How to get more readers and are we boring them silly!
As a teacher and a writer one of the hardest things to convey is the importance of writing with your customer in mind. When I started this blog to accompany the forthcoming Business Marketing Answers forums I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to carry out a little research. I really wanted to see how much writing style really matters when it comes to generating targeted traffic in this new age of information overload. What do you think I discovered?
I decided that there was only one way for me to test my hypothesis over a relatively short period of time. I would have to write 2 sets of articles for the blog in 2 distinct styles and market them the same way to the same audience to see what response they got.
So I started the blog with 2 fairly heavyweight and technical articles:
Copywriting – 7 Reasons You Must Invest In Article Writing
Search Engine Optimization Why You Ought To Be On The Cutting Edge
I marketed the posts using Twitter, Facebook, Blog Frog, Stumble Upon, Digg and so on. I then posted 2 more much less formal articles in a totally different style:
How I Get The Creativity Of Writing Kick Started
This time I wrote shorter posts in”how to” and “list” styles. I then marketed them in exactly the same way and waited with baited breath to see what would happen.
Can you guess which posts got more views and a slew of comments? Not that hard really, it was of course the more informal posts. Why is this important? Well to connect with your audience you need to communicate with them in a style that they appreciate and enjoy! Who wants to be bored rigid?
We now know that it is the case that we have to tailor our writing to our audience and of course make sure that we are actually targeting that audience. How do we do that? We have to get to know who our readers are! Get some tips on customer analysis here.
In the mean time why don’t you share your views below on how you tailor your style and what difference do you find it makes?