ASK AN AMBASSADOR: How Do You Build Your Audience?

ASK AN AMBASSADOR: How Do You Build Your Audience?

When you're a blogger, you don't want to be the lone voice in the middle of the wilderness, shouting into the wind and no one to hear you.  You want to be heard.

Now blog posts come in all kind of varieties, and some will attract more engagement than others:

• Market reports
• Subdivision summaries
• Listings
• Open houses
• Local Events 

• Tutorials
• Personal events
• Nothing at all (well sort of nothing!)

That's just scraping the surface, and some of those topics won't build much of an audience for you here in ActiveRain, but (hopefully) they're building an audience for you, a nice, quiet audience called the consumer who doesn't make noise UNTIL they pick up the phone and are ready to talk real estate and discuss hiring you!  That's why we write those pure real estate type & event posts in the first group.  We don't expect many comments from Rainers, but Rainers aren't the true audience.

Now the last group of topics, THOSE are the ones most likely to build your audience here in the Rain.  People like to get to know each other, after all this IS a social media site, right?  So letting people get to know you, to become acquaintances and maybe even IRL friends, that's one of the cool perks about this community! 

Of course everyone likes to know things that help them make their lives easier, and that's where the sharing part of this community REALLY comes in handy.  One of our primary goals for our Tuesday Ask An Ambassador series is to (hopefully) shorten the learning curve for newer members.  A shorter learning curve means bloggers are more likely to see success from their blogging and to stick around, a plus for the community overall.

And that last category, posts about "nothing" building an audience?  We're going to refer you to the Jedi master, Obi Wan Roger D. Mucci for lessons on gaining an audience.  Roger can collect more comments on any post of his than we can with even our most popular featured posts.  Why?  Because you know he's going to give it to you straight, and you're probably going to leave his posts feeling better than when you first arrived! 

Now there's a handful of fundamentals to consider when blogging that apply no matter your choice of topic: 

• If you're going to write, write it right!  Grammar and spelling matter.
• Aesthetics.  A wall of words in small font and no pictures can hurt your odds of getting people to stay with you. 
• Content is still king, queen and the rest of the royal court.  The better your message, the better your chances of gaining the audience. 
• Blog regularly (okay, semi-regularly at least).  If you're not around much, people won't keep an eye out for your posts. 
• Consider your attitude.  Both positive and negative can work depending on how you work it.
  

Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help!

Liz and Bill aka BLiz