Twenty- five Seven

Personally speaking

Recent Posts

  • Who is my target audience? 

    If I’m not writing for family then who am I writing for ?

     

    Image for my target audience
    In yet another attempt to be the perfect blogger, I actually followed Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. This 31 day challenge is a wonderful resource that is available for FREE. Unfortunately I muddled through for 8 years till I stumbled upon it.

    In my typical fashion, I couldn’t follow it through for 31 days BUT  I did come away with ONE  powerful insight from the podcast.

    • It is important to identify  your audience

    So I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and began to imagine what my target audience looks like.

    Quite frankly , if you are

    • Middle aged
    • Urban
    • Sociable
    • Interactive
    • Curious
    • Net savvy

    Then YOU are the person I’m writing for.

    In other words, I am writing mainly for women like me . Sadly, most women of my generation are too tired to take up yet another skill. They are happy to switch on the computer or use their smartphones to email, whatsapp and Facebook or FaceTime. Unlike the millennial babies , they are content with picking up the phone and having a long chat or going to the library and borrowing a book or flipping through the pages of a magazine.

    [Tweet “This doesn’t mean my content is gender or age specific.”]

    On the contrary, I’m always trying out new ideas , new techniques and different topics to appeal to a wider audience.

    Developing your blog is a balancing act between appeasing current readers and reaching out to new ones.

    Scribendi, How to Write a Blog
    Have you identified your target audience ?

    Do share your story on how you found your target audience

    Day 4 #blogboost , #UBC with #DailyChatter

  • #1 Mistake of a newbie blogger 

    But I went on

    image for #1 mistake
    Source – Pixabay

    Like most amateur bloggers I set up a blog that could be classified as a PERSONAL – random musings, the occasional reviews and some travel tales. After all, I didn’t have a business, nor did I have a skill or expertise that I could share . Besides , my motivation for blogging was to share the goings on in my life.

    However , despite my busy life, the posts were often hit and miss. Some  days the thoughts  flowed easily while on some days they just didn’t. They seemed stilted and forced . I found my draft folder growing with posts  unpublished simply because they didn’t sound so funny or amusing when I re-read them .

    That also explained why my audience of 10 remained static. My content was too specific. It had too many references that others couldn’t relate to, in-house jokes etc. It just wasn’t interesting enough for strangers to my life or me .

    #1 mistake of a newbie blogger

    [Tweet “Personal blogs are sometimes too personal and subjective to appeal to strangers”].

    I had to make my blog more general and objective to make it more appealing to a wider audience.

    Did I really imagine I was like Erma Bombeck , the best selling American author whose stories resonated in vastly different cultures ?

    I was Ms. Nobody from Nowhere  blogging on one of more than a million blogs in the blogosphere under an incongruous name like Penelope Potty Snooper !

    What ?????

    You heard right. I used to blog as Penelope Potty Snooper .

    But that’s another story and the perfect example of how very in-house centric my blog was .

    If I had to appeal to a larger audience, I needed to step out of my world and into the real world. I had to look outwards.

    [Tweet “A personal blog can only resonate across cultures if it addresses UNIVERSAL concerns.”]

    This is my #blogpost for Day3 of the # UBC and #DailyChatter

  • Starting out with baby steps

    Baby steps

    [Tweet “When my first born stepped out into the world, I stepped into the blogosphere.”]

    My first fledgling had flown the nest and was studying far away in Minnesota, in a world far removed from the one she had left behind. Instead of resorting to letters, I thought I would start a blog. One that would bring her cheer in her snow bound misery.

    I thought it would be fun to recount the happenings in my life – going to the fish market , meeting Mr. Bad Temper , lunching with my buddies, my squabble with the tradesmen , etc etc in a light, breezy way.

    And what’s more, everyone would be able to read my blog:

    • Members of my family who lived overseas.
    • My friends.
    • The world!

    [Tweet “I actually had visions of being a superstar publisher like iVillage .”]

    So I sat down on my computer and thought up clever lines. I exaggerated, embellished and sometimes was brutally frank. I imagined anyone reading it would have a hearty chuckle .

    Diligently I would log onto my computer early in the morning ( it was still yesterday evening in America) and bang away on the key board . A quick spell check and publish . My post was out in the world for all to see.

    Even my friends didn’t know I blogged!

    Alas! For several years I blogged and plodded in anonymity and isolation. No one bothered to read my posts. No one bothered to react with a simple tick in the box ( those days I blogged on Blogger )

    Occasionally a cousin would email a reaction but my friends? Most of them didn’t even have a computer at home!

    If anyone asked me what I did the whole day I’d say I blog. They would look at me blankly and say ” What’s that?”

    It was enough to make me want to give up

    Day 2 of #UBC and #DailyChatter

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