I’ve kept a blog in some shape or form since around 2003. They’ve come and gone before I finally decided that I’d build out ryancmiller.com as the place for most if not all of my content. My blogging process has also ebbed and flowed over the years as well, sometimes going on writing sprints where I’d post weekly, sometimes monthly and sometimes I wouldn’t post for several months. There was also that time I did a photo a day project for an entire year.There are lots of great places to publish your content and find an audience and heavyweights like Facebook and Medium are quickly becoming the center of gravity for lots of bloggers. I have kept this site intact though because I want to make sure I have a repository for all my stuff. Platforms and companies will come and go, so I wanted a place I could control and curate everything.
Over the years I’ve spent time writing about small business, social media, personal branding, travel and more. I’ve posted short films I’ve created, projects I’ve been a part of, my music, vlogs, and tons of footage from flying my drone. It’s become a living resume and a repository of the stuff that I get very interested in. There’s variety. And that’s part of the problem.
Think about the blogs that you read, or what blogs come up when you’re googling for a particular kind of information. They’re blogs that are super-niche, super specific. Politico is just politics. Seth’s blog is just marketing. SCOTUS Blog is only Supreme Court news. When you stick to your niche, you also attract an audience that cares about that niche and that content.
Going deep rather than wide also is one of the thing that helps with SEO and that all important Google juice. It can cement you as an expert in a particular field if you keep a focus and post with regularity. That’s not at all what I’ve been doing and is probably one of the reasons I have struggled to build an audience over the years.
But at the end of the day, does an audience matter? What is the purpose of the blog? For me, it’s truly about keeping track of the projects that I’m working on-showing my work. Keeping a living resume of the things I’m interested in, the projects I’m a part of and the things I’m building.
But if you’re looking to build and audience or become known as a subject matter expert, you’ve gotta go deep, not wide. Write, film, comment and write some more and over time maybe, just maybe you’ll build a specific audience and become the leader of a very specific tribe.
EDIT – By the way, in addition to having a place to call your own (your own website/blog) I DO think it’s really valuable to cross-post to Facebook, Medium, or whatever platforms your audience is on.
