4 Ways to Knock Your Online Communication Out of The Park

I probably read more blogs and listen to more podcasts these days than I’ve ever listened to in my life. You just know when you’ve come across a good blog or podcast because of the value that it offers. Besides having a professional feel to them, the one thing that normally stands out is that you can connect with the author and the content that they provide.

When you’re promoting your business online, besides using your voice in a podcast or video, the best way to connect with your audience is through written words. So it’s important that you are able to get your point across in a way that it connects with everyone.

In order to gain attention, and establish influence from your following, then you must learn how to be great at communicating online.

Here are some tips to get you on your way:

1 - Tell Your Story - If you haven’t already noticed, everyone has a story, and is very willing to tell it. Sometimes it’s a rags-to-riches story, and sometimes it’s just a story about how someone got into the position that they are in, to be able to share valuable tips and information. Whatever your story is, it helps your readers identify and connect with you on a personal level. This helps to build trust and acts as kind of your resume, which tells people why they should listen to you.

2- Keep it Short - This means several things. It doesn’t refer to keeping your blog post short, unless you know that your target audience digests content in shorter batches better. By knowing your target audience you should be able to determine how detailed you need to be in your post.

Keeping it short does refer to keeping your paragraphs short and readable. Long blocks of unformatted text will lose your reader's attention very quickly. It’s also ok to keep sentences short as well. Yes, some of what you learned in English class no longer applies when communicating online.

Furthermore, keeping it short also refers to email messages that you send to your list. It’s no secret that people are bombarded with many emails on a daily basis, these days. The first trick is to even get your reader to open your email, but once they do open it, they’re likely not going to want to read a novel.

3 - Write Good Titles and Headlines - Speaking of getting people to open your email, what do you think the main reason is for someone to read your email? Yes, you guessed it. A compelling headline.

Your titles and headlines are the first thing that people see, in your email, social media post, and blog entries. Given the busy lifestyle of today’s consumers, and the fact that they probably receive more information and correspondence today than ever before, you only have about three seconds to get people’s attention.

In order to compel folks to read more, then it’s essential to get them to notice you in the first place.

4 - Write so a Kid Can Read it - Have you ever read an article that left you wondering what the author said or meant by something that they wrote? Or had to pull up the dictionary just to understand their vocabulary. If I looked up how to how to bake some sugar cookies and had to constantly look elsewhere to see what a word meant, then I would probably go somewhere else to find out how to bake cookies.

Bottom line, is that you have to make your content easy for the reader to consume for them to stay interested. This is more or less the big brother to point number two that was made earlier.

Implementing these concepts should apply to every type of online communication that you do and is not just limited to blog posts or articles. At times it may be feasible to do only one or two, depending on the medium that you’re using, but overall they should be used in most online writing that you’ll do.

Remember, the more that you can connect with your audience, the better off your online business will be.

#Writing #Blogging #EmailMarketing #SocialMarketing