Finding your audience and community on NewsBreak

There’s no secret, overnight formula for gaining followers and building your audience, but there are some strategies you can use to help increase your reach and impact.

(Hannah Busing/Unsplash)

Be consistent and publish often. You are a creator and consumer of content, so examine your own expectations. Would you follow a publication if it only updated once every two months? Probably not. The more consistent you can be about publishing content, the more likely you are to start building trust with readers and the more likely they are to start following you. The best way is to have a posting schedule, like once every week on Sunday, or twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The more structure you can give to readers, the more likely they will begin to check your publication regularly.

Become a topic expert. Whether you love covering local events, hobbies like music and dance or local high school sports, people want to read stories that educate and further their knowledge. Also, when you establish yourself as an expert on a particular topic, it builds trust and connection with your audience. Developing this type of recognition and focus will then allow people to reach out to you with stories ideas that fit your expertise.

Pay attention to your grammar, language and writing style. People expect a certain amount of style and accuracy on News Break. Nothing loses trust among readers faster than constant typos and grammatical mistakes because it suggests the writer doesn’t care to get things right. Poor grammar and spelling also disrupt the reading experience, and can quickly lead to people tuning out.

Engage with and understand your audience. It’s important to understand who you’re writing for, and one of the best ways to do that is to engage with your audience. Ask them questions, reply to comments and help foster a positive community dialogue.

Add a follow widget to all of your articles. Often times, readers will find you through a piece of content or article in their feed. You want to give them an easy way to follow you, and the follow widget is the best way to reinforce that action within your content. The follow widget is added through a button in our writing module. If you are having trouble finding it, please refer to "writing a new article."

Share your content. Tell your family, tell your friends and share your links regularly. (If you use reader referral links, you can make money on your shares too!)

Remember building a loyal audience takes time, so don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t happen right away, but keep publishing great content and it’s sure to follow.

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