Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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Audience Is Everything – Do You Know Your Audience as Well as You Know Yourself?

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Content Isn’t Audience, But You Knew That

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Almost a year ago I gave a keynote at the EdNet conference, where I met with many old and new friends in the business of publishing. I ended up in the most interesting conversation with one in particular, a man who was connected to me from years ago when publishing in print was my life. We got to talking about how publishers were facing the need to move from shelves of books to information that moved across the Internet.

He said, “I love books. I love seeing them stand on the shelves. I understand why everyone wants to keep making them. But I also see why we need to move our thoughts and ideas to PDFs.”

First I winced, then I smiled, then I laughed.

“What?” was what he said.

“You’re thinking of the paper web. A PDF is just a digital form of a paper document and almost as much of a pain. It’s not really part of the web. It’s a gated and separate location. I have to leave where I am to click over to where it is, wait for it to load, and then I’m stuck inside it. Switching back and forth takes for ever. It’s like asking me to go to the corner to buy a book.”

“Ah, I suppose I should be saying content.”

“Content on a blog or a website is easier to access. Yep that’s for sure, but content isn’t the end.”

I asked him to tilt his head to consider this question, “How many books sit on library and living room shelves that were chosen with great intentions then never read?”

If your goal is to sell books or to sell content, then keep your eye on them.
That will happen is that you’ll grow your sales and find ways to get more books in peoples hands and more visitors to your content.

But all of the thoughts that writers worried to express and the reams of ideas that could be changing the world may become good piled in the good intentions of book shelves and feed readers — parts of collections that never get read.

The book, the pdf, the website, the content isn’t the destination the audience is.

Know Your Audience as Well As You Know Yourself

An airplane traveling from New York to Chicago is off course 98% of the time. Still it gets there. Why? The pilot is always adjusting with his destination in mind. Do you listen to your best audience and tweak what you do to keep your content in their sweet spot?

The audience is your destination. If you’re writing for yourself, you’ll head in a different direction than if you’re writing for people learning what you know. It may sound obvious, but it’s still worth stating — if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not going to get there. If you think you’re going everywhere or writing for everyone, you’ll end up nowhere.

Too often authors and bloggers don’t think through who their readers will be. As a result a blog post or a book title gets our attention but doesn’t keep us interested. Don’t write for the fad or the lastest content trend, write for the people who are exploring the idea behind it. Then when they change their direction, you can change yours with them because your relationship is with the audience not with the content.

Have you really thought through who your audience is? Here are some questions to help you do that. Take a shot at answering them all in one sentence.

Write down your audience profile. Revisit it often. Adjust it as your readership grows and you get to know them better.
Use it to guide what you choose to write.

Now that you’ve got a clear destination. Other decisions get a whole lot easier.

Do you look at what you offer from the audience view? How does that work for you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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The Old Neighborhood Bars and Blogs

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Chicago is a city of neighborhoods and neighborhood bars. Every neighborhood has a name. Every neighborhood bar is like Cheers. People go there because the folks inside, especially the bartender, knows their name. Names are important. They’re the first words we know about ourselves and each other.

When I think of my favorite neighborhood bar, I can’t separate it from the folks who are always there. Over time the people grow and change. Some days all one bartender can talk about is his camera. Other days all he can think of is sports. That’s who he is. That’s part of what makes him interesting.

We have personal jokes. He knows some of what I like. I can tune in. I can have my beverage and hardly talk to him at all. There was a time when he was not a happy guy. He’s a friend. You ride it out. Everyone has phases. . . .

It’s a well-known fact that I think of my blog as my father thought of his saloon. But in one way it can’t be the same. Saloons don’t have RSS feeds.

What difference does that make?

When I change focus for a while — you might do it too, or you might not, but we know I always will — readers can decide the new direction is not their “beverage of choice.” That’s cool. That’s only right. I do the same thing — with the blogs I read, not with the people in my life.

In life when my friends shift gears, I often come back to see what they’re doing later. Most often what I find is that we have plenty in common still. Yet when a blog has changed direction, it’s felt more permanent. I hardly ever go back. I’m rethinking that today.

Over the next week or two, I’m going to check in on blogs I used to read. It will be like visiting the old neighborhood bar to see who’s still there. I’m looking forward to it.

I think I might find some nice surprises. What do you think? What’s your experience? Do you ever go back to the old neighborhood?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! Liz understands how people think.

Open Mic 7pm Chgo Time: Let’s Talk About Stress . . .

Filed Under Audience, Comments, Community, Marketing, Outside the Box, SOB Business, Successful Blog | 3 Comments

Yes the Mic Will Be on Tonight

Join Us Tonight

With Ari Garber, Special Guest

Stress. Gosh don’t I know it? I’ve got enough of it in my life. But then, you do too. Who doesn’t?

So, I asked a friend who knows a bit about the stress experience — he was a full-time trader and now he works in a firm run by four partners (all Ph.D.s). He and I thought that it’s time we talked about stress. Maybe we have ideas on how to have less stress and more fun.

I introduce, my friend, Ari.

Liz,
Thanks for inviting me to submit the open mic topic for this week. I chose stress as the discussion starter, how it comes about, how we combat it, how we avoid it.

A few basic thoughts to throw to everyone, from my experiences and random mental meanderings.

Stress is caused by our interpretation and attitude towards the circumstances we find ourselves in. Attitude colors interpretation, it prevents us from coping at optimal levels, it can solve 90% of issues by allowing the freedom to creatively address what otherwise might be viewed as a crisis.

Stress is largely the result of our own decisions. We place ourselves in circumstances. We choose to care. We lose self awareness in the moment, and react emotionally. Our attitudes in dealing with the consequences of our decisions then come into play.

Stress is also directly keyed to physiology as well as the psychology. Health is a key factor. If my diet is off, if I have not been to the gym to release some energy in a positive fashion; my stress levels rise. I need to take care of my body as a baseline, to then be able to take care of my brain.

Stress is subjective, and amazingly can be adapted to in some fashion. I used to be a full-time trader, moving, winning, and losing most peoples salary in seconds, hundreds of times a day. Stress for me today is too many things on my to-do list, and too many people wanting to chat with me while I am attempting to accomplish my own goals.

Oddly, doctors say that the stress I feel today is just as negative to my wellbeing as the stress back then.

I cannot be happy without some stress in my life. Without some pressure, I am not producing at my optimal levels.

What causes you stress?

  • What specific little tricks and methodologies do you use to combat it?
  • Do you focus on psychological, physiological, or holistic approaches to deal with it?
  • Do you self medicate? Do you have prescribed medication? I didn’t want to be the alcoholic cliche of a trader, but the heroin was fun… (That was a joke.)
  • Is stress just the luxury of those who have time to dwell on it?

I look forward to hearing everyone’s ideas.

Thanks again Liz for making this available to all,

ALG

Oh, and bring a link about how you deal with stress to share, if you have one.

The rules are simple — be nice.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Metrics: Who Are We and How Are We Feeling?

Filed Under Audience, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 4 Comments

Information as Art: A New Look at Stats

In August of 2005, the We Feel Fine project began harvesting data from weblogs. In this metrics of feelings, the system scans the Internet every few minutes for new blog posts sentences that include the phrases, I feel and I am feeling. Whenever possible it also gathers from the blog additional identifying data: the age, gender, and geographical location of the blogger who wrote the sentence.

The database now contains several million human feelings and grows by 15,000+ daily.

Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar have organized the data into “six movements” — each artful, entrancing, and compelling in it’s presentation of humanity. They describe We Feel Fine in this way.

The interface to this data is a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. The particles’ properties – color, size, shape, opacity – indicate the nature of the feeling inside, and any particle can be clicked to reveal the full sentence or photograph it contains. . . .

At its core, We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what’s on our blogs, what’s in our hearts, what’s in our minds.

Click the image below to go explore how we’re feeling.

We Feel Fine 55

The people who wrote these sentences are our readers. They are also us.

What do you think of how we’re feeling today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Writing for That One Most Important Reader: That Curious, Clever, Intelligent Individual

Filed Under Audience, Basics, Successful Blog, Writing | 13 Comments

How Do You Write for Everyone?

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How easy it is to get overwhelmed when I think of how individual each reader is. How can I possibly meet what they expect, when each of them comes with a different goal, a different history, and a different mind set?

Whatever the subject I choose to write on, I can be sure that some readers will know it far better than I do and some will have never encountered it before. How do I bridge gap to write a piece that meets learners on solid ground while engaging readers with significant expertise? These writing questions are central for anyone who writes for an audience of more than two people they already know.

How do I answer these questions for myself and for others?

I give them the answer Big Roy discovered.
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