In July, I received an email from an online editor asking me if she could include one of my NYC Instagram photos in a post about “the best Instagram shots of the month.”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
A few days later, I received another email rescinding the offer. The editor politely explained that the full title of the post was “The Best Instagram Shots of the Month Taken by Parents,” and as a non-parent, I was ineligible.
I suppose you expect me to be outraged. Â Nah. Â Maybe if this happened a few years ago when I was obsessed about the community of the blogosphere. Â But now I’m older and wiser, and I just shrug. Â It was nothing personal. Â There is no community. Â Or more accurately, there are many and many communities. Â It is all about each person connecting with an audience. Â Â The editor of this blog, like most network, film, and publishing executives today, understood the importance of reaching a targeted demographic. A parenting blog wants to connect with other parents, in the same way that a Jewish magazine wants Jewish writers to connect with a Jewish audience, or a LGBT website asks a gay novelist to share his experiences with a gay readership.
From the Ladders blog —
The starting point for all communication is becoming aware of the intended audience and approaching them on an appropriate level…
To ensure successful written communication, first think about the people who will read it. By putting yourself in their shoes, you will gain insight into what they want to know and how they want to be addressed. The Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece has an inscription that cautions each person to “know yourself.†Improving communications encourages people to know thy audience.
Knowing your audience is not an easy task.
Earlier this week, Â I wrote on Facebook:
I seem to have an ongoing struggle with my writing voice in relation to the audience. I write for myself, challenging myself to find some inner truth worth discussing, as if I’m in a therapist’s office. I write for a select group of long-time friends like Veronica and Schmutzie, because our entire friendship is based on our blogging, and it feels as if there is an obligation, almost a duty, to continue our online pen-pal relationship by writing. I write for a general audience of bloggers who might discover me through social media. And sometimes I think about writing for a complete outsider, maybe someone influential, like an editor, who will give me money to do something. And I don’t feel any of these audiences are the same, or expect the same voice. I’m not going to talk to myself, Veronica, the general blogosphere, or some editor in New York exactly the same.
But then, today, after much reading and thinking, I wrote another update —
Aha! It’s suddenly so clear. I was so blind. It isn’t about knowing who you are. We all know who we are. It’s about knowing who you’re talking to.
The audience. Â You NEED to know your audience. Â Or else you’re flailing.
Some of you misinterpreted my update.
From Danny Miller —
Yes, but demographics are mostly used to make crazy-ass stupid decisions. “OK, we’ve got to reach 18-24 year-old males, so we’ll make these God-awful shitty movies because that’s what they want.” Sure, being able to “read the room” is a very helpful skill in life, but don’t start changing your message or presentation in any kind of artificial way because of some perceived notion of who your “audience” is. It’ll never work and you’ll end up as clueless as a network executive.
But I think Michele Kosboth said it best, in her comment.
I think you are totally spot on. Knowing who you are talking to makes that feeling of detachment, of talking into the wind go away.
Michele understood that I wasn’t talking about changing myself or my writing style to cater to a demographic. Â I was looking for a way to escape the loneliness of “talking into the wind.” Â I wanted to know who I was addressing.
Part of creating community is inclusion AND exclusion. We can’t just talk to everyone. Â You make the decision to either talk to other writers or established journalists or other celebrities or other parents or other Jews, etc. Â I assume that if you are reading this right now that you are an upper-middle class, married, 35-55, (probably a woman), liberal-oriented, and a college graduate who understands insider jokes about Twitter, watches HBO, and has a creative streak. Â While I try to connect with as many people as possible, I also exclude 99% of the world population just with that one statement.
Some of you are under 35 or over 70, or a man, or have never watched Breaking Bad, and that’s OK (I haven’t watched it myself), but at least I know that you — most of my imagined readers — ARE watching it.
Why is this important to me? Â It all depends on what type of community you want to build. Â It’s difficult building an audience that completely revolves around your personal life. Â Â Why should anyone care? Â Asking the question, “Who am I?” has never resulted in any concrete answers. Â Maybe it is time to ask a different question. Â By discovering you, I will be better able to understand myself.
Of course, no one has one audience. Â I find that I’m able to connect with a very different audience on Instagram than say, Facebook. Â On Instagram I am “artistic product.” Â On Facebook I am “personal.” Â I know quite a few people who like my photos as creative work on Instagram, but cannot endure my endless kvetching on Facebook about my life. Â I have blogging friends who never interact with me on Twitter. Â It’s taken me a long time to figure this out. Â Each location is a different community with different rules and hierarchies. Â You cannot be the same person everywhere.
The typical question I get asked by friends of friends is “What is your blog about?” Â An equally tough question, one that I am asking myself right now, is”Who is this blog for?”
Boy, you pegged me right as one of your readers. With the exception of HBO, I don’t watch it. Not rich enough.
Neil, I think you need to leave out the HBO. I was gonna say the same thing Dana said. Maybe our strongest connection…is that we DON’T care about HBO!
This is really timely for me Neil. I’ve been sort of struggling with this issue myself. I write about a number of things. But who am I speaking to? Music lovers? Serious writers? Humor writers? Other moms? Men? Women? The answer is all of them. But is it like the music business where I need to scale it back – simplify? Because those are all elements of my life and ingredients of what I have to say. I was editing an old post today and it suddenly dawned on me that it was all over the place. I was approaching it from too many angles. When I really thought about who I was talking to, it became so much clearer. I don’t want to change who I am or force a direction. I just want be more aware of who it’s for. Maybe my audience will come from a number of demographics, maybe not, but at least I’ll have been authentic. And now I should edit this. It’s post length.
PS…You pegged me spot on as one of your readers too. I’ve never seen Breaking Bad though and I can’t afford HBO anymore, which really pisses me off. I miss Bill Maher.
I almost feel compelled to tell you who I am. If each of your readers tell you a bit, then maybe it’ll help you understand your audience? At least this is how I read your post, as if you’re reaching out to us…
I’m a woman. That much is obvious, or maybe it isn’t. I’m 47 going on 17. I still have a near stroke when I think of my age. But it’s ok, I’m healthy and ride my paddle board almost daily.
I ask myself the same questions as you do, but usually come up with different answers.
I have recently been hired to help deliver the next Oprah Winfrey/Deepak Chopra 21-Day Meditation challenge, which is almost funny because, well see above note about my age. I have no children, no pets, no plants, but big dreams. I live on a boat, and always wonder why more people haven’t discovered how it’s by far the best lifestyle ever.
And I enjoy reading your quirky facebook messages, and have never seen a picture of yours on instagram I did not like.
Neil, sometimes you really bug me with your searches for meaning on the internet. But this time I had to chime in. I want to write for the sake of writing, and thinking about an audience has paralyzed me. I don’t want to make a product, at least not with a blog. I want to write freely without anyone else in mind, and if someone happens to like reading that kind of rubbish, well that’s alright with me. But all this talk about building a community and finding your readers…it makes me mental. It must be the hermit in me. My problem is getting the audience out of mind when I write.
I sit in a bubble, talking to myself mostly. I spent so many years drawing for The Man, it’s a great relief not to have to think about what my ‘target’ expects.
YAY! I won at the internet for once.
Ha ha!
“Part of creating community is inclusion AND exclusion.” I like that. I hate thinking about reader stats and demographics — all those things that no one cared about when I started blogging (well, at least things *I* did not care about). Nice to just write and put it out there and hope someone enjoys.
I really, really like the thing about knowing who you’re talking to, how that takes away the loneliness of feeling like you’re just talking into the wind. I feel like there’s a lot of truth there… and there’s a lot of truth to what Meredith says, too, I know when I’ve had the most trouble trying to blog it’s bc I’m thinking too much about who will be reading it (tho there’s a slight but significant difference there– worrying about who will read my thoughts and what they’ll think of them, vs knowing who I’m talking to…which could give a feeling of comfort, like when you know you’re talking to a good friend vs someone you’ve just met).
It’s really funny reading your description of your avg reader, I’m just a tad on the young side and don’t watch HBO (tho I tend to catch up on the shows long after they’ve ended…) otherwise it’s pretty spot-on.