Did you know there are controversies in blogging?
One of them is over who should read your blog.
Who is your target reader?
Who do you want to receive joy from your content?
You have two choices, the person in the mirror or everyone else.
Are you writing for yourself or your readers? Do you want to get satisfaction by writing your content, or do you want everyone else to get satisfaction from reading your content?
What is a Target Reader?
Target reader can be defined as who you want your audience to be. Who do you want to get empowerment from your blog?
After reading your blog, someone’s life should be better as a result.  Is that person you or someone else?
I believe you should strive to give satisfaction to your target reader.
[bctt tweet=”Your goal should be to help your audience, not yourself.” username=””]9 Reasons You Should Not Be Your Own Target Reader
- By helping your audience solve a problem, you will feel so rewarded that you will, in turn, get joy. My post What No One Tells You About… Blogging explains the joy I feel when people write to thank me for my blogging tips.
- Experts like Jon Morrow and Tom Watts advise you to write for other people, not yourself.
Brian Clark advises, “Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.”
As a blogger, everything that you do flows from understanding your audience and seeking to help them as much as possible.
- How to get blog traffic is often cited as the biggest challenge bloggers face. Not having traffic leads to discouragement and disillusionment with blogging. Blogs are left abandoned within a year. When other people like your content, your traffic rises which increases confidence and happiness.
- When your readers like your content, they are more likely to share your posts with their social media followers. This, in turn, leads to your blog traffic rising due to the additional exposure.
- When your readers like your content, they often link to you. This, in turn, improves your ability to be found in search engines and improves your Alexa score. They may view additional pages and posts on your site which improve your bounce rate.
- When your Alexa score is low, opportunities often appear that wouldn’t otherwise. For example, when my Alexa score decreased (low is good), I started getting requests from people. They wanted me to link to them for example. Since we were like-minded bloggers, they published my links as well.
- Bloggers generally become bloggers to empower other people. If you are writing for yourself, you could start a diary or journal. I’ve read bloggers have voices that long to be heard. The point is for the voice to be heard by other people.
- There are other places you could write just for yourself where your page views don’t matter. Medium is an example of a site where you could write for yourself.
- Caring about your target reader is so important, it could lead to outcomes like monetizing your blog.
Consider these comments from blogging expert Julie Syl Kalungi, “I find that most bloggers totally miss on the “WHY you blog, and WHO are you targeting, and ARE you serving their needs?” Once those questions are addressed in a selfless not attached to the outcome way, the income is not only regular and solid, it’s certain!”
Conclusion
For the reasons above, if you want to experience blogging success, you should not be your own target reader.
What about joy? You want joy? Give other people joy first, and then your joy will come. Give to others first, and then enjoy all the rewards you will get.
So many bloggers write about their “rants,” “musings,” or “ramblings”. They even put those words in their tag lines.
One of those bloggers, The Ranting Monkey, put “ranting” in his blog name.
He and I once had a discussion about these concepts. He observed, “Self-preservation and cooperation are not mutually exclusive.” In other words, you can help your readers and yourself at the same time.
Please share this post, so bloggers desiring success can know the advantages of writing for others.
Readers, do you write for yourself, others, or, like my reader observed, both of you? I look forward to your views in the comments section.
Related Posts:
This is the Way to Quickly Increase Your Blog Traffic: Blogger Collaboration
How to Get Help Now [Blogger Collaboration Group]
How to Save Money, Time, and Stress [Cross Promotion]
