Day 8: How to Pop the Question to Your Customers

There are moments in life where your heart starts to pound, your breath gets caught in your chest, and you start to pace back and forth.

Asking your audience what they want doesn’t have to be one of them – but it usually is.

We’ve been running our blogs for months – years, even.  We know what we’re writing about as content creators.  We did our keyword research and we’re covering exactly what the numbers show us people want to hear about… but the numbers aren’t reflected in the retweets you get or the traffic that shows up on your door step.

Instead of popping the question, you made a bold statement about what you think and now the people across from you are staring at you mutely.  Every once in awhile, a murmur might creep through, but the crowd stays at arm’s length.

That’s what it felt like, sometimes, at By Bloggers until this week: like I poured my heart and my time into the content (to the tune of 2,500+ word posts), and it was hit or miss whether it was well received.

So I swallowed my pride, and admitted to myself: “Maybe I don’t know how my audience wants to be loved.”

That’s a hard thing to say.  So I did it publicly (that makes things easier, right?).

How does your audience receive love?

One of the shocking realizations of relationships is that you eventually learn that not everyone receives love in the same way that you do.  Many people receive love in the form of gifts – a thoughtful present makes them feel warm and fuzzy.  Others, myself included, care little for material gifts; if you can give me a memory or communicate how you feel through a heartfelt message, it will always hit home.

When you try and love someone in a way that they aren’t able to receive well, you find yourself working in circles – trying the same thing over and over (because it makes sense to you), and getting no results.

When the going gets tough, the right answer is right in front of you most of the time; even if it’s not the easiest one to swallow: “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got this wrong.”

Once you open yourself to the possibility that there is a better solution, you’re ready to ask your audience, “How can I serve you better? What do you want from me?”

If you don’t ask the question, you will never know the answer – you will be guessing.  Once you do, you can hone in on exactly what your audience wants to receive.

Need proof?

Late last week, I put out a two-question survey with a small gift at the end as an extra incentive.  The incentive and the simplicity were key – I wasn’t overloading my audience.  I showed them love by asking how I could help them better, and then respecting their time.

When I asked what the readers of By Bloggers really wanted to hear about e-books (how to design an e-book or how to produce one on a budget), I was quite surprised by the response. So I wrote a post about designing an e-book, my first that covered the subject in such depth.

The result?

I received double the retweets of an average post.  Comments came much more swiftly. A swell in traffic.  The cornucopia of blogger delights, isn’t it?

And it was as simple as popping the question.

Task: Ask your audience exactly what they want from your blog in the most simple way possible – if you want to know how, check out this post. Deliver it over the next few days. And then come back and tell us in the comments below what they said!