So, if I write a bazillion good posts but nobody ever sees them, I’ve certainly wasted something, right? Maybe it did have it’s purposes, but I’ve realized that I really need to think about audience1.
Who is my audience right now? My friends and family.
How will that audience change? Word of mouth.
Why will people talk? Because I’m writing good things for my audience (or will).
Sure, it’s not bad to write about stuff because you like it and nobody cares. It just doesn’t do that much (except maybe make you happy). I personally would like to have some other people reading what I write and caring about it.
So I must write for the audience I have. That’s the only way to change and grow our audience it seems to me.
- It should be noted I learned about this whole audience thing in Rhetoric class with Mr. Tollefson; we went through Aristotle’s Rhetoric and that’s something he talks about. So, at least if I want to be persuasive, I should consider audience. I think its also very much an element of other types of writing, though. ↩
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I like this post.
I don’t know. I use my blog as as an outlet for thing I really love but can’t talk to my friends about because they don’t share those interests. I think that if you promote your blog, eventually people with the same interests will take notice and leave their two cents.
But you’re right it is not a bad thing to consider the people who are already reading it. :)
Yeah, I don’t know, I felt kind of weird about this post. I guess it’s about building an audience. Which yes, I want one, but no, it’s not essential. We really will write about most anything here, sans turning the blog into a personal diary.
But, I don’t really want that just to be the point of writing here, I guess. I mean, I want people to read it, that’s sort of the point of having a blog, but… read my post from a bit back about why I write a blog. I have a sequel in the works, too, considering a couple other reasons.
I probably just rambled on and wasn’t very clear there. Sorry.
[...] and Nathaniel’s post on audience have got me thinking and somewhat re-working my approach. In fact, this is an attempt at a short to [...]