Throughout the day I had moments, pauses really, where I considered what topic I was going to blog about. I had considered some “useful” evergreen topic like “call instead of email your clients”. Snooze.
I had also considered blogging about something from today’s work like “rebuilding forms for portals”, or “learning to structure product backlog meetings”. However, there’s nothing really of value that I can give anyone writing on those topics through this blog.
At lunch, I received an email for a podcast that I’ve been following. Thought it might be cool to recap on Product Management: What is the job, really? – Christian Idiodi, but I can’t imagine anyone that reads this blog would find value from that.
Really, I keep coming back to that word “value”.
Writing For the Audience You Have
A major part of rediscovering blogging is making the decision to blog for a specific group of people. Kurt Vonnegut in his classes on writing at Ithaca expressed that “you should always write with a specific person in mind”. On the surface, it sounds like he meant a physical person you already know. However, there’s so much more to it.
Learning to write technical instructions, I learned about personas and the idea of creating a profile around a “typical” user. It was much like creating a fictional character and represented the most-likely person to read/use your writing.
For myself, I mentioned in yesterday’s post how I’ve been having troubling sitting down to write. One of the major issues has been with how I recognize my audience. I know there are several co-workers of mine that show their support from time to time. I also know of the several friends and family that click my posts through social media.
You all are wonderful, but I would like to learn how to expand beyond the people I can contact directly.
Writing For the Audience You Want
“Want to be a banker? Spend time around bankers. Want to be a lawyer? Spend time around lawyers” – Common wisdom.
I’ve heard the previous line dozens of times in my life from a variety of sources. There’s a similar one I’ve heard about blogging. “Write for the audience you want and the readers will follow”. – Various Sources. Another mildly different version of this is, “keep writing and you’ll find the audience”.
As I decide what I want to make of my blog, to make of myself, I’ll have to decide what I want my audience to be. I might get lucky enough to unwittingly build an audience that I can recognize on the spot.
Anything is possible.
Finishing Thoughts
Right now the real value in blogging is for myself. I am my own audience. I am the one that reads every post that is published on EDR.
Honestly, when it comes to deciding who my audience will be, I know I have to remember that I count as a member of that group.
If you are not writing in some way for yourself, then how can you ever write with someone else in mind? I don’t know if the logic in the question rings true, but I’ll continue to try this experiment out and will bet money that the logic holds. There’s something to add to my every day rhetoric repertoire.
Thank you for reading.
All the best.