Tag: Audience Building
-
Three Essential Strategies for New Writers Without a Following
I could talk about beginner writing all day. The early stage of a writing career is my favorite topic because it’s where everything is possible and nothing is proven, a combination that’s either thrilling or terrifying, depending on the hour. You decided to be a writer because you can’t not write. The impulse is bigger…
-
The Trust Puzzle: Does Visual Design Establish Credibility?
Subject: Panic Hey Milt, So like I said over coffee Friday, I’ve got to get a website set up fast. And it needs to look credible! Not like I put it together in a week. Even though that’s exactly what I need to do. Not sure where to start. Thoughts? Frank Subject: Re: Panic Hey…
-
The Surprising Reason Audiences Reject Unfiltered Authenticity
I had a t-shirt from SXSW Interactive 2000, the kind of faded, threadbare artifact that only looks cool because you actually were there and the shirt earned every frayed edge honestly. I wore it like a badge of honor. Then a friend showed up to dinner in a shirt that looked almost identical. Same vintage…
-
The One Trait All Readers Share: Leverage It for Maximum Relevance
It doesn’t matter if you write about minimalism or motorcycles. If you have an audience, it contains three concentric circles: 1. People who read your content. 2. People who read and share your content. 3. People who take action on the advice in your content. These aren’t separate tribes. They overlap. The person who implements…
-
The Content Strategy Spectrum: Matching Your Message to Buyer Demand
Staring at a blank page, wondering what you could possibly write to convince someone, anyone, to become a customer? That feeling has a name. Actually, it has several: dread, obligation, paralysis. And underneath all of them is a mistaken belief that every piece of content you publish needs to close the deal. It doesn’t. Not…
-
Strategies for Captivating Unfamiliar Audiences
I published a blog post once that I thought was brilliant, carefully researched, elegantly structured, full of insight. The comments fell into four distinct camps. One person said it changed their thinking. Another said “Great post” and clearly hadn’t read past the headline. A third picked apart my sources. And a fourth used my ideas…
-
Strategic Prompts That Spark Meaningful Connections With Your Audience
I know. I know. I know. “Viral” is a real word people use to describe content that has exploded across distribution channels, landing in feeds, group chats, news roundups, and that email from your aunt who just discovered the internet. But I still don’t like it. When “going viral” becomes your goal, you’ve already lost…
-
Four Organic Principles for Compassionate Promotion
I have a confession. I keep going back to a soap company that doesn’t deserve me. Five years ago, I found them online. Rare scents. Natural ingredients. Prices that didn’t insult my intelligence. I placed an order and entered my email address to “confirm my purchase.” You know what happened next. Within days, my inbox…
-
Six Irresistible Web Design Tricks Your Visitors Will Devour
“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”, Steve Jobs You wrote the words. Good words. Words that teach and persuade and build trust over time. And then someone lands on your page, sees a wall of text floating in a sea of visual nothingness, and bounces. Your…
-
Getting Your Writing Noticed by the Right Audience
If you want to get discovered as a writer, there’s an elephant in the room. Its name is SEO, and if you’re anything like I was, your immediate reaction is somewhere between a yawn and a groan. I wasn’t into it either. For a long time, SEO looked to me like sketchy tricks designed to…
-
Four Surprising Ways to Establish Expertise in Almost Any Topic
When I started writing about marketing, I had a terrible secret: I wasn’t sure I knew enough. I’d read the books. I’d done the work. I’d gotten the results. But somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice kept whispering that I was one tough question away from being exposed as a fraud, that…
-
Five Reader Personalities You Should Feel Free to Disregard
I once received two emails within the same hour. One said I was publishing too often. The other said I wasn’t publishing enough. I stared at both, wondering if I’d accidentally built a audience of exact opposites. Here’s the emotional truth most writing advice won’t name: wanting to please everyone isn’t generosity. It’s fear dressed…
-
Earning Audience Confidence Through Consistent Content Marketing
In 2007, something strange happened to me. I’d been publishing valuable, free content on my blog for eighteen months, no product, no service, just a relentless focus on serving the audience. And people started emailing me with a question I didn’t expect: “Why are you giving all this away for free? What’s the catch?” They…
-
Crafting Intimate Prose Without Crossing into Narcissism
I almost didn’t write this introduction. Not because I had nothing to say, because I had too much to say about myself, and I could feel the slide beginning. The one where a perfectly useful essay becomes a diary entry with a megaphone. Every writer who dares to be personal knows that slide. It’s the…
-
Creating Prose That Connects Deeply with Your Audience
I once spent three hours on a blog post that I was certain was brilliant. Published it. Crickets. A week later I dashed off 400 words about a small frustration I figured nobody else would care about, and it generated more response than anything I’d written in months. The difference wasn’t quality. It was connection.…
-
Choosing the Right Topics for Your Audio Show
A friend launched a podcast and called me six months in, voice flat with the particular exhaustion of someone who’s been talking into a microphone and hearing nothing back. “I’ve published 30 episodes,” she said. “I’ve interviewed interesting people. I’ve covered topics I care about. And my audience is still the same 200 people, most…
-
Captivate Your Perfect Audience Through Meaningful Content
In 2014, Jerry Seinfeld sat down with Alec Baldwin for a podcast interview and said something that should have been boring but wasn’t. He explained why his show was good: “In most TV series, 50 percent of the time is spent working on the show, 50 percent of the time is spent dealing with personality,…
-
Build a Scrumptious Content Plan Inspired by Farm-Fresh Principles
I once had a farm-to-table meal in Devon, England that I’d been dreaming about all day. Fresh, local lamb. Honey collected on-site. Baby vegetables picked that morning on farms within thirty miles. The menu read like a love letter to the countryside. Then the food arrived. Overcooked lamb. Drowning in honey. Baby vegetables reduced to…
-
A Streamlined System for Promoting Your Brand Through Content Creation
I’m going to tell you something that sounds like a lie but isn’t: content creation can become as automatic as brushing your teeth. I know. You’re rolling your eyes. You’re thinking about the blank page and the blinking cursor and the way your brain suddenly remembers every urgent task the moment you sit down to…
-
Are You Crafting Content for Admirers or Buyers
Mickey Spillane did not suffer from delusions of grandeur. He didn’t write his Mike Hammer detective novels hoping they’d be studied in literature seminars. He wrote them to sell. And sell they did, more than 225 million copies. I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends. > ,…