April 15, 2010 94 Comments

What Is the Focus and Purpose of Your Blog

bullseye Ask yourself that question: what is the focus and the purpose of my blog?

(If you’re blogging for pleasure or your own entertainment, skip this post and read any of these wonderful stories.)

Is the purpose of your blog easy to define? What are you aiming towards accomplishing with it? How are you testing whether or not you’re reaching your desired effect?

My blog has changed a lot over the years. At first, I blogged just for pleasure. Then, I realized that I was developing a community, and that my community wanted some consistent, useful information, so somewhere around a few years ago, things started to make more sense. Here’s a little bit of the backstory.

My Blog’s Many Faces

When I started my blog many years ago (it skittered across several domains before I landed in “real” blog software), it was for fiction. I wrote stories. Then, I wrote about fitness and nutrition. Then, I wrote about self-improvement. Then, I wrote about new media. I went from that into writing about social networks and social media, and then eventually, I moved into how businesses could use social media to improve.

What am I writing about these days? Human business. It’s essentially the idea that relationships and human-shaped experiences serve business much better than cold marketing and afterthought customer service.

What will I write about next? I’m planning some changes to [chrisbrogan.com] in the near term. My redesign by Snowy Day Design is just the beginning, and you’ll be invited along for the ride. That said, I won’t change direction too far afield. You’ll most likely still like it.

Keeping a Focus and a Purpose

Your blog is a media property. It’s also a tool that allows you to build relationships (should that be of interest), to notify and inform (if you like telling the news), to reflect and react (if you like being a commentator), to report (if that’s something you enjoy doing), or a tool to educate, instruct, or establish thought leadership. It can be a call to action, a lead generator, a showcase for your talents, and many other things.

The question is: what will you choose as your focus, and how do you define its purpose?

Can you blog without purpose? Absolutely. Can you unfocus your blog? It happens all the time.

But your community (or your audience, if you’re not as close to them) are there with an expectation. They are seeking whatever it is you’ve been offering along the way. They want your best, and they want your material to enlighten, entertain, inform, inspire, or any of several other functions.

With that in mind, and accepting that things change over time, my question remains: what is the focus and purpose of your blog?

Photo credit respres

Related posts:

  1. Focus on Thanksgiving
  2. David Kowarsky Surrenders Focus
  3. Focus
  4. Focus Tricks
  5. Ben Wants You to Focus

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  • http://www.finearttips.com lori mcnee

    Thanks for sharing this basic but thought provoking question.

    I only started my art tip blog one year ago as a way of 'giving back' … in that short time I have risen to be the #4 most influential 'artist' on Twitter!

    I have been asked to do a series of webinars on Social Media for the artist by the largest art publication. So…I signed up for the Social Media Summit 2010 to learn even more.

    My main problem is 'time'. I am a fulltime artist and mom and now blogger! I am loving it, but hope to learn how to monitize my efforts.

    Thanks for sharing your knowledge-
    Lori

  • davidmcmillan

    Chris,

    Funny you should bring this up — it's actually something I recently addressed with my own burgeoning community on YouTube:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mrjoc6Pb0I

    Excellent meeting you on Tuesday at the conference, btw. And thanks for signing my book! (Is it weird, though, that I wish you had written my name in the inscription? Ah well, still awesome that you signed it.)

    cheers,
    David

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  • DarrenSproat

    Chris,
    I read often but don't comment much. This one caught my eye, however, because I just went through a major site redesign and evaluation of the purpose of my blog. I know now that it is pretty simple… to share my experiences, and those of others, with those who are interested in reading them. Primarily, LIFE is the topic and the purpose is to share stories of life that will inspire and motivate others to live theirs beyond their imaginations. Thanks for provoking a little thought on this otherwise mindless Friday afternoon. :)

  • DarrenSproat

    Just have to highlight… “they miss the point of attracting, capturing and engaging the people whom they wish to connect with”. THREE CHEERS for pointing this out.
    Thank you
    Darren

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  • lynnwedgeboots

    I believe that keeping a focus and a purpose for a weblog is the most important thing. In time, people tend to forget this because is so easy to lose focus.

  • annawoods04

    Well this is upto the person who is looking forward to prepare their own blog.Some do it to earn money from them while various methods some do it to share their own feelings and life with their friends and others, while some may be doing it just they love to do it.

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  • http://www.spectraelite.com Luis

    “Can you blog without purpose? Absolutely. Can you unfocus your blog? It happens all the time.” –> Hello Me

    “accepting that things change over time” Definitely, you an your business need to evolve constantly. This life is about growing internally and externally. Unfortunately, we always focus in external things rather that what is really important which is our inner guy or girl (Growing Spirituality is huge for anybody.)

  • http://marianlibrarian.com Marian Schembari

    God, this is something I've been thinking about for ages. I get so freaked out about focusing my blog because then I feel like it's stuck there but I've realized in the past 6 or 7 months that I've been blogging, it's probably refocused about 3 different times. And people keep coming! My traffic grows steadily every month and since it's loosely focused around my career post-college, people like to following me on that journey.

    So when I started the blog to get a job, it was all career oriented, but mostly personal. People congratulated me when I got a job and that was bad ass. Then when I started blogging about publishing because that was the industry of said job, I got a little publishing following. And then when I quit the publishing job to freelance an starting blogging about social media freelancing, more people joined them. And now that I've started a small side project helping people get a job using social media, my audience has grown to include career-minded folk. I haven't noticed a drop in my readership or a change. It's just…. grown. And I think if you always include some form of personal aspect or at least tie it back to one thing, your focus can always be, well, you.

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    Very informative stuff.I also believe that knowing focus and Purpose of blog play vital role.Forecasting is all well.I always suggest If we consider blogging and plan to run it like a business, then we should run it like a business.

  • http://thesocialmediachronicle.blogspot.com/ Natalie DeNike

    I really appreciate your useful and practical blogging tips. As a student, I try to focus my blog on social media trends and news that affect both social media users and professionals. I often struggle in finding my purpose and unique voice when blogging about this topic. I want to avoid sounding repetitive of other news outlets and would like to develop a stronger opinion on the topics. I appreciate you pinpointing the different types of blogging. I do agree that it is important to adopt a blog writing style that you enjoy.

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    The main thing is that what you comment should be relevant and the focusing to the topic.Human business. It’s essentially the idea that relationships and human-shaped experiences serve business much better than cold marketing and afterthought customer service.

  • Kyra aka Brighter Scribe

    Strangely enough, this post gave me comfort. It answered the question of purpose and focus for me in a way I've been pondering for a while now. Also, I had an inkling that evolution in blogging was OK and that it happens. So cool. I blog for pleasure. I blog for the fun of it. I blog to face the fear of putting my written word out there and just let it go. Mostly I blog because I love to write. End of story. Who knows where blogging will take me in the future; but that, of course, is the pleasure of it all.

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      To date I have not built a significant community nor am I receiving much
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    Strangely enough, this post gave me comfort. It answered the question of purpose and focus for me in a way I’ve been pondering for a while now. Also, I had an inkling that evolution in blogging was OK and that it happens. So cool. I blog for pleasure. I blog for the fun of it. I blog to face the fear of putting my written word out there and just let it go. Mostly I blog because I love to write. End of story. Who knows where blogging will take me in the future; but that, of course, is the pleasure of it all.

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    • Anonymous

      Confusion led to being demotivated and dropping the blog pretty fast –
      which meant I never gave myself a chance to build an audience in the
      first place. So with my current blog I spent months narrowing down the
      ‘big topic’ I was going to tackle throughout all my blog posts –
      creating legacy. I love this topic, and it’s nice to see my audience
      steadily growing as they know what to expect.

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