Connect With Your Audience

Increasingly the Internet is being seen as the global village predicted by Marshall McLuhan. Our networks extend over continents, professional domains, social milieus, generations and just about every other demographic you can think of. So whenever we want to achieve anything we automatically have access to a wide selection of people whose input can be highly valuable to us and dramatically impact our level of success.

Over the past week I’ve called on some of my Internet friends for their wisdom and expertise, while I was setting up this blog. As usual, they were unstinting in their generosity, both with time and nuggets of hard-won (and when you pay for it, expensive) specialized consulting knowledge.

Twitter is fabulous and it’s my networking tool of choice. Leaves most of the others standing–including FaceBook for me. But I digress as usual.

I’ve asked my Twitter network for advice on my design and color scheme, how to import the posts from my old blog, help with troubleshooting feed problems (Feedburner was jettisoned as a result) and a host of other stuff. I’m sure I’ve driven them nuts–I’m thoroughly sick of the subject myself at the moment–but they were all patient. So they deserve a big mention.

Top of the list is Mich D, who is quietly brilliant, working away in the shadows. He wrote a guest post for me on Blackhat SMO tricks. I think you’ll agree there’s lots of valuable information here as well as some fresh and unique perspectives. He said he loved the design, and that while it was pink, it wasn’t “fluffy.” I took that as an approval. Mich gave me the most fundamental help when I told him I was having trouble importing posts from one MySQL database to another. Why bother? He asked. You can import blog posts, even across platforms, through your WordPress Admin interface, and I did, and it worked beautifully. Thanks Mich!

In case you’re having he same problem, in the WordPress Admin panel for your old blog, select Manage Posts and click on Export from the options on the dashboard. Save the resulting WordPress file to your hard drive. Then go to the WordPress Admin for your new site, select Manage Posts and then select Import. Browse for and upload your saved file, and voila, you’re done. But don’t forget to do 301 redirects for your posts or you’ll have duplicate content issues big-time.

Kimberley Bock made me feel more comfortable with my choice of color scheme. I say ‘more comfortable’ not because I had doubts about what I like but because a couple of my other friends had mentioned that they weren’t 100 percent comfortable with my choice. You could say I was suffering a confidence crisis.

In particular, Richard Dewick, AKA Makaman, had strong reservations about my choice of color. He also reminded me to follow my own advice and make the font a readable size, which I did. He also reminded me about posting my Twitter feed to my blog, which I haven’t had time for yet. But I will. Richard also hated my logo. I don’t think he’ll like the new version either, but it’s the best I can do for now. Whaddya say Richard?

Ultimately I felt my choice of WordPress theme was totally vindicated by Chris Garrett who said:

You have to connect “you” to your target audience, if pink fits both, forget what random internet folks say

I totally agree with this. A small thing like your color scheme could put off a small minority of visitors, but overall I think it’s true to say that if a reader senses that you’re not holding back, and that you’re communicating who you are at a basic level, with no artificially-set parameters, they’ll respect you more for it. And I’ve never been one to try and impress, so this concept suits me fine. It’s not that I take a devil-may-care attitude. More that I like to communicate honestly, including who i really am.

But Chris got me thinking about how to really connect with your audience. What’s the secret? Obviously your theme and choice of colors is going to be a superficial first-glance thing. But there has to be more to it than that. What are blog readers really looking for?

In the end I came to the following conclusions:

Connecting with your audience is all about being who you really are. It’s about being willing to take the risks associated with sharing your innermost thoughts about what you do and how you think. You may leave yourself vulnerable to the piranhas that live online, but you’ll also make contact with a solid readership base who are looking for authenticity. You’ll also make genuine friends. The Real Thing is impossible to fake and it’s priceless.

So in the coming months you can look forward to some hard-hitting opinion, state-of-the-art SEO information, and tips on how to get your blog or website off the ground. Most of all though, you can look forward to my blog as an honest expression of who I am.