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Turning Up the Volume with Relevant Questions: 5 Questions to Engage the Audience

One of the most important things about reading blogs is the extended power of opinion, especially when it differs from my own.  Most often when I read something that really gets my blood boiling or challenges my thinking, I never forget it. I often even meditate on it for days.  Sometimes it colors the mood for the rest of the week. I don't mean to give it that much power, but sometimes the power it has over me is relevant. It is a teachable moment, a moment of utmost importance in the greater shaping of my character. I like these moments because they make me double down and get a little bit more serious about my personal brand. Often times, I find myself returning to the same place for the next saga in non-conventional thinking outside of the box.
Turning up the volume with challenging and non~traditional content can be a boost to your readers, depending on how well you deliver it. I have come up with five questions that will help you develop your content in a way that will be non-confrontational, and yet very effective in delivering a message that intrigues, satisfies, and compels your readers to think.
These five questions are:

1. What influences the way you view this topic? This will be the ground work for laying a foundation that makes you reader friendly and intelligible.
2. What is single most important thing do you find about this discussion? There are moments around every subject that each of us connect with more strongly than others. What are they? Why are they so powerful? Which buttons were pushed for you and Why?
3. If you don't have enough information, how would you go about determining the best position on this?
4. Where do your values lie on this subject? Values make our work significant. Values make our ideas coherent and effective.  What are yours and where did you put them in relation to your content? Can your readers connect with them, understand them, and determine them from what you have written? If so, how? If not, how come?
5. Do you think your personal beliefs will serve you well over time? This one is a kicker! When delivering thought provoking content that creates your following audience, it is important to determine whether or not your beliefs about the subject will serve you well over time. As a thought leader, if you cannot take a position and and stand on it, you will lose credibility with your reader, and with your brand.  Figure this out, and work from within it.

Discovering hiccups in our thinking can move us further into creativity by broadening our worldview, and point of view. Here are five questions for uncovering your hiccups!
1. Who am I in relationship to this thought. Who is my reader?
2. What am I saying, and is what I am saying align with what I believe?
3. When I say this, am I willing to define myself by it?
4. Is where I stand on this topic today a place I would be comfortable to stand on tomorrow, next week, or five years from now?
5. Why am I writing this? Do I believe it, am I afraid of it, am I changed by it, is it a sensitive spot in my being?

I think content is so powerful! Don't be afraid of it! Use it wisely, use it carefully, and use it courageously and you just might develop a tight little niche that makes a great big splash....