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- This page was last edited on 8 July 2018, at 20:36.
7 Reasons Why You’re Not Connecting with Your Readers
Are Your Readers Excited About Your Articles?
Imagine having a conversation with a new client. You’re trying to keep them engaged in what you have to say, but it’s clear they’re just looking for an escape. No matter what you have to say, or how enthusiastic you say it, they’re just not into it!
Does this sound familiar with your writing?
If you’re working double time to connect with your readers, and the results aren’t there, you can become extremely frustrated. This is a feeling many writers know all too well. While your articles may be getting plenty of views, your readers may not be interested in learning more.
Losing a connection with your audience, or never having one at all, can be upsetting. It’s not easy to establish healthy relationships, nurture existing ones, and build a fan base through your writing. Below are a few reasons why you may not be connecting with your readers and some advice on how to improve your approach.
1. Your Readers Don’t Know You Well: If your articles are your main go-to source of content for your readers, that’s something to be proud of. Your knowledge and experience should shine through in your articles. However, it’s also important that you provide the appropriate amount of information about you and/or your company in the Resource Box. Your Expert Author Page is also a place where you can include a brief description about yourself, a list of your goals, and links to your website(s). Be brief, but have a little fun with it! Show your readers how excited and passionate you are about your niche.
2. The Formal Approach Falls Flat: It’s not too often an author’s audience demands a formal writing style only. You want your content to appeal to a wide variety of readers without alienating anyone by accident. You should be aiming somewhere in the middle with your writing style. Use humor, mild sarcasm, and vibrant formatting on occasion. Be careful not to get too technical or lazy in your presentation. Slow and steady will carry your article far, provided you get to the point soon enough to deliver your best content.
3. You’re Not Standing Out: Having an informal approach to your writing is one thing, but it’s even more important to produce unique content for your readers. Your articles and writing method need to stand out. Your strengths should be visible and you should develop a recurring theme in your articles, such as a quote in the beginning or bold, consistent headlines. If your articles are just a few paragraphs with nothing that pops out at your readers, it will be just that, a few more boring paragraphs of fluff. Here is more information on learning how to stand out in your niche.
4. Lengthy Articles with Too Many Sources: Now a few paragraphs may seem a bit on the weak side, but it’s even worse if your article takes an entire afternoon to read! There’s a place for research papers and essays. This place is not in your articles. Using too many sources and dragging out every detail will most likely overwhelm your readers. Keep your articles between 500 and 700 words and you’ll be seeing your hard work pay off in the end. Your articles will be read all the way through.
5. Your Message is Confusing: Keep it simple! The last thing you want to do is confuse your readers or leave out crucial details in your message. Communicate your tips and advice clearly and keep them engaged without going over their heads. An easy way to keep them focused is to outline your article in the beginning and then recap at the end so nothing is lost in translation. Be professional and don’t try to be too cute or subtle in your message. Your readers shouldn’t be reading your articles over and over just to get the point!
6. Forced Content or Promotion: Many article submission sites have a minimum word count they need to enforce. This is to keep articles with 1 sentence or a paragraph of derivative junk out of publication. However, if you are forcing extra content into your writing because you ran out of ideas, this is a bad practice and you will lose some readers. You should never add in sentences that don’t contribute value to your content. You should also avoid any promotional content until you reach the Resource Box. You can learn more about this in our recent article, A Quick Reminder on Promotion in Your Articles.
7. You’re Not Teaching Enough: There are many ways to write and share content with your audience. Most articles should educate and inform your readers. Look back at some of your articles. Each bullet point should stand out on its own. You should know your readers and spark their interest by giving them something they haven’t learned before. Raise interesting questions and give them a desire to read further! Teach through your writing; don’t just list things that could be helpful.
It takes practice and technique to connect with your readers. Make sure you realize that once you gain an audience, you must work on keeping them around! They won’t be there forever if you don’t put the work in. If you haven’t read our last article on this topic, we recommend you read 7 Keys to Repair a Severed Connection with Your Audience.
Do you have any unique techniques that you’ve used in the past to connect with your audience? We’d love to hear about them, whether they were effective or not. Feel free to leave a comment below!
Posted by Derek, Member Support on April 28, 2016 at 9:00 am | 83,492 views
58 Comments »
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A useful quick checklist – thanks!
Always the key to being read is to be relevant to your readers, be interesting and to be engaging. So in general, informal and chatty is the best way to engage people, with some humour if it can be worked in.
BUT it’s very easy to go too far with all of these. Depending on your topic and target readership (and you did want a wide range of readers, didn’t you?), don’t be too focussed and too chatty. Cut to the real point of the article fairly quickly. And avoid humour unless it’s sure to get a quick chuckle or wry grin – any other kind of humour will be a dampener, and remember that a bad joke is one of the fastest turn-offs of all.
Item 5 above is the most important. Be succinct, repeat once (at the end) and focus it all on the call to action: the whole article should be a focussed build-up to this.
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Thanks for yet another excellent blog article. It is so very true that writers need to be both direct and to the point. Choosing the right subject, and then writing at your very best each time are key elements in people wanting to read more from your pen, and it is always a pleasure to see that EzineArticles is looking for all of us to do our very best. This ensures that people will keep looking at our community for more gold nuggets when they need advice on all subjects.
Keep up the good work. :-)
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Wow, I totally agree with this information. Article Authors – take note – if you want to succeed. Lance
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I do want to succeed in my writing, so these tips were great to read. Hoping my writing will get better in time.
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Very informative, I’m new writing after many years, so these tips are very helpful.
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Thanks for yet another excellent blog article. Very helpful tips!
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Very helpful article… it’s easy to forget that if we are not connecting with our readers the articles we write serve no purpose. I will keep these points in mind as I try to keep my readers hooked, and get them to come back for more. Thanks!
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Thank you with your inspiring motivational word of encouragements.
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It’s hard for me to be succinct as I’m more of a playwright. This article made things seem so much simpler for me. This writing will have a huge influence on my next article. I tend to ramble but I am informal and simple enough for everybody to understand. I’m working on a short story where every sentence has to be important to move the story along.
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Thanks with your update.. it is very refreshing. To be perfect is a recipe to imperfect….. We all need someone to edit and proofread our writing. Again thanks..
Question: Does anyone know how you can get paid for your Blogging… If so, please share the link with with me.
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Very useful info. Thanks!
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Love this article. Most people can handle a lengthy post very well, but for beginners it’s definitely great to keep it around the 500-700 range.
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Nice article. I especially agree with
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I am also an avid reader and writer as well on EzineArticles and regularly writing articles. But, still not getting enough traffic. I hope this will work for me.
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Thanks. A happy Monday all!
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I love to read your blogs. These 7 tips are very helpful for us.
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I am also an avid reader on EzineArticles and regularly writing articles. But, still not getting enough traffic. I hope this will work for me.
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Thank you Derek for the informative post. I am new to ezine article writing and any information is really appreciated.
I like the idea of adding humor. Humor may help to put the reader at ease, provided it doesn’t deflect from your main point. Putting a smile on your readers face will encourage them to continue reading and isn’t that the point?
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A Helpful quick articles “Ezine” – thanks!
Regards
Natasa
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This is a great insight for blog commenting. I really admire the person who wrote this. Very informative. Great job!
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Thanks for these tips Chris, I’ve read them all carefully and will try to internalise all the advice.
Being able to write well, and in such a way that readers respond too, is a very important skill nowadays, but it’s something I struggle with at times, so articles like this always help.
As a quick addition, an experienced copywriter once told me that varying the length of your sentences makes a text more enjoyable to read, as it takes on a kind of musical tone. From seeing his work, I think he’s right, but it’s a difficult thing to do correctly.
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Thank you for sharing your valuable experience with us.
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Very encouraging for upcoming writers, I hope my writing will improve and people get more good stuff from my articles. Thank you so much.
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Hey,
Thanks for the article. You always help us indirectly with many wonderful resources.
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I couldn’t agree more with the first point. You have hit the nail on the head with this point. Not only should you be aware of your reader’s profile but your reader should be aware of yours too. Bottom line that all SEOs and content writers need to keep it in mind is that you need to interact with your readers and the content you write should act as a bridge between your readers and you.
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Awesome point and some practical tips. It is essential to associate with your blog Readers. At the point when your perusers see themselves in the story you tell, they will be moved, inspired and you will gain their trust.
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Thanks – now I get it. Here’s to writing some interesting articles. I will definitely remember the teaching element and not to force feed promotion.
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I have been writing for about four months now and it was great for me to read through your comprehensive list to see what is working and what is not working for me. I appreciate your advice and you modeled it well! Thanks! Sherry
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Lot of points covered, a lot of other important points have been missed. Title & UI of site could be another reason. Anyway nice efforts.
Amit Jain
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Hi,
This is a wonderful post with great points. We need to focus on user engagement and follow the proper guidelines.
Thanks for sharing this nice post.
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Thanks for the insight, one profound thing in writing is that it goes beyond communication, it requires absolute connections. This can be hard but as you said it takes hard work and time.
More so, understanding the present need of your audience can be a very handy key to connecting with them properly. As life has it, every season comes with its need.
One again. Thanks
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To be able to write well, and in such a way that readers respond too, is a very important skill nowadays. It’s something I struggle with at times, so articles like this are always help.
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I think it is key to write articles that your readers will be interested in. I know it seems like an obvious thing to say but sometimes people forget about writing FOR their readers or an audience. They often get to consumed in writing something that is ‘perfect’ that everybody will like and share.
The best thing to do is to write for the few and not the many.
Focusing on a specific audience will always be better than trying to write something that will appeal to everyone. First of all it is hard to write about something everyone can relate to and like. Secondly, writing for a targeted audience will mean more loyalty, discussion, popularity and an overall better following.
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I am one person who does not communicate with others without any work. But after reading your post, now I’ll try to change myself as much as possible. Thanks
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As a new writer, I think these pointers will help hone my skill and produce more interesting content that will catch the attention of my targeted audience. Great article. Thank you.
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Very informative post on the subject!
To become a good writer, the key is to keep learning new skills and keep writing at the same time.
As English is my second language, since I am writing posts almost two to three in a week for my two blogs, my English is improving.
Thanks.
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My best one is
Thanks for the list.
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Yes author, I totally agreed with this and always remember the teaching element including not to force feed promotion.
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Nice share, these seven mistakes can turn things upside down even if you are a fortune company. Very informative and of value thank you for sharing.
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This is the reason why I am not connecting with my readers, you nailed it. Peace
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Prem! You are not alone, but still a lot more bloggers will find the reason too through this post. Great analysis tips.
February 1, 2018 at 7:31 AM[Reply]
These 7 points are really important that you need to focus on, most of the blogs don’t even know that they are making these 7 big mistakes.
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Dear author, first of all I would like to say thanks for writing this amazing content. I agree with you. 5 reason out of 7 I like the most.
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You have mentioned great points. It is important to connect with your blog readers. When your readers see themselves in the story you tell, they will be moved, motivated and you will gain their trust.
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Very encouraging for upcoming writers, I hope my writing will improve and people get more good stuff from my articles. Thank you so much.
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Great insight on how to write an interesting piece of article. I have been writing my blog but the next article in my blog on fashion would surely have slight sarcasm and light humor.
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Yeah Neha…
I also agree with your point… we must follow these instructions to make our blogs better!
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Hey Derek,
Thanks for this awesome piece of content. I really liked
If they want to write long content then they must write in points and also use trigger words which attract there visitors to read those points!
Thanks for your great stuff!
-Rajinder
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Hi,
I’m a bit late here but completely agree with all the information provided in those 7 points. I think every author, writer, editor or publisher must take care of all these points while writing on any topic.
And thanks to Derek for sharing this information (which is common but many writers actually do not know about this) here publicly.
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Very encouraging for upcoming writers, I hope my writing will improve and people get more good stuff from my articles. Thank you so much.
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I am a new author and your article really helps me improve my writing skills to attract more readers.
Thanks for sharing valuable information.
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I think we will be able to get more and more readers if we provide a chance of DIY to our readers and in this way we will be able to get more orders also, more commission if it applies. Thanks for a good article.
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Thanks to Derek for sharing this information (which is common but many writers actually do not know about this) here publicly.
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I would say, great points to remember before writing an article. Brief to the point and very engaging articles are key to success. Connecting with different writers provide extra exposure as well. Thank you for sharing such important things to do.
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Thanks for this article.
A few of the points you described in this article are really helpful, for someone new like me.
Point
If they want to write long content then they must write in points and also use trigger words which attract their visitors to read those points!
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Hey David,
I discovered 5 out of 7 flaws after reading your article. I guess, not being popular is one of the main problem people have.
But it’s just an inner conflict. Pass that and you are good to go.
Great insights!
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