SOUL SEARCHING FOR MY INNER BLOGGER
A journal entry of a photographer on starting and writing his own blog.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography
Growing into blogging
Recently, a couple of months ago, I decided to finally put my fingers to the keyboard and start blogging. The drive to do so came out of a concoction equal parts necessity and desire. While I do not consider myself much of a natural or motivated writer, I have kind of always wanted to write. Yeah, doesn’t make much more sense to me either, but it is what it is. With the revamp of my website, I felt it was time to set out on a blogger’s journey, to post regularly and give this writing business a proper try.
It turns out that I might have been a little naïve about it. Not the writing part, but how to build a meaningful blog. It is comparatively easy to ramble on from one topic to another, but quite another to write independent articles that all fit under a common umbrella. I must admit this part is still work in progress.
Knowing your audience
Essentially, this is the crux I think for having a successful blog. Knowing your audience is key. To note, knowing your audience is not necessarily identifying those that already have an interest in you, but also knowing who you want to target as your audience. I must admit that I am running afoul of this part. I am a photographer, naturally I see my audience as other photographers and those interested in photography.
But are those people really my target audience? Good question, right? I, personally, follow other photographers, curious to read their thoughts and to peruse their work, looking for inspiration, affirmation, and learning more. Intrinsically, I gravitated towards writing blogs along the same line as those that I was reading. In the back of my head, this little voice kept admonishing me that I could be missing the audience that I actually want to reach.
So, who really is my audience? Hmmmm…. tough question.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography
Who should be my target audience?
Anyone who writes a blog for a specific purpose must ask themselves this very question. There is a succinct difference between writing for sheer pleasure and writing for a premeditated purpose. I started my blog in order to reach people that have a potential interest in my product and services, to draw more attention to myself and my website. This statement is the determinator for who my target audience should be. And with this in mind, I must now zero in on my target audience, regardless of personal preferences, which in turn then influences what and how I should be writing.
Worry not, I am not going to dive into a long exposé of how to determine your target audience, how to figure out what they want to read about, or how to reach them.
So, who is my target audience? Well, the purpose of my new website is to showcase and sell my fine art photography and ultimately will house all my fine art works and photobooks. Voila! Target audience identified thus narrowing down for whom I should be writing and the type of SEO I need to garner.
Now on to tailoring my blog topics and writing style.
So, what is this here blog about?
Very good question there, Robert!
Believe it or not, when I opened Word to write this week’s blog, I had a completely different topic in mind. I had spent some time researching through various sources for a completely different topic altogether. Yet, when I finally started to write, my mind went off on a tangent, and now we find ourselves here with a not well planned out opinion piece that was never intended.
To answer my self-posed question: “so, what is this here blog about?” could we say: “Blog Searching”, a.k.a soul searching just for blogging?
In a nutshell this is something akin to a journal entry that allows me to unscramble the mess in my head regarding this business of blogging. How can I write what I want, make it relevant to my target audience, appeal to a wide variety of people, and not pigeonhole myself into a very restrictive set of topics.
Searching through my blossoming blogger soul I found that I want to keep my topics options open. I want my blog to become a personal journey, a compilation of my opinions, my passions, my travels, and topics that I can identify with. So, I did a little more soul digging and realized that most of the things I want to write about fall into two reoccurring topics: Photography and Travel. I guess those are my greatest passions. Might throw in Food as a category as well, but then most of my food stories tend to also fall into the traveling category. Maybe, to make my life easier, let me just keep it to these two topics for now.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography
What comes next?
Damn, I am full of good questions, aren’t I? Go ahead, I am laughing at myself too.
I guess now that I have a better notion to whom I want to write (or is it “for whom”?) and what I want to/should write about, I need to figure out the voice in which to write it. Somewhere in the previous paragraph is hidden the narrative voice that holds all these topics together and can become the voice behind all my blogs.
I believe it should be my personal passion, born out of my interests and opinions, that should become the narrative voice.
I see my blog as a window into me. I am not trying to sound narcissistic here, not in the least bit, I just want my blog to offer you a better understanding of that which drives me to take the images that I do. By doing so I hope that I can impart some of my passion on you and help you build a connection to my work.
Somewhere on my profile I wrote
On my about me page I have a quote from myself that reads as follows:
“Photography allows me to share my own vision of the world and impart on you an emotional experience of your own — something I call: ‘Extrospective Photography"‘.
To me, extrospective photography is the science, art, and practice of creating durable images by recording light electronically (digital) or chemically (film) of objects and events external to the photographer’s own mind, though influenced by the photographer's own conscious, self-reflection, and their unique way of experiencing the world around them.
In a nutshell my blog should become an extension of ‘Extrospective Photography’, allowing the readers an even deeper immersion into my images and gain an even greater emotional experience.
Did I find my blogger soul?
Ha-ha, that still remains to be determined, but I think I can say that this journal entry, a.k.a blog, has indeed allowed me to sort through the cluster of thoughts in my head and find a narrative approach to my blogs that will allow me to express what I wish while remaining, hopefully, relevant to my desired audience.
I hope, going forward, I will be able to impart on you my dear readers, a better sense of myself and my photography, independent of the topics I may choose to wordsmith into a blog topic, while remaining coherent to my ‘Extrospective Photography’ philosophy.
In other words, giving you better insight into what inspires and drives me, consequently empowering you to form a greater emotional connection to my photos.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography
Thank you for reading my blog and visiting my website :)
