On Growing Your Audience

[rowyn]

jongibbs made an interesting post a couple of days ago on the subject of "fans" vs "friends". It was inspired by a question from one of his friends on how to create an online fanbase.

The question was a little offensive, especially when it was followed up with “I want a blog not a chat room,” he said. "Besides, I’m too busy writing to waste time making ‘internet’ friends.” Like jongibbs, I regard y'all as my friends, not my fans, and it seems silly, even insulting, to do the opposite. The term "fan", rooted as it is in "fanatic", seems somewhat condescending when applied to other people, even if I'm happy enough to apply it to myself in many cases.

But as I was mulling the entry over, it occured to me that I do actually have some ideas on how to gain an online audience that goes beyond one's circle of friends -- on using LiveJournal or any blog to reach more people than you have the time to cultivate a friendship with. So I left this long comment on his entry, and Jon Gibbs responded with 'why don't you make this an entry?' Oh yeah.

The notes below use the generic second-person, so I want to clarify right here that I don't mean you, specifically, should do any, much less all, of them. So:

Some Things to Do If You Want to Reach a Larger Audience

1) Produce something of considerable interest and/or entertainment to your audience. OK, this should go without saying, but it is the most important step. It doesn't need to be profound; CakeWrecks.com has gone a long way based on "funny".

1a) If you're really intent on growing an audience that you regard as fans and not friends, you probably want to refrain from social-media type posts: "The omelet I had for breakfast was delicious! :9" Note: I'm not saying you should never write about the everyday events of your life, because the everyday events of your life could make great reading. sandratayler writes one of my favorite blogs, and she usually focuses on the things that are important to her life: raising her children, crisis management, writing, self-publishing, running a two-person business, etc. I love her blog because she writes about these things in compelling, candid way. I may not be raising kids, or self-publishing, or running a business, or managing crises -- but at the heart of so much of her writing are lessons on how to live, which is something I do every day. In a similar-but-different way, ursulav writes great posts on whatever happens to be on her mind, using wit and humor to make them entertaining. Some writers have a talent for making anything interesting: Isaac Asimov could've written a fascinating essay on dandruff (and possibly did, who knows? It is one of the tragedies of our times that Asimov did not live in the blogging era.) If that's what you want to be established as, go for it. Just keep your audience in mind; your shopping list or the list of names of the people you met at a party last night are probably not of interest to them.

2) Post regularly and/or frequently. Depending on the service you use, this may be more or less important, but it never hurts to keep your blog current. Posting on a schedule is nice (M-W-F at midnight), but if you post every day or two I don't think a schedule is that important. If you're only going to post once a week, you probably want it to be at a specific time so that the people who don't have you on an RSS feed know when to check back. If you post less than once a week, it's harder to build an audience at all.

3) Advertise on sites that have the kind of audience you want, where possible. This works well for webcomics, which often advertise on each other's sites. Blogs don't have the same tradition of advertising, and even with ones that have ads, the ads may be served by the blogging service, and therefore you can't target your ads to just the blogs that have the kind of readership you're after. Even so, you can promote your blog by commenting on widely-read blogs. And when I say "promote" I mean, "leave a comment that's interesting, relevant to the post, and includes a link back to your own blog". Not "come read my blog! It is teh awesome!" If you write interesting comments, the blog's other readers may follow your link back to you. I started reading mharreff's journal after seeing his comments on sythyry's; I daresay I started reading many of you by seeing what you wrote in the comments section of my other friends' entries.

4) Guest-blog on a successful blog. This is even better than writing good comments, because many readers don't click through to the comments, but almost everyone will read the main page -- and if what you write as a guest blogger is good, some of those readers will take a look at your own blog. Similarly, posting on a well-trafficked forum or a community can drive traffic back to your post. As with (3) above, your post needs to be interesting in its own right; you want to advertise by demonstrating that you have something readers want to read, not by telling them "Read my blog!"

5) Own your URL. For some reason that I do not fathom, many people think that "ladyrowyn.com" is more professional and therefore somehow higher quality than "ladyrowyn.livejournal.com". In an ideal world, you probably want to use something like WordPress to publish simultaneously to several different outlets, so people can find your latest posts on ladyrowyn.com, ladyrowyn.livejournal.com, ladyrowyn.dreamwidth.com, etc.

6) Have an RSS feed. Lots of people like those.

7) Make it easy for your readers. This goes along with (5) and (6), which are really just ways of saying "be easy to find and easy to follow". In the same vein, you want to put as few barriers to readers as possible. Don't make them through cut-tags (or make your feed customizable so that they have the option of having or not having cut-tags). Have a comments section that threads well. Choose a color scheme that's easy to read. Etc.

8) Have other people to link to you. This one's somewhat out of your control, obviously, but it doesn't hurt to ask your readers to tell their friends. And of course, if you write something interesting, people are going to link to it naturally: "read this, it's cool!"

---

All this said, I'll note that I do almost none of this myself. This is mostly because I'm not looking to build an audience for my blog. I keep a journal partly for myself, partly to keep in touch with my friends, partly to make new friends, and a little bit to entertain passerbys. I'm happy see new faces and to write things of interest to a wider audience, but it's not my primary focus in my journal. Perhaps someday it will be and then I'll have to take some of my own advice (and see if it works!) And this is one reason why I mentioned earlier that "I'm not saying any of you, specifically, should do this". Because there are plenty of good reasons to blog that have nothing to do with reaching a large audience.

But I am curious -- what advice would you have for growing an audience? What sorts of things have made you decide to follow the blog of someone who wasn't a friend?

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

The #1 thing that gets me to follow other people is an interesting response to something elsewhere.

[rowyn]

Yes, it's in the top three or four for me, as well. (Other major factors: a comment left on one of my own entries, linked to the blog by a friend, or the blog belongs to someone I know from elsewhere.)

Still, I should've put "leave interesting comments on other blogs" as its own category, instead of lumping it in with "advertise".

[skyflame.livejournal.com]

On a semi-tangent, I checked FB the other day and realized that I had about 125 friends. These are all people that I know (from high school, locally, from cons, online, etc.). I was kinda shocked that I personally knew that many people, much less wanted to have an idea of what they were doing and keep them apprised of my own life.

[rowyn]

Yes, I have something like a hundred "mutual friends" on LJ. A year or two back I thought "I can't possibly have this many people that I *really* want to read" and went through the list to see if I could filter it down. And decided, nope, these are all people I'm interested in. It does seem weird to have connections with *so many* people.

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

Great post, Rowyn.

When it comes to growing an audience, I'd say writing good content is vital, but it isn't enough. I think you have to have a sincere interest in engaging with other people.

Thinking back on the four or five occasions when I've unfriended somebody. Aside from one (who used the 'c' word - an instant unfriend as far as I'm concerned), the others were all due to the way the blogger treated me or their other readers.

That said, I don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong with those folks, they just weren't who I thought they were when I friended them in the first place, which is my mistake, not theirs.

[rowyn]

I think that wanting to interact with your audience is an enormous help; it's certainly the best way to make friends and establish connections. But there are a few blogs that I read where I never leave comments and never read the comments page. I'm there just to enjoy what the author has posted to the web for everyone to see. Just as with reading a printed book, I don't feel a need to engage with the author directly in order to enjoy the writing. So I don't think it's necessary that a blogger reply to readers (or even have a comments section) in order to get readers.

For someone with relatively few readers (say, less than two or three hundred), though, interacting with the audience is probably the easiest way to encourage people to keep reading and to attract more readers. And even people with huge audiences benefit from occassionally dropping in to chat with them. I'm certainly not saying it isn't a big part of most blogs or that it's irrelevant! Just that it's theoretically possible to get by without it. :)

[rowyn]

On a related note, "how you interact with your readers" is at least as interesting a question as "do you interact with them?" Because while I, personally, am repulsed by people who treat their audience shabbily (flaming, insulting, making fun of), I know that some sites which are at least somewhat popular pretty much gained that popularity on the strength of their mean-spirited and unpleasant behavior. Apparently, some people like seeing others get torn down. :/

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

I think that's one of the reasons why people enjoy American Idol (it's certainly one of the reasons why I don't watch it).

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Generally, I've friended people I don't know when they get my attention somehow and then their journal is interesting to read. I unfriend them if they annoy me or bore me and have high volume. For sites that aren't blogs, I also sometimes stop reading them if they don't update for long enough that I think they're dead. I guess that's another reason to provide an RSS feed, so that people can forget that they're following you until WHAM!

[rowyn]

You know, I can't remember if I've ever unfriended anyone? There was at least one person who went friends-only and whose friend list I wasn't on, so after a while I took them off. Oh, wait, there was one person who annoyed me enough in a post that I unfriended them for a while. There seems to be a whole lot more drama to friending/unfriending than is warranted, really.

And yeah, that's what I like about RSS feeds and livejournals (which basically work like one). Check one page that shows updates on a hundred different sites is way less annoying than checking a hundred sites individually to see which ones have updated. I've thought of making a feed for the comics I read, but most of the ones that update irregularly don't have feeds either, and comics feeds tend to be just "here's a link, now go load my page to look at it", which isn't any more convenient than just checking the page if it's one that updates regularly.

[sandratayler.livejournal.com]

Interesting post. It has stuck with me since I first read it as my brain is percolating thoughts. My first thought is that your suggestions for building an audience are all solid. My further thoughts get a bit long, and for that I apologize.

Fan does have its roots in fanatic, but the meaning has shifted. The difference between a fan and a friend is that the emotional balance is equivalent in friendships, where a fan is far more invested in the blogger than the blogger is in the fan. Once a blog reaches a certain level of readership it is not possible for the blogger to be friends with everyone who comments. This means either the blogger has to learn how to deal with fans, or the blogger has to take steps to limit the readership to a manageable number of friends. This is a personal decision and either way can be right or wrong for a particular blogger.

Keep in mind though that some people want to be fans. They want to read and enjoy in anonymity. I read many blogs where I love to visit, but don't try to engage the author. This for me is the same way that I read books. I can enjoy the book without needing to be friends with the author.

I had to confront the fan/friend dynamic early on in my blogging because my husband sent fans of his comic my way. Between us, Howard and I have a large pool of fans. I consider them all friends in potentia. That is, they are not friends yet, but could be if the right circumstances occur. And indeed the right circumstances have occurred many times. I can't even remember how long ago it was that I started considering you a friend even though we've never had the opportunity to meet in person. (I think we first met way back on the Schlock forums or IRC channel, but I am really not sure anymore.)

In regards to answering every comment: I try, but I can't always do it. My life is frequently busy and it is common for me to think an answer without actually typing it out. Instead I view my blog as an open house party where I am hostess. I try to encourage good conversations. I try to make everyone feel welcome. I try to circulate and direct. But I know the party is really working once people start talking to each other as well as to me.

[rowyn]

I was one of the fans of your husband's comic that he sent your way. :)

Once a blog reaches a certain level of readership it is not possible for the blogger to be friends with everyone who comments.

Yes, exactly. That's part of why the idea of starting a blog where you're not looking to make friends makes sense to me, even though it's not what I use my blog for or what most of the blogs I read are like.

Whether or not I answer every comment depends on my mood. Sometimes I try to and sometimes I don't worry about it. I don't mind if bloggers don't reply to my comments. Knowing I'll get a reply ads some incentive to comment, but it's not the biggest factor for me. I'm not sure it even makes the top five.

[sandratayler.livejournal.com]

I was talking to a local friend about this yesterday. She used the term "audience" rather than "fans." I really like that and wish I'd used the distinction myself in my comment.

[rowyn]

Yes! "Readers" is a good term, too, for bloggers. That's why I used "audience" in my post. :)

[rowyn]

But "fan" is a weird sort of term. I don't see anything odd about saying that I am a fan of your blog, or of howardtayler's webcomic, or of jordangreywolf's artwork, to give a few examples. But for me to say that of someone else about my own work -- "Greywolf is a fan of Silver Scales -- feels inappropriate. Presumptuous, even with people who've self-identified as such already. I'm not sure why, but I definitely still feel that "fan" is a loaded term that one should take care in using, while "audience" or "reader" is perfectly innocuous.

[sandratayler.livejournal.com]

Yes. Fan as a self-applied term is neutral. Fan when describing a second person as a fan of a third party feels pretty neutral. But describing someone as a fan of me feels like I am placing myself above. Presumptuous is an excellent description of how it feels. On the other hand there are times when Howard and I use "fan" and it is the correct term to use. As part of a public event, for example. Perhaps that is because we are speaking fans as a group of people which allows individuals to mentally opt in or opt out of the group description.

Interesting. I'll now have to watch our usage and see if the theory holds true.

[rowyn]

That seems about right. I suspect that if I had thousands of enthusiastic readers, I would probably still describe them collectively as "readers" rather than "fans". But for, say, an artist who has thousands of people who love her artwork, describing them as "fans" is the most natural term. Especially at an event: "I've doing a panel a X-Con for my fans" makes the most sense -- neither "audience" or "members of my audience" has the right connotation in that instance. "Admirers" would, but that's a little less natural and almost as presumptuous-sounding. So hey, some times you just have to accept that your work is beloved. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I haven't really ever figured out just what my LJ is supposed to be for. It's too personal to be a "professional blog." I think I mostly use it as a vanity - an electronic fridge door upon which to post whatever I've drawn recently, or a link to something I've been involved with, just because being able to post about it somehow gives me a sense of accomplishment. I don't have any particular OBJECTIVE in mind.

I've been timid about adding Friends anymore, because a while back, I'd add Friends left and right - but then I couldn't possibly keep up with my "friends" reading. Plus, there are some people I would consider friends, but I don't have them listed as LJ Friends; a couple of posts with heavy curse words in BIG TYPE right on the front without any cut-tags, for instance, and I might not want this to be what someone sees if he decides to follow the link to see my friends page. I "manually" visit more pages than I have listed Friends, when I want to check up on things. After all, if you don't Friend someone, you don't run the risk of gaining unfavorable attention if you un-Friend.

On Facebook, I've got a very different approach; I hardly post anything of substance at all, and most of my "Friends" there are total strangers who only have in common an interest in a particular game system - or maybe they just want a really long Friends list, and they've picked my name out at random. I can easily choose to "hide" entries in the "news feed" from people who only post incoherent or crude fragments, or updates about games that I don't care about. It's not as much of a big deal - but then, I don't invest as much into it, either.

I can't imagine myself doing a "serious," professional blog - where I'd have to think about the differences between "fans" and "friends" and "'Friends'" -unless I was in the business of, say, doing a web comic, or writing published stories, or something along those lines that would encourage interaction and feedback.

[rowyn]

I can imagine doing a "serious" blog; I do write the occasional essay about economics or finances or somesuch that might be of broader appeal, and I have plenty of ideas for those that I never get around to writing out. But I'd rather just write whatever I feel like when I feel like it, and not worry too much about reaching the maximum number of people with my blog.

So that's pretty much what my journal is for -- a place to write whatever I feel like writing, when I feel like writing it, and where I can talk to whoever happens to read it and comment. :)