Why do my readers repeatedly come back to read my stories?

How to increase the number of your loyal readers?

I used to work in the food and beverage industry, working as a marketing manager for a Japanese restaurant chain when I lived in Hong Kong. My title — ‘Marketing Manager’ — sounds very professional. However, it was not because I had been experienced as a marketer, but because they had a serious shortage of labour. My job was not only marketing. I also had to do other kinds of things, such as creating new menus, training the workers, managing the managers of branch restaurants. Overall, I had to bring many people to dine in our restaurants to make a profit for our shareholders.

Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Restaurants are everywhere. Amongst those rivals, how could you make your restaurant popular? What should we do to compete with other restaurants?

People come and go. Restaurants have lots of walk-in and one-time-visit customers. Still, you need to have regular guests to stabilise your sales. If you have certain numbers of frequent customers, it will be easy to estimate how much your shop can earn. At the same time, you don’t have to pay extra costs to promote your shop or give special offers.

So how can you increase the number of your fans? It depends on which kind of persona you are targeting of course. However, I think the important thing is that you have to provide added value which people cannot get anywhere else.

I am talking about restaurants. Therefore, you have to provide decent food; properly cooked, delicious, well-decorated dishes with high-quality service. That is the minimum. All of the restaurants are trying to do so. Every single marketer in this industry knows this principle very well anywhere in the world.

So, what is the ‘added value?’

People eat to live. We need to absorb nourishment from the food that we eat to generate energy to work tomorrow, as well as today. We cannot live healthily without a nutrition supply.

However, are we always happy as long as we can have three meals every day?

We need to eat to live, but our lives can be happier if we feel the joy or fun of eating. From my experience, I had my customers coming back to the restaurant when they could enjoy the connection as being human and share a ‘fun’ time.

Even if you can provide delicious food with decent service, people wouldn’t say, “Let’s go to that restaurant again!” unless they enjoyed the time in your restaurant. (The guests can possibly come back to the restaurant because there is nowhere else to go in the region, but this type of restaurant will close down as soon as they have stronger competitors)

Now I have an impression that it may be the same thing for writers and readers.

Easy to understand, providing useful information, proper grammar; it’s not enough. There are lots of writers like that everywhere.

Why do your readers come back to your writings? It’s because there is something more than just ‘nutrition’?

When I started writing as a freelance writer I had a chance to write a ‘mini e-book’ (in Japanese). It was a story written based on my experience.

I wrote the introduction part after collecting data and information from other websites. Then, the client asked me to delete all of that part. He said;

“This introduction is the writing which anybody else could write. I would like you to write something that only you can write.”

I was good at making patchworks of information and writing up a smart-looking ‘article.’ So, it was a new challenge for me; to write something that nobody else can write. It was a good experience for me.

I think, that is it.

Write something that nobody else could write. Write in a manner that nobody else could write. I don’t want to say that it’s ‘originality,’ which sounds too cheap.

Something that your competitor cannot provide is the value of your writing. It might be a sense of humour, creativity, inspiration or deeper insights which make your readers giggle and move their emotions.

If my readers not only absorb the information from my stories, but they can also enjoy the ‘taste’, my work will pay off.

“Her stories always have something fun, moving, that’s why I want to read them again.”

I want to be this type of writer.

My books are available on Amazon!