Engage, Infuse, Share - Secrets to Building a Dedicated Blog Audience

When it comes to your blog, the holy grail of viral content can be found by engaging your readers.

There are many things that can contribute to a notable blog post. Here, I have chosen to share six simple strategies that I use to make sure my content is engaging to my readers.

While emotional connections often blind us as human beings, the more intense a writer's emotion, the faster their content will spread. Emotional intensity makes content more engaging and boosts its potential for going viral.

Sometimes I share my emotions by telling a story. Other times, I describe the emotions that surround the facts and key points. Of course, humour works well too.

Here's a simple example. In a blog post I wrote last year, I explained why teenagers were making more money than their adult counterparts. In the post, I mentioned feelings of irrelevancy and incompetency.

Later the same day when my blog post went live (and evidently viral), I got a call from a New York Magazine editor. My line about feeling incompetent had made him chuckle and he made a deliberate point to mention it.

Give your content a voice through feelings.

While it's often the facts that matter the most to readers, the way they relate to those facts is dependent on people and the story that surrounds them.

For instance, if I tell you that I used to do mastermind coaching, you may find this fact is only mildly interesting.

But, if I told you that a person I coached later went on to found a start-up that will exceed $3,000,000 in revenue this year... now that's interesting.

Ambiguity is the enemy of engaging content, and so to win the war on clutter, it's crucial you simplify your writing. The best writers re-write... over and over.

"Clutter is the disease of American Writing".

William Zinsser, Author of "On Writing Well"

Sometimes what makes sense to us in our minds, doesn't always make sense to others. Other times, the reaction to our content is different to what we hope for.

A pre-screening process (much like what movie studios do) helps garner critical feedback. Insights from the test audience help us re-write the content before we publish to a wider audience.

I often ask my test audience to give me a rating out of 10 for engagement and meaningfulness. If I get a score of below 8, I re-work my piece until it achieves my desired result.

You may choose to use a different kind of pre-screen test. Regardless, it's important to define and measure against a benchmark before you decide to publish.

Many times, I have completely re-written blog posts because of the audience's response. The re-write may serve the same purpose as the original, it'll just be presented differently. Little things can make a big difference.

Getting better at blogging takes time, but thankfully, iteration is on our side. At first, my content was often abstract and gave only a high-level overview of my chosen subject matters; I (falsely) assumed fine detail would bore my readers.

As I spoke to my audience more and more and solicited feedback, I learned that they wanted more detail along with case studies to back up my claims. These kind of insights only come from building relationships with readers and encouraging feedback.

"If I get 1% better every day, I'll be twice as good in 70 days" - Alan Weiss

Unfortunately, noise on social networks forces our subconscious to exercise greater vigilance when assessing content. Thus, headlines have to be 'better'; think like your audience.

Because content and tone can change throughout my writing process, I always write headlines at the end. I often get a piece of paper and try to write 20 headlines as fast a possible and then shortlist a few before picking a winner.

My original idea for this post was "How to Write Engaging Content for Your Blog Audience". In the end I settled with the one above.

(Note: if you submit your blog to a reviewer, they may change the title to suite a theme or audience.)

While there's much more to writing for fame and fortune, the strategies above will definitely improve your potential.

Best of luck!