MP thoughts to share...
I prefer to be transparent and clear about my posts, so I will continue to date mine. It appears that there are a few things that I prefer to do differently than many/most bloggers today. Many of those differences are probably driven by the fact that I’m not particularly interested in making money from the blog. At least not the primary, personal blog. It’s just me, sharing stuff about my life, our stories, lessons learned, funny things that happen along the way. I can fully see that at some point I might want a blog or website that is a source of revenue. I really would love to help enable John to retire or at the very least change jobs sooner rather than later.
Choosing not to date the posts, having a myriad of pop-ups, which kinda annoys me because they assume that every visitor will want to subscribe, not posting because they are too busy trying to make said money on other platforms and are just using the blog to drive traffic to it, having monetized it so much that you can barely get to the content - these are just a few of the things I do and will continue to do differently on this blog. I know that these techniques come from the marketing gurus that bloggers seek out to help build blogs that do make money. As I said, I’m just not in it for the money. Which leads me to ask myself, why am I in it? Who exactly is the target audience, and why isn’t it important to me to have an income from the content? I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now - who is my audience? I get side-tracked quite often because I have never really nailed this. I’m not a professional, and I don’t (currently) have anything to sell anyone. I do want to be a source of gentle evangelization, and when I say gentle, I want to be approachable to those who otherwise would never even consider reading something because their immediate impression is that there is no room for unbelievers or those questioning, seeking. I’d rather those who don’t know Jesus come here looking and get to know me better without preconceived notions about who I am. That’s not to say I am ashamed - I am not. It’s not to say I don’t want to boldly preach - I am not called to preach at all. I have been called to love others with hospitality - food for their hungry tummies, and a place they can visit and feel welcome and cared for, and words of encouragement that whatever crazy stuff is going on in their lives, they are not alone. They are not alone in the fact that God their Father is always present and always wanting to provide the very best for them, and not alone in the fact that nothing is new under the sun. Whatever life has thrown at them, be it good, bad, ugly, beautiful - they are not alone. Someone out there has or is experiencing the same or similar things and there is comfort and joy in sharing with others who understand. We somehow are able to accept our stuff easier when we know we are not alone.
So, who is my target audience? I guess I would say people like me, sort of. When I say people like me, I don’t necessarily mean people with the same background or same current life situations. I mean people experiencing similar challenges and joys who are just looking to hear from someone else in the same boat, or on the same lake at least. I mean, I guess it would most likely be someone who shares at least some of these things in common. If I used the same system to clarify the audience as bloggers does I would do something like this: (note: interestingly, I see a wrench in this system because of a statement written above...) Women>Wife>Mother>Grandmother>Christian>writer, cook, gardener, lover of good coffee, food and wine, reader, friend, walker, nature lover, homemaker... You get the idea. The wrench in the system? You might have already discovered it. In my life, I would always, always strive for Christian to come first in that list. However, to reach those who may otherwise be unreachable, I didn’t put it first because I would want them to get to know me first as these other things, and maybe see how much we are alike before they decide we couldn’t possibly have anything in common. I assure you, we probably have more in common that you could imagine.
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