How to attract the right audience for your blog

If you’re a truly passionate blogger, particularly an expert in your field, you need a range of materials on your blog which can work on multiple levels. You need more than SEO. You need interest drivers, and good structure in your blog to give people the information they require to get up to speed with your ideas and your enthusiasms.

There’s a few caveats to writing like an expert. You may loathe the idea of dumbing down, rightly so, but you also need to make yourself comprehensible to readers who lack your level of expertise. There’s not much point in giving readers material they can’t read. You see this problem regularly, even on Wikipedia, where expert writers, usually technical writers, provide a clear summary of a subject for anyone with a postgraduate degree and 20 years research experience, but God help any poor reader who’s only got a Masters, let alone a lay person.

That’s not the only problem. Explaining the significance of an idea can be difficult, particularly when there are any scientific concepts or abstract ideas involved. Stem cell articles are a case in point. These articles range from the utterly basic to the almost spreadsheet-like series of associations of bits of information where the reader’s mind is supposed to provide the formula to make the equations. That just doesn’t happen, because extended logic doesn’t work that way. Even experts make quite different associations with the same pieces of information.

For example:

If you’re an experienced and passionate graphic artist, working with the absolute latest software combined with your own experience and very focused on the possibilities of new graphic art in your blog:

• How much knowledge is required to have any idea what you’re talking about?
• Could a student, or other people most likely to benefit from your ideas, understand the thinking, and to what extent?
• Are you helping or hindering yourself making your case, expressing yourself in this way?
• Are you in fact putting up a barrier between yourself and your audience?

The audience you need, and how to get it

As a passionate person, you require an audience which can pick up your blog and understand it correctly. You may be interested to hear that for the creative professions, the passionate advocates are the undisputed best motivators. These are the people who inspire generations of musicians, writers, and other artists, and they also provide huge incentives for the sciences, particularly at pre-college  and college level. Your ultra-enthusiastic blog could be the most useful thing these very interested people could wish to see. You have something to give, and you need to make sure the right people get it.

The best options for getting the right audience are almost exactly like search engine optimization marketing strategies:

• Structure your blog with back up materials and internal links.
• Link to useful sites for explanatory materials, preferably those with excellent information and well written.
• Use graphics to illustrate specific high impact points.
• Spell out your idea in your intros, so it’s unmistakable to readers.
• Check feedback and identify areas of particular interest to your audience, and be receptive to their ideas.

The result is a healthy relationship with your audience. That alone will generate more interest and attract exactly the people you need to develop your blog.

This is a guest post by Marcela Dias. She is a online marketing specialist and passionate about blogging, social media and SEO.

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