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