What to blog about? How to use reader feedback
When you first started your blog, chances are you had no trouble coming up with content ideas. But as you continually put out content, you’ll at some point hit a wall where you’ll start to have trouble coming up with new content ideas.
When you get to this point, instead of trying to figure out all your content ideas on your own, why not try asking your audience? After all, at the end of the day it’s their opinion that really matters. Here’s how to do this.
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Asking through direct email
One great way to ask for feedback is to just ask by email. If you have a list of readers, just send out an email asking if they have any feedback. If they get the sense that you’re really trying to help them by offering better content, they’ll be very willing to help you out. This works especially well in environments that have a strong sense of community or a “we’re in it together” sense.
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Using surveys to ask for opinions
Surveys can be another great way to ask for people’s opinions. Surveys can be a lot more involved. You ask readers several questions and get a lot of useful feedback. You can ask questions about how they like the content so far, what they’d like to see more of in the future, any unanswered questions they have, demographic questions and so on. Because surveys take more time to answer, usually you’ll need to create some sort of prize or incentive to get people interested. For example, you can give away a free eBook to anyone who answers the survey. Or you can give away a higher ticket item in a sweepstakes style.
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Using the phone/video chat
For bloggers who want to go one step beyond what most people do, there’s the phone/video option. If someone is a regular reader of your blog you could ask them for a one to one chat. This is a way to get powerful feedback as well as to send a message that you really care about them and what they want from your content. Ask them if they have any feedback, or ask them 3-5 questions you prepared beforehand. This is also a great way to hear them use their own words to describe their feelings and where they are in their journey. You can then use these exact words to shape your content. It is important to know what people think and feel, straight from the horse’s mouth, rather than assuming you know or putting their issues in your own words.
Once you have your feedback, use it to structure your future content so it really answers your reader’s unmet needs. If you do the feedback process well, you should have a very good idea of exactly what your readers want to know. If you provide that information for them now and consistently in the future, you’ll have loyal readers for life.
Have you ever asked your audience for feedback on the content you produce?
Comments 10
I’ve never directly asked but I put out a question last week which got more engagement than almost anything else I have done before and the responses have given me enough material / ideas for 2 blog posts 🙂
Thank you very much for this Aby. This is very useful and I will need to schedule this task in my calendar.
Fab advice Aby. I read a while ago that another way of finding things to post about is to read the comments people have left on previous posts and see if there is anything there that sparks another idea. x
Great tips for generating content x
I have seen a few tweets asking for advice on content so maybe some people are taking your advice already! #thelistlinky
Great advice. My problem at the minute is having too many post ideas and then not feeling it and wanting to change when I actually sit down to write
#TheListLinky
This is something I’ve never done. I’m struggling so much with content at the moment but I do have a list of topics where I’ve started to write. Just need to find the time to actually write some content
great ideas, I keep meaning to do a poll on my Facebook page so will do that! #TheListLinky
I’ve never asked for content feedback – to be honest it’s never occurred to me but it does make perfect sense #thelistlinky
Have never thought to do this. I thought this post would be about stats, great food for thought, thanks!