortable with taking readers too far “behind the scenes” of my shop, though that was my intention for the blog to begin with. And as a blog reader, I wasn’t compelled to visit other shop owner’s blogs too often because, well, post after post of “here’s what’s for sale” just got old.

I know I’m not the only indie entrepreneur or blog reader/potential customer who’s felt this way.

The fix is in reframing your blog to encourage more reader engagement.

Only as I’ve gotten away from the retail life and have had a chance to immerse myself in other blogosphere niches have I seen the type of content that really captures my attention. The reason is simple, obvious, and yet so easily overlooked by so many of us {guilty here in my past blogging life!}: your blog posts should be more about your reader/potential right person than about you.

Less self-referential and more right person referential.

Less “here’s why I’m cool” and more “here’s why you’re cool or how you can be cooler.”

Less “here’s what I want to do with this blog” and more “what do you want to see on this blog?”

Less “here’s what I want to tell you” and more “here’s what you often ask me about.”

Get it?

Your right person will engage with you when they see you’re making it about them.

But before you do this, you have to be willing to engage back. You must {unlike me way back when} respond to your comments. Not just chalk them up in your mind as your “tip” for putting up a good post. Uh uh. The blogosphere usually doesn’t reward silent, distant, inaccessible bloggers. {Unless, of course, being silent, distant, and inaccessible is part of your M.O. and your brand identity, in which case, keep at it!} First, you’ve got to talk to your right people. And when they talk back, you’d better bring it. Always {OK, usually} have the last word. It shows you’re attentive and responsive, which, if you’re in business of any kind, are good qualities to have anyway.

Moving from you-focused to reader-focused content

You-focused content is content that says “here’s what my business and I are about, here’s what we have to offer, here’s why you should love us, here’s how you can spend your money with us today.” Don’t beat yourself up if you realize you’ve consistently been publishing you-focused content. It’s all right. Now that you’re learning differently, you can do differently.

Reader-focused content is content that says “here’s how you do this thing you’ve been wanting to do, here’s the best tip I have to offer, here’s the secret to achieving X, here are the 3 things you need to know before you do Y, here’s the insider scoop on Z.”

Reader-focused content makes the reader feel as if they’ve been specially singled out to receive secret, too-good-to-be-true, too-good-to-be-free information that can inspire and enrich their lives and teach them more about what they care to learn.

Now, you-focused content isn’t always bad. Sometimes you’ve got to shout something awesome from the rooftops {because it’d be really dumb for business not to}: your business won an award. You’re entering a competition and you want your right people to vote for you. You’re hosting an amazing event and you want people to come. All very good reasons to talk about yourself.

Here are some examples of reader-focused content

An interview with one of your vendors; a video demonstration showing people exactly and easily how to do something you make look impressive on a daily basis {gift wrapping? designing cool Twitter backgrounds?}; a photo tutorial accompanied by simple written directions; a free report people can download; a list of your best tips focused on a specific topic; a survey or poll asking people to submit feedback and suggestions on a specific topic; a behind-the-scenes, exposé-style article about whatever people are always curious about within your biz; a resource list {online and/or offline resources} to help your people find or learn more about something; a series of provocative questions surrounding your topic that you invite people to respond to; reviews of other businesses whose offerings are complementary to yours {don’t bother reviewing if you can’t say positive things about them, though — no use being a provocateur just because}; a self-assessment quiz to help people understand their own tastes, preferences, or personality better in a way that relates to your offerings; your best advice to people who’d like to get into the same business as you; an advice column helping people with questions/challenges related to your specialty; prose portrait of your favorite/ideal/most exciting-to-work-with type of customer/client {be careful here! no veiled descriptions of customers you dislike and no judgments or criticisms of people who simply can’t afford you or don’t get you}; a contest {be careful here, too! I don’t recommend that indies get into the habit of wildly giving away or discounting goods and services willy-nilly. When you do, it’s got to be intentional, purposeful, and with a high-yield result that pays you back more than you give.}

You can reframe you-focused content to show your right people how it connects to or concerns them.

Your business won the award because your people have kept you in business and made you popular through spreading word of you to their friends.

You want your people to vote for you in the competition because it’ll bring attention and accolades to something they already figured out is cool. {People love to be among the first to discover a good thing.}

You want people to come to your special event because you want to treat them to a free gift, a limited time discount on your goods or services, and an opportunity to say they were where the action was!

See how that works? Always look for an angle to make it more about them. {Even when it’s technically, well, not.} This is not blowing smoke at people. This is naturally niche-y marketing to your right people because they are the reason you can keep your enterprise in existence. They are a part of the world of your entrepreneurial dream in a very real way.

Moving from virtual irrelevance to virtual addictability

It’s so fun when you start experimenting with less virtually irrelevant content {in other words, your you-focused posts} and adding in more addictability-enhancing content {reader-focused content}. Keep in mind that our interest in what you and your business are up to has a relatively short attention span. We do care, but not as much as we care about what we’re up to. And our attention span for us-focused content is virtually endless. So if you reframe your blog posts with that in mind, your ability to captivate and addict your right people is only limited by your capacity for dreaming up great new content.

And one last thing indies often forget…

Always, always, always ask for engagement!

A pure and simple ask gets results. And yet we neglect to do it. At the end of a great post {or any post, because you never know which ones your right people are going to think are great}, ask a question. Invite commentary. Ask for comments. Ask for feedback. Welcome dissension when appropriate. Ask your people to engage with you and they very often will. Don’t ask, and only the outgoing ones or the ones on a networking mission will.

Never underestimate the power of your blog: it’s the world’s best free online marketing tool and it’s especially potent for niche-y enterprises

Through reframing your blog content to make it more reader-focused and less you-centric, you can tweak your brand’s addictability tenfold.

If you want a bit more around this topic, check out this short video I made on how indies can reframe their blog content for better reader engagement. If you like it, consider clicking through to the Indie Retail Web Show channel on YouTube and subscribing. It’s free.

What types of reader-focused content have you found to be successful for creating engagement? Any ideas you can think of beyond the list I generated above?

Does your business need an addictability tweak beyond just changing up your blog content? I have a sweet little package where I customize a plan for us to do just that for your niche-y enterprise. And we do it in a way that befits your right people. Visit my Vision page, then scroll down ’til you see the Addictability Tweak.