The other day a blogger said to me that they can never work out what will please readers so now they please their self.
I didn’t have an argument. Fact is, sometimes an audience can be unpredictable. You spend hours carefully crafting every word of a 1000 word post and it hits the web with barely a ripple. Posts you dash out quickly cause a huge splash. Looking back you can’t figure out why. It’s happened to most of us.
So who should you please? Yourself or your readers? … It’s a tricky question, readers can be misleadingly split about what they do or do not like. In fact, the better job you do the more people will be divided about how well you are doing. You are not a true success until people hate what you do! The only person you can really satisfy that you have done a good job is your self.
On the other hand you must consider your reader. As Lorelle says you are communicating with an audience, so you should at least think about them with what you are writing. It’s no use writing the news for you, you already know it. Putting together a tutorial without considering the reader is like trying to explain a limerick to a Martian.
Constantly chasing others approval is a certain route to despair. People never agree, you end up with the least offensive solution rather than the best loved. Building by committee is rarely a way to enjoy your work or succeed with any endeavor.
The answer seems to be somewhere in between. Develop your blog for your audience but to the level of your own satisfaction. Take feedback but you have to be the ultimate judge of how well you have succeeded.
