“Your audience is brilliant”

Chris Brogan wrote a book back in 2010 called Social Media 101, and it’s full of best practices and bite-sized ideas for business and creative types alike. Consider, for example, this piece of advice about blogging:

“Your audience is brilliant. You sometimes know something they don’t. But treat them as though they are masterful and brilliant, as though you’re just sharing this information in case they want to brush up. You’re not a god. You’re a communicator.”

It’s a thoughtful and considerate approach, but it’s also a sensible one. It boils down to putting yourself in your reader’s shoes, and that’s a good idea when it comes to any kind of communication.

I try to bear this tip in mind whenever I sit down to write a new post. I want what I’m saying to resonate with you, and I want you to feel like the time it took to read it was time well spent. As a reader, I appreciate when other writers and bloggers do the same for me. We’re all busy people, after all.

I took a few days off from blogging last week, for reasons I’ll get into later. I thought I’d start the new week by pledging to get back on track with this rule in mind. I hope you’ll stick around to see if I do a good job (and if you don’t stick around, I’ll know I haven’t).

By the way, another thing Brogan likes to do to encourage engagement is ask a lot of questions at the end of his posts. What do you think of this strategy? Have you tried it? Do you think it would work in this case?

Posted in Creative Projects

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