3 Types of Personal Bloggers, and Their Readers

Senèn Pon, 19 Mulud

Image: MartinPoole

So every blogger crashes on that existential wall, right? Wondering why in the world they followed the trend and started blogging. Whether you are a serious or a casual blogger, every time you struggle with a new post you start wonder: Why the hell are you doing this to yourself and the people who'd bother reading this stuff.

Personal blogging comes on a couple of levels. On each level there's the market for it. First and always, there's the…

• Verbal Farts.

_{I love the way that sounds, and a lovely amnesic writer I might as well add.}
Verbal farting is the photographer's equivalent of taking pictures of your feet. Or drawing the outline of your less-cocky hand. The examples to this kind of blogger is plentiful, and the question of purpose in their existence is unimportant. Verbal farters don't really need a plan or a mission statement to maintain their blogs because most of them are posting on a mood's basis.

Audience to this kind of rambling:
Your desperately bored relatives and psychotic fans. If you want sustainability with this kind of writing, you have to be ridiculously good looking or rich or famous for no good reason to maintain an audience with demand for eye candy. Simply existing must be good enough for your readership to bloat and fatten. Post pictures often, dramatize your breakups, and don't worry so much about spelling or grammer (ha!); your readers want you, not your ideas.


• How-to & List Posts.

_{Oh, I get my kicks when I can nail this kind of posting right. Nothing beats the smarter than thou feeling.}
You know the gist about internet writing, right? People are here for clear simple, clear facts. How do you serve a knock-out conversation in 7 half-lines? How to bait a girl into taking off her bra in public? How to…Well, you get where I'm going. Of course, you can only take it so far, because eventually someone will come up with something smarter than your idea, or the novelty wears off and you are no longer fascinated with bras and girls.

Audience:
Easy and gullible clientèle. This kind of writing is the crux of internet audience. Normal people get online to know about the things I mentioned up there, and information chunks. Whether it is written based on your personal experience or a passed on knowledge, this is the kind of writing that is bound to bring the audience coming for years to come.


• Deep Probes.

Some things need to be clarified in a couple of mouthfuls. Probing Posts inseminates the bigger chunks of your more evolved-self: your more-advanced thoughts and individuality. The trick is in finding a method of speech that is both clear and at the same time thorough. This is the kind of posts that certifies your intellect, authority and experience; which you will want to work on from time to time, just to make sure that you're not stuck on verbal farting or how-to thinking.

Audience:
Hardcore researchers. Your best friends. The kind of folks you can't please all the time, and the most honest with their opinions. The kinds who are there for the long term conversation. Good luck in finding them. I love mine a lot.

Rule of Thumb
Ideally, as a blogger in this niche, you rotate between the types. Nevertheless, even if you stick to just one type, always keep Form and Readability in mind.

And even if you're just a verbal farter for most of your writing career, don't worry too much about it. You know that I'm reading you anyways.

So, what's your stuff about?