Admittedly, most of these followers are people from whom I'm separated by 1 or 2 degrees. I know my dad emailed out the link to his company's staff mailing list, my mom has forwarded it to all my relatives, and my grandma has extended it to her knitting circle. The only feedback I've gotten from complete strangers has come when I've initiated the contact by first commenting on their posts.
Unfortunately, WordPress does not possess the capability to see who exactly views the blog. I'm sure I have some random visitors from time to time, but no one who is devoted enough to reach out to me and comment.
Writing to an audience of 30 is definitely more intimidating than publishing content to no one. I wouldn't say that I've changed my writing style or altered my content at all, but I'm definitely aware that people ranging from my college-aged friends to my grandma's knitting friends are reading. To engage all these audiences, I try to make sure that my writing style is professional enough to give me credibility with older audiences, but "me" enough that my friends can relate. It's an interesting mix!
My friend Dan and I have a blog, and one way we were able to increase our readership was posting our blog links on Twitter. We would tweet a link to a blog post and then attach a popular hashtag. As far as we can tell, it didn't get us any more regular followers. But it did get us more hits (and comments!) from people outside our immediate social circles.
ReplyDeleteOooh very interesting... thanks for the tip! I've previously hesitated to tweet about things that aren't related to my professional field, since half my followers are potential future employers. On second thought though, it might be beneficial to show them this little project, it could be a good supplemental portfolio piece!
ReplyDelete