Imagine your online community is a group of hungry people who walk up to a table where you have a spread of finger foods and appetizers. That’s your online content.

By watching which items disappear quickly, you learn what your audience truly wants. That’s the content that satisfies their hunger. And that’s what you need to give them.

In this article I’ll show you 8 ways to discover what topics satisfy the hunger in your online community.

#1: Ask your community

Most businesses assume that they know what their online community wants to hear from them. There’s nothing like doing a reality check by asking your community directly. What you learn might surprise you.

Start by creating a list of 10 topics you believe your audience wants to hear. Use your list to create a survey and collect their opinions using one of these strategies:

• Ask them to say “yes” or “no” for each topic.
• Ask them to rank the topics in order of interest.
• Ask them to pick their 3 favorite topics.

Always include an option for “other” so they can fill in any topics that you didn’t include in your list. Pay careful attention to these topics. If someone goes to the trouble to write in a topic, it’s very important to him or her.

There are several popular services that allow you to create a free survey including SurveyMonkey, Free Online Surveys, Zoomerang and Bzoink.

You can easily create smart professional surveys.

You can add your survey to your website, highlight it in your email newsletter and promote it on Twitter and Facebook.

#2: Check your blog comments

Which blog posts get the most comments?

Most bloggers will tell you that their most popular blog posts often surprise them. It’s usually not the post that they like the best.

When you write a post that gets many comments, you know you have struck gold. Review the comments to see what about this post inspires your community.

• Are people interested in this topic? Write more blog posts about it. You might even create a new category for these posts to make them more visible to your visitors.
• Did people like the post format? Did you make a list? Did you review an article or a tool? If the format was a hit, then consider starting a series of similar posts. You can even make this a recurring feature on your blog.

Tip: If most of the comments on a blog post are questions, it means that your audience is looking for more information on this topic. You can become their go-to source by providing detailed answers to their questions.

#3: Check your retweets

You post things on Twitter that you believe are useful and interesting. However, value is always in the eyes of the reader. When your Twitter community loves the information in your tweet, they retweet it to their communities. Check for your most-loved tweets and turn them into important conversation topics.

The new Twitter makes it easy to find your retweeted items and how many people retweeted each one.

1. Open Twitter.com and log in (if necessary).
2. Click Home in the top menu (if necessary).
3. Click the Retweets tab (in the left pane). Twitter displays the retweets menu.
   

   The Twitter Retweets menu options.

4. Select Your Tweets, retweeted. Twitter displays a list of your tweets that other people have retweeted in chronological order.
5. Hover the pointer over the first tweet, and click the flyout button to see the retweet details.
   

   Click the flyout button to see the details about this tweet in the right pane.

   Twitter displays the retweet details in the flyout (right pane).

6. Locate the retweeter list for this tweet.
   

   Twitter tells you how many people retweeted this tweet and displays their profile pictures.

To analyze your retweets:

1. Write down the number of retweets for each individual tweet in a month.
2. Group together tweets into topics or categories.
3. Add the individual retweet numbers to get a topic or category retweet total.
4. List the 3 most popular topics based on retweets. Plan to talk more about these topics in the next month.

#4: Check your URL click-throughs

When you share a link on Twitter, you probably use a web address (URL) shortener to save space. Most of these services provide statistics about each shortened link. You can use these numbers to see which links people clicked most often. These are the topics that captured their interest.

The popular URL shortener services include Bit.ly, Goo.gl, Tiny URL, Cli.gs and Is.gd:

You can collect, organize, shorten and share links.

HootSuite, the popular Twitter client (software that lets you use Twitter with additional features), provides two URL shorteners with statistics and detailed reports.

Users can now choose between two flavors of links—one with a social bar and one without.

The statistics on these services show you the number of times someone clicked through each link. Use this information to determine the most popular links. Group your links into topics or categories and get a total number of click-throughs by topic.

An example of Bit.ly statistics for a blog post about Cherry Street Coffee House.

Tip: Twitter.com uses its own shortening service, http://t.co, which doesn’t provide any statistics. You can use another service to shorten URLs before you paste them into Twitter if you want to get click statistics.

#5: Check your Facebook engagement

Facebook Insights provides details for page administrators about how users interact with their business page. It’s easy to see which status updates received the most feedback and interaction.

To display the interaction details for the previous month:

1. Display your Facebook business page.
2. Click View Insights (right column).
   

   Click View Insights to display the page administrator's statistics.

3. Locate the Interactions graph in the bottom half of the page.
4. Click See Details.
   

   Click See Details to get information about individual status updates.

Facebook displays the interaction details for the previous month.

The chart provides detailed information about your status updates and how your community interacted with each one.

Use the detailed information to find the popularity of each status update.

• The top graph provides the total count of likes and comments for each day of the month.
• The middle chart provides details about individual posts. Click on the column headings to sort the data by column.

Group your status updates into topics or categories. Talk more about the topics that get the most likes and comments.

#6: Ask Facebook questions

The Facebook Questions feature makes it easy for you to ask questions to anyone in your online community.

Before you start, write out your question with multiple-choice answers. Each community member must choose one answer to your question.

1. Display your Facebook business page.
2. Click Question.
   

   Click Question to start creating your Facebook Question post.

3. Facebook displays a blank question form.
   

   The Facebook Question form before you type any information.

4. Type your question.
5. Click Add Poll Options.
   

   The Facebook Question form before you add the poll options.

   Facebook adds blank poll options to the question form.

6. Type each multiple-choice option to answer your question. Facebook automatically adds blank options as you type.
   

   Complete the question options and click Ask Question.

   Tip: Leave the check for “Allow anyone to add options” so your community can add options you did not consider.

7. Click Ask Question. Facebook posts your question on your wall and distributes it to the news feed of people who like your page.
   

   An example Facebook question on a business page wall.

#7: Check Twitter favorites

Twitter’s Favorites feature lets you mark a tweet in your timeline that you like or want to be able to find again.

You can use Favstar to find which of your tweets people have marked as favorites. This gives you insight into which topics resonate with the people who follow you.

To review your tweets marked as favorites by other people:

1. Display Favstar.fm.
2. Click Sign In With Twitter.
   

   The Favstar front page before you sign in.

   Favstar displays the Twitter sign-in page.

3. Click Sign in Now.
   

   Twitter requires you to sign in and authorize Favstar before Favstar can find your tweets marked as favorites.

   Favstar takes you to Twitter.com.

4. Click Authorize app.
   

   Twitter explains what Favstar can and cannot do after you authorize it for your account.

   Twitter authorizes Favstar to look for people who marked your tweets as favorites and displays your customized Favstar page.

5. Click My Tweets.
   

   Click on the My Tweets button here.

   

   Favstar displays your tweets marked as favorites with the most recent on top.

Scroll through your most recent tweets. Group them into topics or categories. Calculate a total favorite count for each category. Talk more about the topics that get the most favorites.

#8: Check your email newsletter click-throughs

If your business has an email newsletter, it’s another great resource for tapping into what people really want to hear from you.

There are many useful email services such as AWeber, Constant Contact and Mail Chimp. While they offer slightly different services, they all let you track the clicks from your newsletter to your website or blog.

An example report from AWeber showing the links clicked in an email newsletter.

Reviewing the most clicked-through links gives you insight into what people found the most interesting in your newsletter. Talk more about the topics represented by your most popular links.

It’s Your Turn

What do you think? What strategies does your business use to get inside the head of your community members? Has your research provided you with surprising results? Share your experience in the comments box below.

As online publishing platforms and social networks have exploded in popularity, there is a new need to aggregate and search the dynamic “real-time” web.

New platforms hold much promise for marketers who want to understand trends and customer problems in real time. In this article I review three of the top real-time search engines (in no particular order), and each has a unique profile that fits certain use cases particularly well.

#1: OneRiot

OneRiot is the largest real-time web search engine today. It aggregates information about popular topics from Twitter and other social media sites.

OneRiot consolidates all these articles into one headline that you can click that leads you to a list of articles associated with a topic. This is a great way to see multiple articles on one topic all at once and in real time.

Instead of having to search different news sites looking for a hot topic, users can access OneRiot’s aggregated real-time information on the topic. Also, OneRiot does a good job of blending hot topics from different spheres. It has a balanced mix of entertainment news and hard news, but seems to concentrate more on entertainment news.

OneRiot has a bar on the right side of the page that breaks common topics into categories. If you’re looking for the latest news on trends or culture, politics or technology, you can easily find it.

Though OneRiot focuses on news organization sources and provides more reliable information, it lacks the personal touch from integrating commentary from individuals into the feed. This eliminates how the public is reacting to the news. OneRiot is great for lists of news articles related to the topic, but it’s important to get the public’s take on these articles as well.

The best way to use OneRiot for online marketing would be to use its search results about important topics. You could give your audience up-to-date information aggregated from multiple social networks. For instance, if you sell cars, linking to the OneRiot results page with the latest information about models you sell could be a great way to display feedback for people who own your cars.

By going to OneRiot, you can quickly see what the most frequently posted information is at the moment. Overall, OneRiot has the potential to be a great source for generating organic leads.

OneRiot’s real-time results display information about the first person to tweet a story, up-to-date news coverage and social media commentary on those news items.

#2: Collecta

Collecta has more of a mainstream U.S. and international news focus, and does not offer the entertainment and lifestyle content that OneRiot integrates into its results. As a result, Collecta is a great source for people who want important news stories and like to view several sources to understand the breadth of angles on a topic.

The main page displays a general headline for each topic and then three suggested articles related to the topic. This makes it easy to read and gives it a professional, news-style approach. Also, Collecta does a great job of gathering recent social media updates from several sites such as WordPress, Digg and niche blogs; whereas OneRiot seems to pull most of its content from Twitter.

Collecta aggregates multiple sources and displays them based on recentness. There is the option to filter results based on the sources of data you want to include in the results.

Though Collecta does a good job at pulling information from multiple sources, its user interface makes it somewhat difficult to see the information it’s pulling from Twitter and other social media sites. The first suggested article on the homepage is usually an article related to a popular topic, but the next two subheadlines are the newsfeeds for the various social media sites discussing the topic.

The best way to use Collecta for online marketing would be to scan a variety of social media sites updated with the latest information on your business and industry within seconds. Collecta maintains a newsfeed that is updated by the second with several personal and professional social media accounts listed. This is a great way for marketers to research how the public is responding to a topic in real time.

#3: 48ers

48ers focuses more on the collective reactions of individuals to news events in real time. The site is great if you’re searching for keywords and want to see what people are discussing about a certain topic. For example, during the eggs recall you could enter a search for “eggs” and see the discussion on all social media sites about eggs.

The tradeoff here is that if you aren’t aware of a particular topic, you don’t know to search for it to explore it further. Twitter and Google have both overcome this problem by adding trending results and searches. The main page of 48ers is set up almost like Google where you type in one word and review the results. The difference is that 48ers results are social media results, not news articles or irrelevant articles about eggs from last year.

This is a great source for viewing the most up-to-date information on a particular topic, but it isn’t great if you don’t know what everyone is already talking about. OneRiot and Collecta are superior to 48ers in this respect because they offer the functionality of 48ers while also offering suggested hot topics.

48ers has a more streamlined interface than either Collecta or OneRiot, but it also integrates multiple data sources and offers the ability to filter results based on source.

The best way to use this site for online marketing is to analyze a larger number of social media results on a particular topic and discover brand mentions or industry discussions. Results are being pulled by the second and you have a lot more content to work with compared to the suggested social media results from OneRiot and Collecta.

The Final Word

All three profiled real-time search engines offer benefits, and it’s not clear who will plug the holes in their service first and offer the most compelling real-time search offering.

These independent companies are also competing with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other larger companies that are offering some version of real-time search and actively seeking to improve them.

Have you used real-time search engines? Do you think they hold promise? Let me know your thoughts in the box below.

Here are seven powerful blog posting habits:

Tip #1: Clear Targeting

The first rule for creating effective content for your business blog is to completely understand why you’re blogging. Have a thorough understanding of your ideal reader’s (your customer’s) profile and of your core message as it relates to your business. If you have a really clear idea about who you’re writing for, it’s going to be easier to write. Your blog posts will be on target and on purpose. You won’t be meandering off into subjects that are irrelevant to your audience.

Tip# 2: Know What Your Readers Want

Always write with your reader in mind. Write as if you are answering the question “what’s in it for them?” Your readers are asking themselves all the time whether this blog is worth their time to read. You’re more likely to keep them interested if you’re “walking in their shoes.” Address your readers’ major issues and concerns. If you don’t know what they are, ask.

Tip #3: Edit Often

So many blog posts start off with, “The other day, I was thinking about…” or “You know, summer’s almost over and….” A blog post is not an essay and it’s not poetry. Get to the point right away. Follow the rule of KISS = Keep It Simple, Sugar! (or Keep It Short and Sweet). That means you can actually write less.

Write short, declarative sentences and omit all unnecessary words. This means read and reread your posts before you publish. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t been trained as a journalist or taken a lot of writing classes. If you can write an email, you can write a blog post. However, your blog writing will improve when you reread before publishing to be sure you have taken out all unnecessary words.

After you click the ‘publish’ button, read your post again. Often this is when you will catch typos or grammatical errors you didn’t see before. Show respect for your readers by having clean copy. It doesn’t take much for readers to abandon your blog; some might unsubscribe simply because your spelling is sloppy. In the online world, your words are all you’ve got.

Tip #4: Create Keyword-Rich Headlines

Write compelling headlines by using strategic keywords that are relevant to your topic. Keywords are often touted as gold by search engine optimization experts who want to charge you an arm and a leg for their services. But let’s make a complicated issue simple.

Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal reader. If this reader was searching Google for information or solutions to a problem, would she find you? Make a list of all the words or phrases she might use to search for you, your business, and your solutions. Those are the keywords and key phrases that you want to use frequently on your blog. When you write a headline for your blog post, use these keywords. This alerts the search engines as well as your reader about what’s important in your post.

For an in-depth discussion on writing effective blog post headlines, read Chris Garrett’s post on How to Create Headlines that Go Viral with Social Media.

Doing keyword research from time to time will help you stay on top of what your prospects want. You’ll find out exactly how readers are looking for the information you’ve got. Use the free keyword suggestion tool at WordTracker to make this simple. Your post headlines can also make it easy—or difficult—for people to find the information they want. Headlines should be as descriptive as possible. Don’t be vague. You can be cute (but not too cute), as long as what you’re putting in the headline clarifies what you’re really writing about or what the reader is going to learn.

Remember, it’s all about your readers. It’s about helping them find and use the content you are giving them. Blogging is going to be a fruitless exercise if your readers can’t get what they want out of reading your blog.

Tip #5: Write Great First Sentences

Write an optimized first paragraph using the same keywords you used in your post headline. Make your point right away rather than leading into it. Use clear keywords in the first sentence of the first paragraph, and then summarize them again before you close your blog post. Always close by asking readers for their comments.

Tip #6: Keep it Short and Spacey

When writing, keep paragraphs short. They should be one or two sentences at most, and then break for a new paragraph. White space is your friend. Sometimes just one sentence can be as effective as a paragraph. You want lots of white space between paragraphs on your blog.

Remember, most readers are in a hurry. Text on a computer screen is also harder to read than text on paper. You want to make it as easy as possible for your readers to grasp your message quickly.

Tip #7: Use Bulleted Lists

Use bullet points and lists as often as possible. This makes your post easy:

• To read
• To scan
• To understand
• To remember

Research shows that people prefer things to be easily digestible and chunked down for them. It’s easier for them to remember your message if you’ve given it to them in a list of three to five items. Some online writing experts also recommend keeping lists to an odd number of bullet points, but the important part is to use lists whenever you can.

There are many ways to ensure you have great blog posts. These seven tips provide a good starting point and checklist to help you stay on track and create content your readers will devour and that will move them to action.

What other tips would you add to this list to write better blog posts? Share your best blogging tips in the comments below.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/ / CC BY 2.0