Know your audience

Some good tips about polling your website’s audi­ence to learn what they’re look­ing for. The author +Daniel Tread­well the devel­oper of the Google+Blog plug-in for Word­Press that lets you sync between the two.

Know your Audi­ence
Last year with the release of Google+ it was made very obvi­ous that a large amount of peo­ple have been look­ing for a new com­mu­nity that allows them to share their time, their art and their opin­ions with oth­ers in a way that was not pre­vi­ously available.

Once you have gained a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fol­low­ers (and this amount is sub­jec­tive and per­sonal, what is a large num­ber to one may not be to another) most peo­ple will start to won­der exactly what it is that their audi­ence is most inter­ested in

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  • https://plus.google.com/111051285432886962560 C. Wess Daniels

    I can see this for a com­pany or non-profit but not sure it really works for per­sonal blogs anymore.

  • https://plus.google.com/118137693598946900921 Mar­tin Kelley

    What doesn’t? Ask­ing what peo­ple want? See­ing what was pop­u­lar? I guess it depends on the pur­pose of your per­sonal blog. If it’s a Tumblr-like pho­tos and per­sonal shar­ing site, then you don’t really care about audi­ence past the friends and fam­ily. If there’s a bit more of a goal it can be help­ful to look for trends.

  • https://plus.google.com/111051285432886962560 C. Wess Daniels

    Yeah, I see what you mean. It’s just that a) I think there are too many blogs today to really make it that use­ful and b) I have tried this in the past and there was always very lit­tle response and it felt more self-aggrandizing. I would pre­fer to just ask you, and a cou­ple other friends who I know and see what ana­lyt­ics can tell me. But that’s where I’m at right now.

  • https://plus.google.com/118137693598946900921 Mar­tin Kelley

    I use a mix of ana­lyt­ics, gut, and “it’s my blog, I’ll talk about what I wanna talk about” attitude.

  • https://plus.google.com/118137693598946900921 Mar­tin Kelley

    (One of the coolest things about this guy’s plug-in is that it syncs com­ments between WP and G+, only it doesn’t work w/Disqus…)

  • https://plus.google.com/111051285432886962560 C. Wess Daniels

    Did you fork out the $10 for the plugin?

  • https://plus.google.com/118137693598946900921 Mar­tin Kelley

    Yep.

  • https://plus.google.com/111051285432886962560 C. Wess Daniels

    Dang — you’re big time now.