This week: Who Is Your Audience? Edited by: Jayne  
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| Hey, I'm back! For the next few issues, we'll be delving into the world of contest creation and overhaul. If your contest is ready for a change, your entries are declining or your prompts feel stale, this is the series for you! It's time to flip the script and look at things from a new perspective. |
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Is your contest or activity serving the community as best it can, or is it serving you? I’m not saying that to be mean or judgmental. It’s a mistake many people make, and not just in the writing community here at WdC. One of the major reasons brands fail or stall is because they focus on what they want to offer instead of what the customer needs. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, Jayne, you weirdo, how does brand failure apply to my writing contest?
Well, your contest IS your brand. You developed it (or maybe inherited it). You shaped and moulded it into what you wanted to offer the site. When was the last time you looked at it from the other side? The customer’s side?
If that sounds a little too capitalist to your artist heart, don’t fret. I understand it’s not a direct translation from corporations attracting consumers to spend their hard-earned dollars and getting people to enter your contests. But think about it this way: you may not be asking them to spend their money, but you are asking them to spend their time.
And just like dollars, for most people, time is finite. Energy units can only be allocated so many places.
Of course, this doesn’t mean writers don’t want to be challenged. In fact, I propose the opposite – your audience wants a reasonable degree of difficulty. A lot of writers don’t mind being slightly frustrated as they formulate a story or poem. It’s how we learn and grow and make better things.
But most writers don’t want to be frustrated by the contest itself. They don’t want to spend their time trying to figure out what it’s about, or what you want from them. Sure, keep them on their toes – but don’t confuse them. If you have to bombard them with 6 paragraphs of information to get your point across, you might want to reconsider if the vision in your head is translating to the page.
Reworking (or starting) a contest isn’t easy, but it also doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Over the next few issues, we’ll explore how to identify how you can get what you want (writers) by focusing on what they want – clarity, consistency, challenge and a call to action.
Most importantly, it’s about listening to your writers - or reaching out to them when their keyboards fall silent.
Part II: "Have I Made Myself Clear?"
Part III: "Solve Your Writer’s Problems"
Part IV: "Clean Up Your Copy"
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Contests & Activities: March 02, 2022 Issue [#11242]
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