Feedback is important when you’re in business. And it pays BIG when you listen. When people comment on your products or services, you learn what you are doing right and what you can do better. Listen to the feedback that comes from clients, customers, as well as those who visit your website, read your blog, sign up for your free offerings, enter your contests, comment on your articles, etc., and you’ll know whether you are offering what is needed/wanted. Every author should understand how important this is. Don’t forget, authorship IS a business.
Do you sometimes feel as though your blog isn’t being read or your book content isn’t being appreciated? Do you wonder if anyone even cares about all of the resources you collect and post at your website for your particular audience? Do you feel you are wasting your time? Few authors receive the responses from their audiences that they desire—at least on any ongoing, reassuring way. Perhaps this is your complaint.
But then you open an email from someone who tells you how much your efforts have helped them or you meet someone at a book festival who says they can’t wait for the sequel of your book to come out. Then you know why you are doing what you do and you are spurred on to continue.
While feedback can be validating, it can also be disturbing. But we should heed those complaints, suggestions, bits of advice and criticism that we don’t want to hear as they might help us create a better product or provide more valuable services.
If you want your reader base to grow, if you want more recognition for the services you offer, if you want to become more well-known in your field or genre, provide a means of receiving feedback and pay attention to what your customers/readers/clients are saying.
Some speakers I know distribute questionnaires after their presentations asking audience members to evaluate their programs. You can ask people to comment at your blog. Encourage readers to email feedback related to your book. They’re more likely to do so if you offer something for free.
How do you build a rapport with your audience, clients, readers? By offering them what they want/need. And you only know that you are hitting the mark through feedback. Encourage it and pay attention to it.
For additional tips, techniques, wisdom, strategies, information, guidance and a whole lot of resources, read my newest book, Publish Your Book. Available at Amazon.com and most other online and downtown bookstores. You can also order it from the publisher (Allworth Press) and at my website: http://www.matilijapress.com