Blogging is all about serving.
Serving is a word that you often hear in Christian circles, but that’s still not very popular. Leading, now that’s a concept most of us can get behind. But serving, that’s a whole different ball game.
Yet if you want to grow you blog, it’s all about serving and not so much about leading.
Blogging isn’t about writing great posts, or making trendy podcasts or whatever. It’s not about experimenting with cool layouts or being active on the latest social media. It’s not about who has the most Twitter followers or the most Likes and it’s definitely not about just pageviews and other statistics.
Blogging is about serving your readers.
If you want to not only attract visitors to your blog, but make them stay and come back willingly or more, you have to serve them.
You don’t just want a lot of search traffic, or a lot of likes or retweets, you want to grow a loyal audience that keeps coming back for more. The only way they will do that is if you serve them.
Serving your readers means your blog is about them, not about you. You write what they need, what they want, not what primarily interests you.
Sure, the best blogs are written from passion and conviction, so there’s definitely a strong personal component involved. But if your blog becomes too much about you, people will lose interest.
You can most certainly write about yourself, your own experiences and struggles. You need to do this in a way however that frames these in a bigger picture that is of interest to your readers.
Before you can serve your readers, you’ll need to know who they are. If you’ve picked your niche right, you should have a pretty good idea of who your readers are. If not, digging into some analytics might give you a better idea.
Once you know who your readers are, you need to find out what interests them what they want and need. That’s where social media are a valuable tool for me actually, I get a great idea of what’s happening in ‘my’ audience by following a whole bunch of youth leaders. Again, analytics can help here as well, such as popular search terms for your blog or your targeted niche.
When you know who your readers are and what they want and need, start serving them… If you do this consistently and with great quality, they will come back for more.
Are you serving your readers right now with your blog?
How could you improve your serve in this area?
[Editor’s Note: Be sure to read more awesome tips and tactics in the Focused Blogging series!]
Rachel Miedema
Rachel is a full-time writer and former youth pastor who devours books. She loves Star Wars, has a weakness for Belgian chocolate, hears the mountains call all the time, and is a walking encyclopedia of completely random facts. Seriously, just ask her.
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