One of the basic tenets of blogging that is stressed over and over is to write quality content. Do that and over time the readers will find you. Sure we might do things like post links to our posts on things like Twitter or FriendFeed and some will get their digg patrol to start pumping interest in voting the posts up to the front page. We like to think that we are writing stuff that will appeal to a growing number of people.

But are we really?

I ask this because of something I began thinking about yesterday after posting my article [nw] on Jason Calacanis’s heart rendering eulogy over his retirement from blogging. Additionally Duncan Riley’s post at The Inquisitr [nw] about post quality added to my concern about not so much actual quality but more about who we end up writing for – which can affect the quality and tone of our posts.

To illustrate this I’ll use my post from yesterday. Since starting at Mashable I look at the things I am writing about to see if it can be done in such a way to interest their readers. Now Mashable has a much wider audience base than my blog does given that it bills itself as the #1 Social Networking and Social Media News site on the web and I’m just a cranky old fart. It is this diversity of readers that one has to keep in mind at all times when writing new posts. Even though they might be primarily interested in web related news and this post was news about a prominent personality on the web the fact is that the chances are the post would be of little interest. So I ended up writing it for what I believe is my growing base of readers here at WinExtra.

But am I?

At this point we have to throw FriendFeed into the mix because for a growing number of tech bloggers this social aggregator is becoming a primary stopping point. It has become a haven for the early adopters and the people who like to be among the first to read what they have to say and then in turn share their thoughts on those posts with other like minded people. FriendFeed has become a hub of conversation about things that might not have even reached the wider blogosphere.

As well there is the immediacy of reader response that feeds a basic need of human nature – that being peer feedback on what we have published. The idea that as soon as you publish something there are people reading it and giving you feedback by way of liking the item or commenting on it – or even both = is rewarding. On the flip side we also take the lack of feedback into consideration as well. I know I have with some of the things I have tried here and I am sure others have as well.

So I come back to my post about Jason and in hindsight I look at who was the intended (or unintended) target of that post. It obviously wasn’t Mashable as it was too narrow of a focus for their readership so it must have been for the readership of my blog right?

Or was it?

The fact is that now that I look back on the post and my reasons for writing it I see that it really wasn’t for whatever base of readers I might have because there’s a good possibility that some of them wouldn’t know – or even care – who Jason Calacanis is let alone that he was quitting blogging. On reflection it is easy to see that I had instead written for the FriendFeed reader base. Now there is nothing wrong with this if that is one’s intention but if one’s intention is to write for one’s complete reader base and attract new readers this narrowing of focus might not be such a good idea.

After all isn’t that the idea of blogging in the first place? To write about thing that interest you in such a way that it would also be interesting to a large number of potential readers. I am not suggesting that we should be focusing our writing for the Mashable size of an audience but equally so I don’t think we should be narrowing our focus to such a point where places like FriendFeed are the target audience. Sure we should make sure that the quality of our posts should be able to pass the scrutiny of our peers but the content should also not alienate the readership you have worked very hard to get.

So who are you really writing for?

Do you remember who your target audience is?

Conversation Tags: blogging, audience, writing