Audience

Marc recently wrote a post called Disclaimer.

Disclaimers, wordy intros, apologies: they’re all unnecessary. They water down the message.

It resonated with me.

I’ve already mentioned my tendency to tag on “In my opinion“, “I feel” or “I think” to my written word.

It’s just redundancy.

So with the benefit of hindsight this disclaimer in my first post of this challenge was a waste of space:

for the record I don’t like the negative connotations of this word in today’s context. It implies a certain amount of pre-meditated thought about the content, with a marketing spin, and can feel a bit – as our American friends would say – douchey.

I was talking about the word Audience.

It’s not a bad word.

I shouldn’t have such a problem with it.

But, as I allude above, there can be a feeling that when we write publicly that there’s some hidden agenda.

That our desire to capture your attention is in some way bad.

But in fact it would be silly to be writing if we didn’t have an audience.

I want you to read what I write. I want you to get value from it.

To do that I need to understand you and target what I write.

If I don’t I’ll just be spilling out a load of rubbish like I did for 10 years or more.

This challenge has helped me understand who my audience is.

No, not my audience.

You.

I understand you better.

You are still only a very small group, as I don’t have the distribution.

But that’s OK. Even if I only make an impact on one person, then I’ve succeeded.

I’ll also be making more of an effort now, so maybe you will grow.

I also understand that you are not one person, but several. There is a crossover. If When I write a book on OneNote it might not interest you. That’s fine. Writing it won’t stop me also covering subjects such as general productivity, workflows or business.

My podcast won’t suddenly become a Microsoft Fanboy zone.

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This seems a fitting post for me to complete my second marathon in April with.

To think about the people who have read my work and how I can better serve them in the future.

I do want to continue to get better at writing

I do want to help people

I do want to be heard, even if I am being just noisy average, and I’m no longer embarrassed to say this.

Thanks for reading.

You’re awesome ❤.

Words: 400

Time: 1 hour. It’s a bit short but I like this post. It’s sentimental and a bit vague ; it suits my mood after writing all month. Finished, yay o/

This post is one of 30 I wrote daily during April 2016 as part of the 30 Day Writing Challenge.