For two consecutive days, starting from five days ago, I posted two articles written by guest authors. I hand-picked these two people to write articles for me because I see both of them as intelligent people. One of them is very knowledgeable in topics I am highly unfamiliar with, while the other has proven their writing capabilities through multiple insightful pieces. Although the first article got an overall positive response, the second literally failed. As fast as I could instant message people asking them to read and reflect on the piece, I got new worthless comments telling me to come back and write my own pieces, or declaring how much the piece at hand sucked. I wanted my friend to get a good review of his writing from people that he normally wouldn’t receive input from. The input I got was not anything near what I was expecting.

If it makes any of you feel any better, both Roger Manarik (the author of the second guest piece) and I read through all the comments. Although I did not respond to all of them directly, and Roger didn’t respond to any of them at all, we tried to get the best out of as many of the comments as possible. A majority of them were directed at me instead of Roger’s writing as I would have rather wanted. I really thought about why the piece received so much criticism, and had a short discussion with Roger as well.

Essentially, the only thing Roger could come up with was that the piece was rushed and unthoughtful. I had requested the piece from Roger, and he felt obliged to submit a piece for me as soon as possible. Lacking thought and consideration, the writing turned out less influential than his other pieces.

Although I agreed with Roger at the time, I thought up of a better reason based off facts that I already knew behind the scenes that Roger would have no knowledge of whatsoever. Essentially, when his writings are posted on Facebook in the form of notes, the people Roger tags are his good friends – people who like Roger, who like his writing, and want to read what he has to say. When I moved his writing to a foreign area such as my blog, however, he had a completely different audience. The way he had to approach his readers was completely different, but the adjustment was not made accordingly.

According to my access logs, the group of people that read my blog is severely more diverse than the people who would ever have access to Roger’s Facebook notes. I have people coming to read my articles from my hometown in Illinois, United States of America, all the way to people from Russia on the other side of the Earth. The range of people I have to please is much wider than what Roger has to ever dream about doing.

This leads me to the importance of target audience. You see it all the time in commercials – depending on the type of show airing, the commercials change. You will never see a commercial for Teletubbie dolls during an R-rated movie, and you will never see a commercial for condoms during Barney. But is target audience more complicated than just who you want to read your content? What if you want more viewers? Does that mean you have to change your content to fall under multiple target audiences, and how does one go about targeting both infants and adults at the same time?

This is where you come in. I want you to comment for me and let me know why you either (1) like my blog and keep coming back for more, may it be because of entertainment or value of information, or (2) dislike my blog and avoid coming back to it at all costs. All one-line comments, irrelevant comments, or comments without valid email addresses will be rejected. You may use a nickname to hide your identity, but you must use a legitimate email address. Note that nobody except I will be able to see your email address.