Blogging tip #1: Knowing your purpose
Following up on the entry on The blogging ministry, this series of posts is intended for anyone who wants to improve their blogs, but more specifically, for bloggers who wish to use the Web as a platform to reach out.
Why do you blog?
I can’t overstress the importance of knowing the reason for setting up a blog. In fact, this should be thought about even before you embark on setting up a blog. This will determine on the resources you need, the frequency of blogging, and the writing style required. But even if you didn’t think of all these previously, and you already own a blog, all is not lost. You just need to introduce change slowly.
The purpose for writing
Knowing the reason why you blog would determine on your target audience. I’ll illustrate my personal story here. In 2005, I started considering Christianity seriously and was pretty certain that I would accept Jesus as my personal saviour sooner or later. I was reading the Bible voraciously. I set up my personal blog with one intention in mind: To keep an online journal about my discovery and possibly walk with God. I was on the computer many hours a day, and much to the credit of a fellow teacher, she recommended that I document my journey at that stage of my life, where I was working just before I entered university. As such, my personal blog “Thoughts. Attitudes. Reflections†was born.
The purpose will determine your target audience
Yet, because I intended it very much to be a personal blog, I didn’t go out to attract people to visit my website. I didn’t make the readership grow even though I knew how to market a website. It was a blog meant more for myself. I just didn’t mind the occasional people leaving comments about my blog. But if you are in the blogging ministry, then you should leverage on the various ways to make your readership grow.
The purpose will affect your title and design
Because I was blogging to document my journey, and to reflect on what I could learn in the workplace, and what I could do to improve myself, I chose the title “Thoughts. Attitudes. Reflectionsâ€. Partly because of the title, but also to reflect the nature of my blog, a pretty sombre yet thought-provoking theme was designed. It was designed with the aim to set myself into a reflective mood, to think.
The purpose will determine which platform you use
If you are blogging for personal reason, then I think Blogger, Livejournal and Xanga will suffice. However, just like Pastor Kenny found out, when you are blogging with a larger audience in mind(note, a larger audience is no less specific), then Blogger, Livejournal and Xanga can become pretty restrictive. Why? It’s difficult to leave comments on such websites. On Xanga, you have to set up an account first, and login before you can post a comment. It’s difficult to add pictures, links, but more importantly, it is difficult to market your blog to reach your intended target audience. This is why Wordpress is so much more attractive. Which is also why Blogpastor decided to have its own domain name.
The purpose will determine your writing style
Each author will have his own writing style, but in general, the trick is to pitch your complexity of your sentences to that in which your target audience can understand. My blog was written with myself in mind, so I didn’t really care whether people understood what I wrote. But, I knew my blog turned a few people off even though they took a genuine interest in my blog. Their complains: They can’t read my blog without having a dictionary right beside them. They find that they have to flip the dictionary for every other sentence. This was where I failed. So don’t repeat the same mistake.
Add comment November 21st, 2006
