How can you use professional writing to increase audience engagement?

I visited a prime location shop in one of the busiest business districts in Singapore. The gentleman (owner) was selling big and tall sportswear. While I was picking a few large sized tshirts, I noticed a few potential customers entering his shop only to ask him directions for the product tbet wanted. I joked with the owner; "you must be a millionaire for the amount of people visiting you." He answered with a sad face "no dear, all I do is give directions all day." I exited his shop thinking; is this guy for real. He's got customers coming in like bees. All he needs to do is to know what they want and keep the damn product at his shop. No rocket science. So if you do not know your customers and what they want, God be with you.

It's helpful for me to NOT think about an audience, but instead one person I want to have a conversation with. I want to understand what drives them, what challenges they face that I can help them solve. If you don't know their goals and challenges, find that person and interview them. See how they talk about their dream outcomes and the pitfalls getting in their way. Note the phrases and words they use. Now you have a foundation of qualitative insights you can use to communicate to that person and others like them. Once you've nailed the message for that person, you can begin expanding outward, without overwhelming yourself from the start.

Here is how to know if your audience will gain value from your content or not. Read through your content, then think about what you've read and simply ask yourself: "What did I learn from this and how is it of help to me?" By doing this simple but effective exercise, you will know whether your content provides value to your audience or not.

In the time of visually appealing and eye-catching graphics, what makes your words interesting to the reader??? Your content must be: - Audience oriented - Provides a solution - Engage audience These all factors collectively add value to your content. The audience is searching for value, so make it reader-friendly by adding value. Graphs, stats, images, etc. enhance x5 audience engagement.

Writing gurus will give us playbooks these days just for writing powerful hooks. Don't get me wrong, we need to communicate our ideas in ways that get people's attention. But writing a hook or any piece of content with the intention of gaining impressions and engagement is incentivizing the wrong mindset. When I'm writing, I try to focus on giving value, solving problems, entertaining, and sharing a piece of myself. I write to build relationships and earn people's trust. I write to refine my ideas and build an audience around the topics I care about.

What's worked well for me is to write out my content. I edit as I go, until I have a v1 of the content. Then I'll go back and re-read it several times, making additional edits. Once I think I have a piece that's ready to publish, I'll copy and paste it into Hemingway (hemingway.app). I love how it helps me simplify my words and sentences. I turn hard-to-read sentences into simple. I reduce any overused adverbs. I switch from passive to active voice. And I ultimately optimize the content to be easily read by a 3rd grader.