Monday, February 6, 2012

Grow Your Community by Asking Questions

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pReporters at a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/"emThe Washington Post/em/a are now actively engaging their readers by posting comments in streams on the paper?s news stories online, something they?ve never done in the past. The paper switched to a new website platform called Echo, which has helped them grow their online community. Reader comments at the paper have shot up 142% since March, 2011./p
pThis is new territory for many journalists. Never before have they been urged to take part in the conversations the public is having online about their stories. This type of involvement helps reporters fend off rumors, speculation, and flame wars, according to this article published on the a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/02/the-washington-post-tries-a-new-weapon-to-fight-the-trolls-humans/"Nieman Journalism Lab/a website. It also allows reporters to share more information, as well as prove that they, too, are real people./p
pFor freelancers, this new trend at one of America?s largest newspapers just goes to show how important it is to a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/freelance-news/commentary-analysis/ways-to-engage-your-clients/"engage with your community/a./p
h3Show You Care/h3
pI try to comment on the blog posts I write for FreelanceSwitch?especially the posts that have gotten a lot of action from the readers. I really do appreciate the time people take to share their thoughts and opinions on my blog posts. Comments help me gauge a posts? success and help me decide what to write about in the future. The best way for me to show the readers that I am paying attention, is to tell them so.span id="more-24610"/span/p
blockquote class="pullquote"pAsking for feedback is mandatory these days if you want to be successful./p/blockquote
pAsking for feedback is mandatory these days if you want to be successful. I worked for a magazine where the editor and publisher never solicited advice or comments from the readers because they were worried about what people would say. This is just backwards mentality. For years, the magazine paid money to freelancers for articles in the magazine that a scant few of the readers actually enjoyed. Why not take that money and create content that people actually look forward to reading?/p
pIf you don?t know what your readers and clients want, how can you deliver? Maybe you are considering changing your invoicing system and want to know if there will be backlash. Maybe you?re looking into other opportunities and you want to know if there is a market for your ideas. Maybe you want to change your logo but you don?t know where to start. Ask!/p
pIf you don?t let your readers, fans, or followers know you are open to listening to their thoughts and opinions, a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/freelance-marketing/community-engagement/"your popularity/a will never grow. People want to be empowered?and you have the ability to do that./p
h3Gather Information/h3
pThe Internet has made gathering opinions and information easier than ever. You have a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/freelance-news/global-social-networking/"social media networks/a, apps, and tools right at your fingertips./p
pOne of the easiest ways I have found to solicit information is by conducting an informal poll. You can do this on your blog or website easily. My tool of choice is SurveyMonkey, but there are plenty of other companies out there that do the same thing./p
pI also a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/finding/ask-questions-facebook/"ask questions and conduct polls/a on my business Facebook pages. It?s another tool to reach your audience that takes little to no effort to implement./p
pMy advice is to keep these polls concise. You know how annoying it is when a telemarketer calls you with a survey and you feel so bad for them that you agree to do it over the phone. Instead of asking five questions, they ask 55, and you become angry and impatient./p
pYou don?t want to give too many choices. For example, instead of asking for a rating between 1 and 10, try 1 and 5. And try to focus on one particular aspect instead of a vast, broad survey. Keep the questions to a minimum. People don?t have a very long attention span. You want them to consider each question carefully, instead of rushing through just to finish./p
pYou also don?t want to put out a poll every other week. Decide what is most important at the time and focus on that./p
pSome places offer an incentive to respondents if they complete your poll. I don?t find this necessary. If you keep your survey short and to the point, people don?t generally mind answering a few questions?especially if you already have a level of engagement with them./p
pAsking for opinions doesn?t have to be scary. Heck, you might already have an inkling of what the outcome will be, and if it rings true that just means you are on the right track!/p
pemPhoto credit: a title="Attribution License" href="http://photodune.net/wiki/support/legal-terms/licensing-terms/"Some rights reserved/a by a href="http://photodune.net/item/customer-survey/869476"xilius/a/em./p
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