Finding an Audience

Where does one find an audience? I’ve been pondering this point, on and off, for over a year now, as it relates to this blog. As more and more blogs creep up, and some are made rather famous, I have begun to consider such things as readership and success. The very nature of a blog is akin to an underground or a grass-roots movement: rather than mainstream a blog is vulgar. In newspapers, journals, books, and other media, a person has to be syndicated and even marketed in order to gain the immediate attention of the audience at large; blogs seem to take a “if you write it, they will come” approach to things, at least I have. I think I can safely say that has not been the case.

One of the things about a blog that I find rather difficult is the lack of a clear identification of a reader. I can watch the logs my web server spits out and I can see how many different requests are made for a page, and I can pull out some stats, but that does not tell me how many people are actually reading those pages. I can make some guesses but in many cases those guesses are wild and unsubstantiated. The only real way to know if you have any readers is to monitor your feedback; if a person leaves a comment or sends an email regarding a post then I can know someone has read what I wrote, beyond that I can never be truly sure.

Another thing I have been thinking about is how to measure success with my blog. This is the real issue, for one can consider themselves successful if they reach 10,000 readers, or it may be the condition is a certain amount of weekly feedback, for that matter a blogger might consider himself successful if he writes a certain number of entries each week, regardless of who actually reads or comments. In my case I know I am not as interested in the amount of readers as I am in the feedback. My blog is rather personal, making it not for general consumption. If you don’t know me, or aren’t trying to get to know me, most of what I have to say is largely irrelevant to your life. Upon occasion I will post a question or discuss an issue that befits a wider audience, but generally this is a blog about me.

I would consider this blog a success if two things happened. The first would be to get 80% of my family and friends to read it. This will be hard as my family is not on the cusp of technology, and I will probably have a hard time explaining the concept of a news aggregator. Still, it is a goal. The second thing is to increase the amount of feedback I get, and this is a goal I feel is entirely out of my control. The only way I can see to help this happen is to write more interesting (or controversial?) posts and gain a wider audience who is more likely to engage in some feedback activities.

How does one find and audience? How does one measure success? These are questions I could probably ponder for years and never really find a concrete answer. You are more than welcome to try.