Bloggers can create great content on a regular basis. However, like those in most other professions, they also have spells where their creativity is at a low point. This is when they start repeating topics or covering the same topic over and over again. It shows a lack of direction and can be quite frustrating for regular viewers and subscribers. What if I told you that your readers are the best source for coming up with new ideas. To get started on this, bloggers can use the following simple ways:
- Social Media: Your biggest resource for connecting with your audience is social media. Nothing is better for your blogging than connecting with your audiences on different platforms. You can start off on social media by sharing your blog content and then responding to comments. Once this is in place, you can start interacting with them on a regular basis and try to connect with influencers. Participate on Twitter chats and Facebook Live videos on topics pertaining to your niche. All of these steps will help you grow a significant reader base.
- Surveys and Questionnaires: Giving your audience surveys and questionnaires to fill out can give you a new perspective of regular topics. Readers’ opinions can fuel your own creativity as you see their view point and understand what they’re looking for when reading your blog. It can help you uncover and work on highly relevant topics while simultaneously giving your audience what they want. Tools like Survey Monkey or Jotform Survey Maker can make this process easier for you. You can set-up auto responding systems where users can express their problems. To make the most of this, you can also invite new users to reply or submit their own queries.
- Challenges: Depending on your niche, you can set up challenges for your audience to participate in. For example, if you’re a fitness blogger, you can set a short term goal for your audience to strive for. You can then provide them with helpful tips throughout the duration of the project to to help them achieve these short term goals. To increase motivation among participants and gain more participants, you can offer small initiatives like free subscriptions or discounts on affiliated products. Challenges will expose the readers to the practical problems that they face while participating, which will lead to new questions and thus more ideas.
- FAQ’s: If you interact with your audience on a daily basis, make a list of their most asked questions. Doing this will help you realize that a small problem for you is a big problem among readers. You can then build topics out of these questions and do a series of blog posts addressing each question in detail. Alternately, you can answer all the FAQs in a single blog and keep it as one of your top blogs or post it on another website page. To combine both these aspects, you can have a general FAQ with links to the posts in the detailed series.
- Appreciation: You’re audience is your biggest support. Once in a while, show them some love. Write a heart-felt post or offer discounts and freebies to your most loyal customers. Do this on a bi-annual basis to improve the bond between you and your readers. Even if you have no freebies to offer, create a personal post thanking them or send the most loyal readers, personalized messages. All this is aimed at building a good rapport between you and your audience. This will make them more interactive and engaging. They are also more likely to participate in all of the above situations.
If you’re still in the process of figuring out who is a part your audience, create content for those that you wish to be in your community. Marketers for example, can create content that is relevant to other marketers in their niche. Be specific in the content you create as these will drive audience reactions and sentiments.
All bloggers experience a creative block but your audience can help you out tremendously by spending just 5 minutes of your time. The key to making this work is to build a good rapport with them through quality content and engagement. Do not push your products down their throats, instead try to understand their views, problems and needs and cater to them.
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