A couple of months ago we ran a reader survey over at my Photography site that asked readers a few demographical questions, a few questions about their photography and a few questions about how they’d like to see the site develop. We had thousands of responses which meant we had a good sample of data to work with which gave us both insight into our readership and how we could serve them better.
Last night I published a post on DPS that gave a few results from the survey (mainly the demographical information). As I was about to hit publish on the post something hit me that I’d not realized at any point over the last two years of developing the site:
“the audience of DPS is…. well remarkably like…. me”
On each section of the survey that asked about people’s demographics or photography habits the most common response was the response I would have given if I’d completed the survey.
Of course there were a lot of people who answered differently – but if I had to describe my readers they’d be people a lot like me.
I’m still processing what this means (if anything) – Neil in the comments on that post suggested that it’s like pet owners and their pets looking like each other – perhaps that’s true.
Perhaps it is also a bit of a learning lesson – develop a blog for yourself, or people like you.
- meet your own needs (or needs you’ve had)
- write about things that interest you
- write about questions that you’ve asked
- share experiences you’ve had and lessons you’ve learned
Do these kinds of things and you’ll attract people in a similar situation.
I’m going to ponder that some more – but in the mean time I’m interested to hear what other peoples experiences are – have you attracted readers to your blog that are ‘like you’?
