Ethan over on FriendFeed asks the question “How much does your traffic shape what you blog about?” Most of us would say quite a lot based on what kind of traffic we want to get. The flip side to this is that blogs are moments in time, we change and our blogs change with us.

We usually write for traffic, but there are also times we write for ourselves. Not a great answer but one answer that bloggers should be thinking about when they are writing their next great 500 word epistle on something interesting. Or at least what we think is interesting.

Much of the answer to the question is what is the motivation of the blogger at the time, what is going on around them, what has inspired or annoyed them enough that they want to write about something similar.

The other flip side to this is how much is the writer willing to alienate their current audience to build out a new audience. This blog is hard to pin down at times as I have many interests and while the intention was good, have decided that focusing on this blog rather than starting a new blog based on each individual interest would suit me best. That means people will get a little social media, a little blogging, a lot of Seattle Startup news, and then just the occasional personal view.

This is a long way from where the blog started nearly two years ago.

The people who read this blog two years ago have moved on, and I have a whole new audience right now that helps out and visits the site and often provides great information back. I have found the idea of one topic one blog to be beyond my ability to successfully manage.

That does not mean that other people cannot do that.

What it does mean is that I am catering to a number of different kinds of readers, and have to rely on social networks, media, and word of mouth to talk about individual articles rather than the web site as a whole. You would not come here seeking nothing but social media, you would be disappointed in this blog moving on to something else.

Does traffic make a difference yes, but sometimes we blog for ourselves or our own interests, and how those interests change over time. We rarely blog simply for traffic, we have to put our own voices in there at some point.

The question is, why do you blog at all?

tags: blog, blogger, writer, reader, audience, why, motivation, words

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