“If you have one good idea, people will lend you twenty.” – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Born Sep. 13, 1830.
One of the best things about operating via conversations with your audience is that you almost never need to be creative.
Plant a seed, and people will grow it into a crop of their their troubles. They will discuss all their problems with each other. They will detail their distress.
And that is how you know what solutions are needed.
Find solutions you can sell them, or better yet, make your own.
There are a multitude of benefits of making your own solutions for your audience, based on what they are asking for.
And that's where Marie's quote comes in. In a very short time, you'll have way more, and way better ideas for products and service offerings from your loyal fan base than you've ever had yourself in your whole life.
Of course, that doesn't mean you can't take credit for the solutions once you make them, right?
But really, you should give the thanks and the gratitude to your loyal audience. Continue that ongoing conversation that shows them you are here to listen, to solve, and to SERVE.
Easily one of my favorites.
What’s your favorite way to get folks to bitch and moan about what they need?
Thanks for everything.
Well, if you have a community, people will gather and grouse automatically. It seems to be the number one reason people form online communities is to complain about the topic they have gathered around. But if you want to seed the storm, just post your own complaint about a subject, and what you think it should be instead – and then invite people to share their own piques and peeves.
How to do this when your audience isn't responsive? Oh and [redacted], nice one.
Get a better audience? A lot of what I do with my communications with my audience is built around parsing out the active and engaged people who like to respond. Like how I got you to comment here – though the bulk of my audience is usually silent.
As you probably guessed, I'm wondering what the email version's redacted entry #6 was.
Please, do tell.
Respond to the email and I’ll tell you. It’s a secret. 🙂