How An Advice Column Can Help Your Blog Get More Loyal Readers
In most lifestyle magazines, you’ll find an advice column, where an expert or columnist will answer reader queries on specific problems. Readers of the magazine will send in their questions and some of them will be selected for publication every month.
I love reading the advice column because I feel as if I always learn something from it, even if I already know the answer to the question. I’m sure some of you feel the same.
Why are we so enraptured with the advice column? Perhaps it is comforting to see that others out there have the same fears, worries and problems. We all want a solution and are waiting for someone to stick their hand up to pose a question.
Sometimes the questions asked deal with things you’ve been wondering about for some time, as well as topics you were too lazy to look up. Or maybe you respect the columnist/expert and would love to hear her opinion. It is always interesting and useful to get an alternative point of view.
The advice column has worked well for print magazines. Now let’s take a quick look at why you should take this basic editorial format and use it on your blog or website.
The Benefits of Having a Advice Column for Your Website
Image Credit: subway vacancy
An advice column can work with both multi-author blogs that specialize in news reportage and single-author blogs which focus on producing general or specialized articles on fixed topics. All you need to is to assign a person (yourself or someone else) to play the role of the advice columnist and fix a day for publication.
You can run the column weekly, bi-weekly or once a month. I personally think a weekly or bi-weekly column will work best because online content operates on an independent schedule (unlike production-heavy print mags). The web is also fast-paced and content of this sort can be easily digested by readers.
Here are the four main benefits of having an advice column on your blog:
- Receive Visitor Feedback. Questions represent the informational needs of your visitors. By setting up an advice column, you are inviting users to tell you what they want to hear, read and know. As a publisher, this feedback allows you to better organize your content development strategy and determine what to publish and how to improve your overall content focus.
- Reward Your Readers. Ever wrote a letter to a magazine or newspaper and was happy to see it published? Some visitors will get the same feeling of elation when they see their name and question published on your blog. Websites operate through a dynamic network of hyperlinks and you can also use this opportunity to direct traffic to the specific reader’s website.
- Develop Reader Loyalty. As I’ve mentioned in the first part of this article, an advice column creates a bond between readers and yourself. By answering one specific query, you’ll inadvertently answer the questions of other readers. The perception of you directly addressing the concerns of one reader demonstrates your commitment to other readers. This develops reader loyalty.
- Monetization. This concerns people who want to make money through their site. Every question you receive is a perfect opportunity for you to promote an affiliate program or sponsor. Problem-solving and affiliate recommendations go hand in hand in most niches. The trick is not to do it very often and to add value first by offering substantial advice, before including a recommendation.
Ask Dosh Dosh: Starting a Weekly Advice Column
Image Credit: wintry mixed
A few months ago, I wrote an article and invited all of you to ask me questions on topics related to this blog. I answered some of them in the form of articles. In retrospect, I should have continued addressing the questions because they would have helped other readers as well.
To be honest, it’s a little difficult to answer all of the questions asked because I didn’t have any expertise or sometimes, interest in some of the topics asked.
Some of them were also not 100% relevant to this blog’s focus. But that’s the case for advice columns: if you get a heck of a lot of questions, it’s difficult to address all of them, especially when some require a more indepth answer. You have to pick and choose the ones which you think will be particularly helpful to all readers.
That’s what I will be doing for the new weekly advice column on Dosh Dosh, which will be published every Friday starting next week. I’ll have to see how it fares but I’m pretty keen on making this part of the regular content programming.
Email me your questions. The ones that are related to the topics covered on Dosh Dosh (internet marketing, social media, monetization, blog development). If you want to stay anonymous, that’s fine with me as well. I won’t mention your name or site.
Hopefully this advice column will be well received and helpful for everyone. ^-^
For more ways to improve your blog, please subscribe to Dosh Dosh.
Hey Maki,
Completely agree, in fact, I am about to roll-out some revisions to my blog design to encourage more people to submit “Ask Jonathan” questions and then do a weekly advice column in response. Seems like a blog is really the perfect vehicle for this. Plus, it further positions you as an authority in your niche.
Thanks, as always, for a great article!
Jonathan
I’m so glad that you decided to start your own advice column! *preparing one or two questions*
I can see this idea being successfully applied to blogs in almost all niches. However, I’m not totally sure that it would work for little-known sites. Perhaps one should get a few loyal readers first and start an advice column later. Otherwise they’d risk having no questions to answer.
Then again, I may be wrong about this. Who knows? A weekly column might be just what certain blogs need to build a stronger community around them.
I have received a few emails from readers asking for advice. I never thought of posting my answers on the site as an “Advice Column”. How would you integrate one into your blog? – Setup a separate page for those posts, or just a new category?
@ Mike: Although your question was certainly addressed to Maki, I thought I could offer you my opinion.
First of all, let me tell you that a blog like yours seems to beg for an advice column. You should have started one yesterday! The niche your blog belongs to — and the fact that you’ve already received questions from readers — should be enough to justify the creation of your own Q&A feature.
That being said, I believe that a new category would be enough; no need to create a new page. Unless you want to highlight the most interesting questions in some way. In this case a separate page would be a nice addition and could encourage more reader participation.
Just my two cents, anyway. It would be interesting to see other commenters’ input on it.
Maki, excellent idea.
I publish a newsletter for this very reason, to address the questions I receive from my blog/website readers (my niche is freelance writing).
As I get so many, I would never get any work done if I stopped to answer every one of them. My newsletter hleps me to address reader questions/concerns, and provides a format from which all of my readers benefit, just like your advice column (can’t wait for it!).
FYI, to anyone thinking of starting something like this (advice column or newsletter), please don’t underestimate the amount of time it will take up.
Readers expect indepth answers from a separate entity like this (you kinda set them up to expect that when you start a separate thing), so don’t think you can throw it together and have it go over well with your readers.
Take the time to answer questions indepth. If it’s not something you can do, interview other experts. I do this with my newsletter. Readers still get their questions answered — and they get to hear from other experts besides me.
I’m sure you know all this Maki — it’s just a general note to those who’ve never tried something like this.
Good luck with it.
Sincerely,
Yuwanda Black, Publisher
Hey Maki, you got me there!
This is the similar thing I was planning to do for my blog, where people could put up their questions and get their solutions not only by me rather anyone. This will help make people to return, and stand out your blog from the crowd.
yes thats really true…. but most people find it difficult to leave messages in sites
Hey Maki – GREAT idea! I think you have my question(s) already
Agreed!!!.. The main motive of a blog should be satisfying the readers and make them worth their visit to the blog for that regular polls and suggestions from the end user of the content in the blog is a Great Idea… So can edit the Blog preferences to the visitors choice and they be happy and make us happy
that is a great post, I use my sidebar to put some ads, as well as technorati and RSS feed, it has helped some!
That’s what I’ve been doing for over a year, but I lost my audience since I had personal matters to tend to outside of blogging.
Trying to give it another go.
Fantastic article! I read Dear Abby daily even if I don’t agree. I never thought of applying it to my blog! Thanks!
One comment: You need to include a button or shortcut that copies your article or the first paragraph or so with linkbacks onto Facebook.
This is a good idea. But, having an advice column could be a little much if its something like DoshDosh, where you get alot of traffic…unless, you have somebody else working on the blog with you. It is a good way to become more familiar with your audience, I doubt a blog like DoshDosh could respond to all of the comments with just one person. Just my opinion.
@Jonathan
Cool… I’ll look forward to your column!
@ Karen
Yeah, I think it’ll work better for sites at least with some audience, although you could always fake the questions if you REALLY want to get started immediately……something to think about. ^_^
@ Mike
I would do the advice column as a normal blog post, while setting up a new category for it. Later on you can create a new page and then do a ‘Best of’ type of roundup… which showcases all the Q n A sessions you’ve done… while prefacing it with an intro.
@ Inkwell
Yes, it can be time consuming… but so is a normal blog post. I treat it like just another article I write so it shouldn’t take any more time than what I already use for blogging.
@ Manish
Let me know when your Q n A session is up.. I’ll love to see how it goes.
@ Dear AL
Your entire blog is an advice column… pretty cool. Yes, you should probably try to give it another go if you have the time.
@ George
Hmmmm… thanks for the tip. I’ll look into the Facebook button.
@ Sean
As I’ve mentioned in my article, its pretty difficult to answer all the questions. Magazines don’t answer all the mail they get…. they pick and choose and I guess that’s what I have to do in this area. One thing to note.. the questions you don’t want to answer on the blog can be answered in private via email.
@Everyone else
Thanks a lot for your comments!
Nice thoughts, Maki. It ties in directly with another good intention I haven’t got around to … a daily calendar where I write about certain things on certain days. A lot of people do a “link Roundup” oce a week, an advice column is much more interesting, plus, of course, it doesn’t send vistors away.
Maki, don’t you put evil ideas on my mind!…
(All right, I can’t blame you for this because I had already thought about that possibility.
)
But do you know what? I’ve been just stricken by a related idea. *overjoyed* Now I must calm down and think very carefully about it. Thank you for inspiring me!
Ah! I see you’ve caught on to my evil plan to control the blogging universe. Bwa ha haaaaa!
too much work do an advice column
(joke)
Good luck with the Advice Column, Maki. Sounds like a promising idea.
Thats a great post!
Happy New Year!
Are you up for a round of tag? Hope you don’t mind, I’ve tagged you. Please read my post I’ve been tagged…
Forgot to say Maki – get ready for all the pre-teens emailing you for advice on their boyfriend troubles. I get those on a daily basis because of my advice column format. I’m often tempted to give them advice, but not quite the advice they expected
Hi Maki,
It’s such a coincidence. I’m a personal development blogger, and I have been playing this idea for some time already. Yesterday, I finally took the step to setup an advice column on my blog to help my readers with issues in their life.
I was a little ambivalent about how it will be received.
Seeing your article today is a great vote of confidence for me that I’m taking a right step.
Maybe I should start emailing you on how to improve my site? Ha!
Ok, Happy New Year and have a great 2008!
Maki, I am very excited to see you doing this. I think it’s a great idea, as I’ve had many questions that I’ve wished to ask you. I look forward to sending you my queries!
Since I have a cat advice site, it makes sense for me to have one. I’ve been publishing “Dear Pammy” almost since its inception. Sunday nights, ready to catch the Monday morning rush.
I’ve put an email form on my blog that lets people easily & confidentially send me their questions, and I’ve customized the form so I know I’ll have enough information to respond to them.
I used Freedback.com, which lets you have one free form. They are a very good company for this kind of thing, and very reasonable if you would like to expand your form use.
Some questions are not right for the blog: not general enough, or they ask to keep it confidential, what have you. I try to choose questions that will let me segue into general principles, so it’s useful to everyone.
I agree… everyone likes advice columns!
What a great idea, for the last couple of weeks I’ve been struggling with new content. A readers questions section is just what I need to kick start things again.
Wow.
What an awesome idea.
Advice columns have their way of pulling me in…and making me want to read more…and more…and more.
Thanks for the insightful post!
indeed an excellent post. congrats on the SEJ award!
Awesome idea. I just started my blog about fashion and it would be absolutely perfect formy blog to have an advice column. I’m glad I saw this article !!!
Wow, well it must work by the looks of all the comments you have quit a few loyal readers
What a great idea. I am already getting questions in my email anyway. Might as well address some of the questions on the blog.
Interesting concept. I never thought about this before. Thanks for the tip.
Thank you!
Every week I received email from people (all of them got my email addy from my blog) asking some questions on topics in communication, leadership, training, time management, and many others.
I like sharing my ideas to people. So when time permits, I answer most if not all of them. Yes, without the rest of the readers knowing my answers at all.
I will heed your advice. I will start an Advice Column too.
God bless.
Thanks for the idea I have taken steps to follow it!!!
Great idea – I may have to add this feature to my new blog
Your site is full of awesome information. I will be subscribing to your feed and reading more about your expansion plans. I am always looking for good advice on how to expand my readership. I would also like to ask you about exchanging links. Please review my blog at: thechrisjohnsonproject.com
and let me know what you think.
Thanks again for the great work.
What a great idea! I’m a professional advice columnist so naturally I like to see these columns thriving in all sorts of formats. I’ve been a therapist and columnist for 23 years, have a warm, direct, practical, positive, entertaining style. If you need me to add a q & a section to your blog, check out my website and feel free to contact me.
Great advice! Reader Q&A make for great reading, and can also give the blogger some new material to think and write about. I actually built a Q&A widget to do this on my blog, and it’s available for anyone to use (for free, of course) via Askablogr.com. We don’t yet have Movable Type support, but it works in Blogger, TypePad and WordPress. If you have time to take a look I’d love your comments!