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8 Conscientious Ways To Use Your Readers

By Vivien (InspirationBit) on Feb 28, 2008.

This is my first contribution to RA Project, but hopefully not the last one. I guess it’s for you, the readers, to decide.

Have you noticed that when a blogger reaches a certain point of recognition, admiration and popularity amongst his/her peers, no matter what will be said or written by him/her will be perceived and received with even a greater accolade? I did use “no matter what” because even in the case of a negative behaviour or mediocre writing nothing can hurt that image of someone who really knows his stuff.

Why then sometimes I can’t help but feel cheated when some aficionado uses readers to produce the content for his blog. Sure some will say that I take it the wrong way, that it’s simply the way to encourage reader’s participation and give them a chance to contribute. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I’m all for reader’s involvement, that’s why I’ve organized several group writing projects and contests on my own blog, but I believe there is a fine line between a sincere desire to get readers active and excited and the fact that the blogger had no desire for a critically acclaimed writing on that day. It is very important to recognize that difference and not cross the line too often.

On the other hand, like I mentioned before, they know their stuff and what they’re doing, so why don’t we use their knowledge and implement it ourselves. Next time when you don’t have time for writing a reasonably lengthy article for your blog, or having another one of the writer’s blocks, or need some user data for your future articles, or simply want to increase reader’s participation on your blog, try one of the eight ways below to involve your readers in producing content for your site:

1. Poll

   This is probably the simplest way to gather a significant amount of input from your readers and later write an article based on their feedback. You can either use one of the available plugins to generate the polls or simply collect everyone’s answers in the comments. I still remember the poll – Do you maximise your browser window – ran by Roger Johansson last year that collected a staggering 1070 responses, and was followed up with the Poll results: 50.4% of respondents maximise windows two weeks after.

2. Ask thought-provoking questions

   This method is used very often by many bloggers. To get the best results ask questions that you yourself don’t have clear answers for or the ones that you’re wondering a lot about. Later you can follow up the readers’ responses with a post or two, or simply keep the discussions open for future readers who happened to stumble upon your blog. Veerle took it one step further: after asking her readers What is Graphic Design and collecting 194 responses, she decided to run a contest (which brings us to #3 on our list) and get visual interpretations in a form of a poster on What Is Graphic Design.

3. Contest

   Veerle’s design competition has produced over 600 amazing posters, worth taking a look at when you’re searching for some design inspiration. Everyone likes prizes, so get creative and come up with contests that are fun for your readers and beneficial to you, make sure to follow Simonne’s advice on having interesting vs. boring contests.

4. Group Writing Project

   It takes quite a lot of effort to organize a group writing project, promote it (especially if your feed count didn’t cross ten thousand or more subscribers), however the results of interesting group projects are very rewarding, not only because of lots of link love among its participants, but because it really brings readers together and develops dependable relationships. Carnivals also can be included in the category of group projects.

5. Readers Questions

   One of the best ways to get some ideas for your articles is by asking readers what is it that they’d like to learn from you. Daren Rowse is pretty good at that with his “ProBlogger question box”. He opened the box a month ago and over the course of the next few months he is and will be answering the readers questions.

6. Readers Analysis

   If you’ve gained lots of respect from your readers it would allow you to not only whip up a post based on their feedback but even make some money on it, why not? When I first read about ProBlogger Community Consulting where Darren is actually charging people for having their sites reviewed and criticized by his readers, I couldn’t believe my eyes. But it’s been over three months since that announcement and people are still ordering the reviews and the readers and gladly providing their feedback. I guess we can all learn a lot from this “experiment”.

7. Guest Writing

   This one is the most obvious way in getting some fresh content for your blog or backup posts when you are going away. However, be careful and choosy when inviting others to guest write on your blog. You might want to provide them with some topic directions or find out in advance what their guest post would be about. The rule of thumb here for me is that if I really liked the guest article myself chances are my readers would appreciate it as well.

8. One-liners

   Sometimes all you need to initiate a discussion is an intriguing or questioning post title with one word or one sentence in the post, or simply an interesting image or a video. I remember back in my early days of blogging I found a witty comic and decided to post it on my blog without any personal comments about it except the question in the title: Is This Really A New Definition Of Love? I’ve got several interesting comments in return. I also remember how Daniel from DailyBlogTips has produced over a year ago the shortest blog post ever: titled Get straight to the point and one word affirmation in the post itself: “Period”.

Once again, a word of caution – don’t overuse those tricks, and spend more time on producing a quality thought-provoking writing rather than provoking others to write for you.

Which of those methods have you used on your blogs? How do you feel as a reader when others implement them on their blogs?

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