The Daily Maybe #10: Writing For One
Following one of the golden rules of blogging.
Welcome back to The Daily Maybe, dear Reader.
After the madness of writing about Avengers: Infinity War yesterday, I thought I’d take things slow for a day with a more personal post.
Relax, I’m not going to be telling some sappy story. Or, rather, I am, but it’s not going to be all that long or overly emotional. Today’s post is simply me sharing my experience with the “rule” of blogging that most resonates with me:
Write your content for one person.
Now, that doesn’t mean I ask one particular friend of mine what they want to read, then write only that. On the contrary, I only ever write whatever’s on my mind. Whether or not anyone wants to read it is their issue ✋
What “write for one” means is understand the bigger picture. For the longest time, I’ve fantasised about becoming some mega famous, Casey Neistat-level person in the world of blogging. I’d write only about the most trendy of topics, and everyone would be dying to hear my opinion as I pumped out five-star content every single day.
…yeah it doesn’t work like that.
I’m way too lazy with my blogging for that to be feasible right now. Reaching new heights requires hard work, every single day. As of this post, I haven’t really been doing that with the blogs.
That said, I have been trying. I kicked myself back into gear before my blog-break days reached double digits, and have found my voice online. Most importantly, however, I’ve learned what to actually focus on.
Writing amazing, insightful opinion pieces every day would be great, but that’s just not me. I’m more of the casual conversation kinda guy, open to occasionally ripping into topics of more societal value.
Put simply:
That dabbling has enabled me to write about a wide mix of topics. From Fortnite to toxic masculinity to creativity, I’ve written about a bunch! What’s more, as I’ve written, I’ve understood my audience more and more.
Throughout all of this, I’ve gained one amazing thing to teach me the lesson of “write for one.” One thing that consistently teaches me that it’s okay if a million people don’t read the blog, because one person always does without fail.
I’ve gained Renzo.
John/Renzo is a friend from high school and, without a shadow of a doubt, my number one fan. He’s supportive, he’s engaging, and he’s a friend I’m very grateful to have. Most importantly, he’s always giving me amazing feedback on my blogs.
Be it recommendations for topics, his own opinions on my work, or just far more praise than I deserve, Renzo is always contributing to the daily blog. He reads them more than anyone else, and enjoys doing so.
Renzo is the person I’m writing for.
What I mean by that is, he is the person I count on to read and engage with the blog. The rule of “write for one” basically means to appreciate the one person you’re consistently engaging, and just maintain what you’re doing to appeal to that person.
If you know who you’re writing for, you can work out what works best for you. With that, you can focus on developing your own voice, instead of trying to appeal to the masses. Other people will then naturally gravitate to your genuine writing with time.
That’s what I’ve been told, that’s what I’ve experienced. I write in a way I’m comfortable with, and people of all sorts read an episode of The Daily Maybe here and there. I may not have a massive readership, but the beginnings of one are definitely there.
And that’s the golden rule of “write for one person.”
🍉 I’m going to start putting this little mini-conversation thing at the end of each blog, in the style of one of my favourite bloggers, Jon Westenberg 🌈.
Today felt like a casual story/lesson kinda day, but there is another reason I wrote on the blogging rule. The piece I’m currently working on is all about the societal implications of Kanye West’s latest Twitter spree; while that topic’s chock-full of stuff to write about, it’s seriously a lot.
There’s a lot to write in just a few hours, so I’m probably going to keep chipping away at it for a few days while posting smaller blogs in the meantime.
I’m also working on bringing The Millennial Dilemma series back proper. More on that later.
I think I’ll use this end space for updates on how my day was, really make this more of a daily blog. Today I woke up late and raked the front lawn. How was your day?
That… That’s all I got right now.
Till next we meet,
Sarim
