How to Warm Up Your Readers and Make Them Raving Fans

This post is based on Episode 112 of the ProBlogger podcast.

Today I’m starting a series of blog posts to help you get your readers from the cold to you, your brand and your blog, get fully involved and become enthusiastic fans.

I’ll talk about the benefits of warming up your readers, and then walk you through a series of steps to actually doing it.

In the next few weeks I will give you some exercises to guide your readers through the different phases. And then I’ll complete some case studies.

Most bloggers dream that fans will rave about them and their blog. It’s probably your dream too. And you’re definitely not alone. When I started blogging in 2002, I was completely unknown, and the only people who knew about me and my blog were my real friends and the people I worked with.

But since then I’ve gradually reached the point where four or five million people a month read my blogs and have warmed up to my brands. You cannot visit everyone every day. And I doubt they are all enthusiastic fans. But a growing percentage of them is.

How do you get from many cold readers to a few enthusiastic fans? I will concentrate on this in the next few weeks.

Why the audience starts cold

One reason why your readers might be cold at first is because you’re trying to attract people who are incredibly distracted. Even if they find their way into your blog, they may be doing other things at the same time – watching TV, answering messages on their phone, or arguing with children asking about dinner. It is the reality of the world we live in.

You could also be a little suspicious of us and what we say. They may be skeptical about what we are talking about and whether this is relevant to them. Again, it is the reality of the world we live in. With so many “experts” making false claims, it is natural to be suspicious at first.

Of course, they may be at the other end of the spectrum of attention where they only click one link at a time. I don’t know anything about you, but when I look at the links in my Twitter stream, it’s easy for me to get into a zombie-like state of mind if I follow them all.

And then there’s the short attention span that many people seem to have these days. How can they possibly warm up on your website if they only have a few seconds before switching to the next one?

Whatever the reason, many of us have cold readers. How do we warm them up? If you go through the same four phases, you go through every time you warm up for the blog, brand, podcast, or whatever else.

Level 1: Let people know that you exist

When we start our blogs, nobody knows that they exist. And if it’s our first blog, maybe we don’t know we exist.

When I clicked “Publish” on my first post, no one knew he was there. I had to email my wife and say, “Hey, look at this link. It is my new blog. “(And then I had to explain what a blog is.)

I later sent the link to friends, colleagues, and other family members. But I quickly ran out of people to send it to.

I was then faced with the big challenge of going beyond my sphere of influence and telling more people about my blog. (And years later, when the first episode of the ProBlogger podcast went live on iTunes, I had to do it all over again.)

And in the blog post next week I’ll give you some tips on how to do it.

Level 2: Get people interested in what you say

It’s one thing to get people to your blog or podcast. Keeping them there is another.

Sure, you can have their attention. But for the reasons I mentioned, you probably don’t have one full Attention. And so you may not be as interested in what you have to say.

And that’s your next challenge: to interest you. Because if they don’t care what you do and what you have to say, they’ll never connect and get engaged.

(I’ll give you some tips on how to do this in a few weeks.)

Level 3: Connect

So you managed to make them so interested that they could hear what you were saying. You might even think, “Wow, that’s really interesting.” But now they’re done and ready to leave your website. There is no incentive for them to stay with them as they are not connected to you at any level. And if the statistics matter, they are unlikely to ever return.

You need to connect to them. This can be done via email, social media, or even accepting the business card for a real event. But what you really get, as Seth Godin says in Authorization marketingis permission to contact them again.

(I also give you tips on this.)

Level 4: Let your readers / listeners contact you

Congratulations! You have started to connect with your readers / listeners. Although it’s great to get permission to contact them, you want them to contact you as well.

In other words, you want them to deal with you.

Those of you who have been blogging for a few months and have only a handful of subscribers know how difficult it is. You send an email to your subscribers, despairing about the small percentage of people who open them. (At this point, try not to think of the even lower percentage of people who checked their subscription.)

Or you can look at your Facebook stats and compare the number of people who like your page with the small number that receives your messages and the even smaller number that they share or post a comment.

While it’s great to see how many people read your blog posts in Google Analytics, comparing that number to the number of comments everyone gets can be pretty depressing.

But do not worry. In a few weeks I will be presenting some strategies that we are using in both ProBlogger and the Digital Photography School to build this engagement.

The weakest link

I will be talking extensively about each of these four phases over the next four weeks and giving you tips on how to:

• attract people’s attention
• Interest them in what you are saying
• Get them to connect with you
• Get them to deal with you.

In the meantime, let me ask you a question: Which of these four phases do you think is your weakest link? Does it spread the word about your new blog or podcast? Does people care what you say? Does it make this connection to your readers / listeners? Or does it transform this connection into a mutual exchange of ideas?

Let us know in the comments.

Credit: Waldemar Brandt