Listen To Your Core Audience
“Build small community and thousands will want to join.” – Confucius
Successful cult leaders know the secret to growth. Serve a core audience. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. It is ok if some people don’t like you. In fact, it is essential for a few people to hate you if you ever want to become super famous.
(Eg: Would Howard Stern ever become the king of radio if everyone had liked him?)
As your blog grows and you start having more conversations with all sorts of people, it’ll be very tempting to cater to everyone’s needs and wishes. But if you start listening to everyone, you will lose your edge. You’ll go from exciting to dull.
(picture inspired by Kathy Sierra)
How to resist the temptation?
The Secret of Successful Writers
Many successful writers have a secret. They write to an audience of one. They start by writing “Dear Mary” (where Mary is the name of the person they started writing for) and then continue their article or book.
This is a great technique. Because
1. It’ll help in not listening to everyone.
2. It’ll help you keep your writing crisp.
Action Summary:
- Start writing for an audience of one. Start every blog post with “Dear _____” and then edit it out.
Spread the word:
Comments (2)
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As a student and teacher of rhetoric, I write about the issue of audience consideration repetitively on my blog. This post is so true. Thanks for getting such valuable info out to blog writers.
Posted 26 May 2007 #
I don’t usually comment on blogs but your post was really good.
Posted 31 Oct 2009 #