Responding to Blood

If you are going to keep a weblog, it must be for the joy of writing alone. You will never have enough readers, an if that matters, you will always be disappointed.
Weblog audiences grow very slowly, but the readers you attract come deliberately. Do what you can to deserve their attention, and accept that your audience may always be very small. Through your efforts you can hope to gain a few readers and the respect of your peers. Do your best because you love it, appreciate the readers who visit, and don’t allow your statistics to ruin your fun. Rebecca Blood

When I started my blog at the beginning of the semester, I was extremely concerned with the idea of audience. I wanted it to be clearly defined so I could establish a persona and go with it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the fact that this is academia distorts the entire process for me.

Initially, once I gave up the idea of audience, my entries became “better” and I took more ownership over my blog. I felt much more freedom, yet at the same time, much more focused in my writing.

I agree with Blood’s statement of keeping a weblog “…for the joy of writing alone.” It was when I reconciled that in myself that I actually gained an audience outside of the obligatory hits from classmates. Of course it was just friends, family, and colleagues, but nonetheless a faithful audience who actually enjoyed keeping up with my thoughts via the blog.

When the semester shifted to the project blog, my time and energy for the personal blog greatly deteriorated, causing the entries to be weekly, at most. I did my best to take my audience along with me to the project, but they have told me it is “…boring as hell….” I’m disappointed that this meager audience has now left me. I now fail to do as Blood says by blogging “…because you love it….” The project blog is 90% for the sake of getting my grade in this class. In trying to come to grips with the fact that my only audience is my professor, I try to keep reminding myself that it’s beneficial for me as an instructor to have the time set aside to reflect and write about the progress of my class—especially in such a challenging time of the semester. That’s my “bright side” of things.

How, exactly, do you develop an audience for blogging? We could look at other forms of writing to see what process they go through to target an audience, but I think it’s next to impossible to compare a form as unique as blogging to anything else.

John Scalzi compares the aspect of blogging audience growth to other media forms’ audience growth in his column, Whatever, on April 8, 2002, saying,

Since the raw numbers regarding 'blog visits are somewhat shaky, the numbers regarding their percentage growth are likely to be equally so, but I'd be interested to see if the top 10 'blogs, whatever they may be, averaged the same sort of percentage growth last week as the top 10 conventional media sites. If they didn't, then the odds of Nisenholtz winning his Wired bet just got better. Not only that, but Vincent's argument of 'blogging being an alternative to a liberal media (many 'bloggers are conservative) is shown to be somewhat specious, since it shows that when people want news online, what they do is go to the usual suspects first.

Incidentally, it's also worth noting that many of the most popular 'blogs are written by established journalists and writers -- i.e., people who have made their writing bones before coming to the 'blog lifestyle. … Whether the 'bloggers choose to recognize it or not, they still look to and crave recognition from the very media they profess to irritate or, with more hubris, plan to usurp.

So does this mean our audience is more dependent on our reputation outside of our blogging persona? Does what I write have as much to do with who I am? If I intend to have an audience outside of those I already know, I suspect not. However, the thought of establishing an audience sounds daunting and to be honest, like something I have no interest in doing. I’m nothing but a first year graduate assistant. I’m barely able to sort through my own thoughts enough to put them in writing, much less expect an “audience” to form and wade through the mess that is my thinking.

This idea of comparing blogging audience to other media audience still intrigues me though. I searched further and found the article, Blogging: The New Exhibitionism, which says,

Blogging trades the hidden, questionable biases of the mass media for the obvious, proud biases of a human being; blogs are perhaps not more objective than other information sources, but are certainly more honest and up-front about the particular spin on the news they present. The exhibitionistic nature of many of those drawn to blogging means that blog content often provides a much richer, deeper portrait of its author than the same content would if presented in a newspaper article, for example. For all of these reasons blogs represent the quintessential medium for our modern attention-deficient, instant-gratification, self-absorbed, and voyeuristic culture.

What blogs don't typically have is a large, readymade audience -- the "mass" in "mass media" -- which is a given for mainstream media outlets such as CNN or the New York Times. In the blogging world (or "blogosphere", as it is coming to be known), you have to find your own audience. Blog culture is profoundly democratic, in that a blog's popularity is solely dependent on the quality of its content, rather than the factors which distort the mass media sphere, such as the quantity of a network's ad revenue or the partnerships it has with other corporations. The central currency of the blogosphere is certainly the hyperlink; each additional incoming link to one's work represents more potential readers and fans.

Give all of this information, I think I’m “off the hook” and relieve myself of any responsibility to establish an audience for this poor baby blog of mine.