Who Do You Blog For?

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Earlier, I posed the question “What do you blog about?” in the context of refining your blog’s focus. Today, I planned to get you thinking about an answer to another question, “Why do you blog?”

But it dawns on me that, for most of us, the answer will be the same: we blog because we enjoy it. Whether it’s a way to make our thoughts and opinions more concrete, moving them from mindspace to cyberspace, or whether it’s a way to interact with other people, we blog because there is something within us that compels us to do so.

So it would be more illuminating question to ask this: “Who do you blog for?”

Obviously, there are several possible answers:

- I blog for myself.
- I blog for my family and friends.
- I blog for anyone who winds up on my site.
- I blog for the people who have been reading my site regularly.

How you answer that question has a dramatic impact on what your traffic’s going to look like 5 months, 12 months, or even 2 years down the road. It will also affect the money you can earn with your blog. (As I’ve said before, these things are intrinsically tied together!)

So let’s look at those different answers, and examine how they may be limiting us.

“I blog for myself.”

This is always such a fashionable answer. It’s pithy, isn’t it? It kind of has that rebel-with-a-cause ring to it. Problem is, if anyone truly blogged for themselves they’d realize that blogging is a much more expensive than, say, writing on scrap paper in pencil.

Blogging is a public performance. Delude yourself if you will, but the instant you signed up for a domain name and didn’t password-protect your blog you knew it had the potential to be in the spotlight. And, let’s face it, you wouldn’t have signed up for that domain if you hadn’t wanted a bit of spotlight on yourself in the first place.

The instant a complete and total stranger visited your site and you liked that fact you stopped blogging for yourself. And, as they say in some 12-step programs, the first step to getting better is admitting that fact.

I blog for my family and friends.

This is such a nice answer. Really, it is. You seem thoughtful, warm-hearted, kind, considerate and all those other Scout-worthy adjectives. Except for one thing: if friends and family were the only people you wanted reading your site you would’ve password protected it. (Rather than repeating myself, let me just encourage you to read the part above about the first step in getting better.)

I blog for anyone who winds up on my site.

Now THIS is where you’re ready to start thinking about blogging for the money.

Why’s that?

Well, as I’ve said so many times already, put yourself in the advertiser’s position. Why on earth would you spend $100 to advertise on a site where someone just blogs for themself? Or just for their 30 or so friends and family members?

If you’re blogging for anyone who winds up on your site you’re at least recognizing the two reasons people read blogs, which I’ve mentioned before:

1. For information; and/or
2. For entertainment.

Having realized that you’re blogging for anyone who winds up on your site leads to another important realization: you need to blog about things that will get people to visit. As a corollary, you also need to inform or entertain them so they keep coming back. That’s known as providing valuable content, folks.

I blog for the people who’ve been reading my site regularly.

This is an even better answer, since it recognizes that you do have an audience when you engage in the public performance of blogging. How you go about blogging for the people who’ve been reading your site — providing them with information and/or entertainment — will help you refine your blog focus, thus improving your traffic and profit.

The best answer: I blog for those reading my blog today as well as those who might wind up at my blog tomorrow so I can turn them into regular, returning readers.

Your job, as someone blogging for the money, is to be continually working at building a larger audience. Regular readers means regular traffic, people, and the only way to attract regular readers is to inform and/or entertain them.

Keep that in mind when you’re writing one short, hastily-written, unresearched and uninspiring entry after another just so you can make $7. Sure, today’s readers might put up with a slew of those, but what will tomorrow’s accidental visitor find when they visit your blog?

Will they find you’re blogging for them, providing information and/or entertainment that improves their lives?

Or will they find that you just traded their valuable time for a mere $7?

Who do you blog for?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Blog Better (Blogging 401). Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Tagged in: blogging | Building Traffic (Blogging 201) | paid blogging | problogging

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