Audience is Your Destination

Filed Under Audience, Blog Review, Marketing, Writing | 6 Comments

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.

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 already 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.

Too often bloggers don’t think through who their readers will be. As a result their blogs are all over the place. Ever loved a blog one day and didn’t know why you went there the next? That’s a blogger who hasn’t picked an audience.

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.

Who am I writing for?
How are they like me and how are they not?
Why do they read blogs like mine?

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

Now that you’ve got a clear destination. Other decisions get a whole lot easier. In my next post we’ll put this theory in practice.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blog Review Checklist

Filed Under Audience, Blog Review, Checklists, Successful Blog, Survival Kit | 41 Comments

When was the last time you looked at your blog the way your readers do? If you write only for yourself, you look at it that way every day. . . . You are your audience. You’re done.

The rest of us are looking for an audience a little bit larger than one.

Humans have unconscious tendencies. We do lots of the things we like to do and ignore the things we don’t. This makes for a blog that looks great from our point of view, but can leave gaping holes–holes that our readers see, holes they probably won’t tell us about.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s okay to leave things out, as long as we know that we’re doing it. Not every blog has to do everything. In fact, most really shouldn’t. But walking around with a hole in your blog could be embarassing, especially if you don’t know about it.

Here’s a checklist to make sure your blog’s (ahem) vital parts are covered.

Blog Review Checklist

Audience: What words would your readers use to describe your blog? What do they like best about your site?
Purpose: What is the purpose of your blog? Why does it exist? Is the purpose stated plainly where your readers can see it? How well does your blog meet that purpose?
Content: How well does the content support the purpose? Is the content readable, interesting, accurate, entertaining, and appropriate for your audience?
Design: How well does the look of the blog communicate the kind of blog it is? Is navigation easy and intutive? Do items flow naturally from the first to the next? Do the color palette, image, and type choices support the content or call attention away from it?
Posts: Do you post on a consistent schedule the information readers came to find? Do your posts reflect the unique purpose and style of your blog? Do they offer variety and interest within your blog’s purpose and theme?
Comments: Do you read and respond to comments to form a sense of community? Consider which posts get most comments and which get none. How does that effect the topics that you’re posting on?
Technical Issues: Have you checked lately to see whether and how fast your blog loads in other browsers? Have you overdone the use of plug-ins and gadgets, making the experience more confusing than fun?
Writing: Is your writing clear and respectful of your readers? Have you established a writing voice that lets readers know who you really are? Is the blog essentially free of errors in grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation?
Organization: Have you set up your categories to draw readers into your backlist? Do you feature “Golden Oldies” that new readers would have interest in? Do you name your Categories things that readers can understand?
Marketing: What are you doing to let readers know that you are here? Are you listed in the right directories? Do you read and comment on other blogs within your readership? Have you included feeds?

Sure it takes time to review your blog. It takes even more to make tweaks and changes. But you invest so much time blogging. Doesn’t it seem worth it?

A rule of good publishing says, Spare the reader not yourself. In the end, you won’t be sorry.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

WordPress or Movable Type

Filed Under Blog Review, Guest Writer, Successful Blog, Tips, Tools | 4 Comments

From: D. Keith Robinson

Discussion: WordPress vs. Movabletype

It’s an ongoing issue. As two of the biggest players, who often go head to head, it’ll be debated until the cows come home. What platform is better? Movable Type or WordPress. There are some good points being made on both sides over at Darren’s Blog and it’s an interesting discussion to follow as it can really show you the pros and cons of these two popular blogging platforms.

For my part, I don’t have a preference. They both do some things well, and others not so well.

Blogdrive Mini-Review

Filed Under Blog Review, Guest Writer, Tips, Tools | Leave a Comment

From: D. Keith Robinson

I’m the first to admit I’ve not had experience with every blogging platform out there, and I recognize that for every platform there are some bloggers who are a perfect fit. One such platform is Blog Drive—a free blogging platform in the same vein as Blogger. I admittedly don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard some good things. So, when a reader of mine, Christine mentioned how she really liked Blog Drive, I invited her to give a quick write-up.

Here is what Chistine had to say:

Blogdrive is free, easy to set up and use in just a few minutes. Free blogs have one banner ad at the top of the page. There are several nice looking templates to choose from, but one of my favorite things is that you have total freedom to create any HTML and CSS you want to (or javascript…or anything that can go on any web page), and just plug in the appropriate blogdrive tags in the appropriate places. It’s all installed in one place, one .txt file, like any other web page. Easy and flexible.

Other features include: tagboards, comments, permalink, calendar archive, image hosting (up to 30 images and 1mb on free blogs), multiple authors per blog (unlimited), multiple blogs per user (up to ten free blogs per member), entry notification email anyone can sign up for, xml and atom feeds, “contact form” lets people send you email without knowing your email address, easily change your url anytime you want to, email blog entries, easy to add images of any size anywhere in your entries, use html to write your entries if you want to or use the wysiwyg editor. There’;s also a profile page, with much freedom for adding content, not predefined like some are.

These are the features of free blogs, many more options for upgrades. Of course, you have the option of using or not using any of these features. They are always adding new stuff.

Sounds like a pretty full featured and flexible free platform. Worth giving a try.

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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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From: D. Keith Robinson

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