146 - How to Keep Your Audience Happy

Create If Writing

In this post I want to talk about something super fundamental that's sometimes overlooked. And it's simple! Let's dive into how to keep your audience happy.

If you want to build an audience of raving fans, it can seem daunting at times. Do this! Do that! Post here! Write this kind of thing!

But when it comes down to the foundation, it's REALLY simple: set up expectations with your readers and then keep them. This means building trust and keeping trust. It's like you are creating a contract with your audience, even in things like your email sign-up forms when you tell people you will send every week.

HOW TO KEEP YOUR AUDIENCE HAPPY

This boils down to setting up and keeping expectations, but there are multiple ways you may be doing this or NEED to do this.

• What you SAY - The most common way to set expectations is when you explicitly tell people what you're going to do. Ex: when people sign up for an email list, book descriptions, your blog tagline
• What you DO - Your actions set the expectations. Ex: how often do you post on the blog, publish a book, send an email.
• What people HEAR/UNDERSTAND - You may not realize that you are communicating something other than what you think, so it's a good idea to get an outside perspective. Ex: book covers, your tagline, BIG things. (Don't do this with every blog post! But good idea with bigger things or as you start out.)
• What people SEE - You may not realize how much your visuals impact expectations. Ex: book covers, how your blog looks, images you choose to use

TIPS FOR KEEPING YOUR READERS HAPPY

• As much as you can, tell your readers what to expect up front. Be clear and up front about who you are and what you do. Surprises are only good when they are GOOD, like a free book. It's not a good surprise to get emails every day for your product launch when people expected only weekly emails.
• As much as you can, keep to your word. Life happens and people understand that. But whenever possible, stick to your word. Which means...
• As much as you can, don't set up expectations you can't keep or that you hate! If you don't like sending weekly emails, DON'T START. If you aren't sure you could keep up a weekly podcast, DON'T COMMIT TO THAT! Set realistic and sustainable goals.

This may seem very simple and obvious, but there are so many small ways we could all do this better!

When we are clear with expectations and then commit to following through, we build trust with our audience and end up with raving fans.