One person reads this blog, and statistically, it’s not you
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, Apple board member, former CEO of Sun Microsystems, multi-billionaire, nerd-hero, general badass and good friend of mine, made this joke at a conference:
Most blogs have precisely one reader—the blogger themself.
I think he was making fun of me. It’s not just a joke; it’s true most of the time. No one knows how many blogs there are. If you count a myspace profile as blog, albeit usually a vomit-inducing one, then there are at least tens of millions. If I had to guess, I would have to say that there are about two hundred million worldwide, or about 3% of the world population. Of those, I’d say only a quarter of them are regularly updated.
So what makes these 50 million people think that their opinion is important enough to let the whole world know? I mean, when was the last time you published your diary? (Not you Paris Hilton, we know you publish your sex life in video format once a year) Fame? Attention? To prove that you exist? All of the above.
The best forum poster I’ve ever encountered published his thoughts as dialogues with himself. He would tell a story, often referring to himself in the third person. It would usually star a misled young man, presumably his old self, seeking advice from a mentor, presumably his new self. It was the most effective form of textual communication that I’ve seen. He wasn’t telling you what you should be doing; he showed you his mistakes and what he learned so that you might not repeat them. Of course, I proceeded to make many of those same mistakes, but each time I learned something and had a greater appreciation of my experiences and life in general. When I go back and revisit his thoughts, I always find something I’d overlooked, like the subliminal messages that suggest he’s actually Eric Schmidt under an alias. Bad. Ass.
Your primary audience should be yourself.