Scobleizer - Latest Comments in “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Christopher Coulter — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:52:15 -0000

make up your own points and don’t really acknowledge mine

Do you understand the defintion of "counterpoint"?

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

kystorms — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:37:23 -0000

hi Robert
great post! I have a smallish audience, but I do care about what content I have on my blog, I do care about my art! I would love to have it grow a bit more, but I am more concerned about how it comes off, and who it reaches than its size.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

wannalearnjapanese — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:53:20 -0000

I agree with you on this one Robert. I know I would be happy with a small sized audience that comments regularly. The best blogs to me are the ones where the community gets involved with the blogger.

PS. Doesn't everyone know that bashing "The Scobleizer" is the best way to increase your stats... (^_^)/

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Brian Buck — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:21:46 -0000

I loved this post. I am new to blogging and still am trying to find my voice. Your focus on increasing the art instead of the audience is very inspiring! Thanks.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

tish grier — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:12:55 -0000

Hi Robert!

about 2 years ago, Susan Mernit and I were discussing audience and blog traffic, as I was very worried that my traffic was too low for my blog to ever make a difference...

Susan said something to me to the effect of that it wasn't how many people who were reading me, but *who* those people are...

So, honestly, I may *still* have traffic numbers that make me appear far less than A-list, but, but I know that I've got some *fairly* influential readers. The proof has been some really interesting freelance work over the past two years (not to mention my short presentation at Supernova and a few other conferences.) For someone with no formal journalism nor marketing background (unless you count 5 years in retail), I can usually generate one link per post and end up on Techmeme. Not too bad for a low-traffic "nobody" :-)

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:26:15 -0000

Robert - good post, contrarian, yet very much on point. Your observations are derived from the numbers (hopefully correct in this case). It is interesting that the same people who chase the "Google Ad Dream", are the same ones who have a hard time digesting the Google numbers. Go figure!

And where is the Google PR machine in this debate - if there is commentary from Google/YouTube, please point your audience to the their response - or please press them for one!

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Robert Scoble — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 06:36:03 -0000

Chris, Chris, Chris. You sure are consistent. Glad to see you just make up your own points and don't really acknowledge mine. That's cool. I'm used to it with you.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Christopher Coulter — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 06:31:19 -0000

Classic cop-out shell-game tricks. When numbers low, claim readership is better, more elite, more important than all the peasantry riff-raff, when numbers high, claim that you were the first to 'know' this, everyone else took forever in 'getting it', the morons they are. In short: When low, go elite, when high, claim you were the first to know. Can't ever lose.

Counterpoints

1. Exclusive content? Maybe there is a REASON why no one else has that material. Start-up exec's running at the mouth on a narcissistic-personality-disorder streak isn't exactly high-dynamic material.

2. Conversations made up of what? If it's just the usual blog drama queen conversations, so much the worse, besides that has a shelf life measured in hours. Quality of the conversation is critical, not just marketing-dweeb manipulated into a fake buzz lather. If a poor conversation, next time around people will be that much wiser, not buying into the reindeer games. And if you abuse the product and conversations for so long, no one will listen, crying wolf too many times (i.e. Realplayer and others of that ilk).

3. Your niche might not be my niche. There is a whole world out there, limiting it to the blog puke or your narrow field of vision, isn't the all.

4. Credible and authoritative? Says who? You? Many differing sources of authority, and they can come from unlikely places. And oft times the MOST credible people aren't even in the limelight glare, you have to hunt them down. Good journalists know that. What's authority to you, might not be authority to me.

5. Size always matters, but returns and results do too, i.e. profit margin's. Basic economics. Things that stay forever niche, are stagnated and eventually salt-poison themselves out. A body of water, needs inputs and outputs, to remain vibrant. And audiences are fickle, one minute you can have an big audience, the next it's gone. Hoarding all the toys be not "elite", it's childish.

6. If no one listens, that doesn't make it art. Media empire always should look at audience size, demographics, programming scheduling factors and advertising results. Quality of product is default. Playing the socialist, "art for art's sake" games, 'fund me just because', will doom you to niche, followed by crash and burn. Quality should be assumed, if you even have to ask those questions, it's not there yet.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Simon — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:42:36 -0000

One other thing, I have no idea who you are, I don't know if you are a celeb or well known or whatevr and I have never read your blog before, just in case thats important.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Simon — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:34:22 -0000

I agree with the one comment on here that said that blogging was about needing to write something that someone needs to read at one particular moment. It's not about spikes in readership, its about writing the best thing you can in what ever subject your blog is about.

I have three on here, giventosound.com and giventoscore.com in addition and whatever the subject, I always write from the heart and advertising or tailoring for sponsorship is not of interest to me.

If we write it, they will come. Reader spikes are nice but shouldnt be essential.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

JoeDuck — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 01:09:50 -0000

Although I agree that there are exceptions to the "audience size" issue, it's still a good proxy for the value of a site in a given niche. Obviously visits to, say, TechCrunch are worth more to advertisers than visits to Perez Hilton's site.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Brian — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 22:30:02 -0000

I don't think this is a "blogtopian" view it all. In many ways it's the essence of smart advertising. Size is a factor for truly mass market products, but more important to brands is really the ability to target to the right people (at the right time). If I'm selling dog food, I want to reach dog owners -- if you can help me do that efficiently then I'd much prefer using your small niche of dog owners than, say, all of some news site. It's a smaller, more effective, more engaged audience.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Jacqueline Zenn — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 22:03:34 -0000

Like I said on Hugh Macleod's post, I write to build relationships and create value for my readers - and I'm definitely way more focused on communication and the quality of my writing than my stats. After all, I'd rather have a smaller number of readers that engage in conversation or otherwise enjoy my work than a bunch of fleeting eyeballs.

On a somewhat related note, this is similar to my argument for the fact that search engine optimization is not all that important for most - instead, they should focus on creating value and community first, not on google traffic.

And when it comes to advertising, the niche thing seems to hold - it has not been that difficult to sell ads on my fashion/style blog (and I'm not exactly Vogue here) because like gadget blogs, those readers are much more likely to click and purchase. The point - some niches are just much more likely to attract advertisers than others.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Eric Rice — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:02:31 -0000

Heh, yeah 'behind' ain't a big help. Need more people by my *side*, dude. But I appreciate it.

Maybe this year would be a good year to start a magazine. Heh.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Curt — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:34:43 -0000

I concur with Allen on this one, Robert. This seems more like a Blogtopian view of how things _should_ work than a realistic view of how they do. That's not to say I don't believe these things should be our focus as writers (or video bloggers, or whatever your medium is). It's just that I really think advertising buyers in the wider world can't shake loose the errant thumb of sheer numbers from the scales they use, at least not yet. And perhaps what advertisers care about is, in this era of change, also in flux.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Evelyn Rodriguez — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:07:02 -0000

Good points, but I'd take it further. "What advertisers REALLY care about" is the wrong question too.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Alfred C Thompson — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:04:33 -0000

Pure numbers are seldom enough. I worry about my target audience. Its not huge - high school CS teachers - but I want to get as many of them as readers as possible. From what I can tell a rather large (even the majority) of my readers are not part of that target. While I am happy they are finding value in what I write getting more of them to read is not something I think about. Its getting the right information for my target and finding ways to let them know about it.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Allen Stern — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:59:42 -0000

Here is my semi-rebuttal to your post Robert.
http://www.centernetworks.c...

I sure hope we get a chance to sit down and have a conversation sometime - maybe this year at SXSW as we only shook hands last year.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Rodney Rumford — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:59:45 -0000

Robert,
It is about creating conversations and reaching multiple points of gravity. Gravity causes people to move and pulls objects toward it(readers & other bloggers).

It is not how many people you reach... rather... how many people of influence (that you care about) do you reach.

Nice blog post.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Douglas Karr — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:45:23 -0000

"Artists ought to walk a mile in someone else's pants. That way you're a mile away and you have their pants." Joseph P. Blodgett

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Erik Schwartz — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:24:54 -0000

What you're describing is the cable television business.

They can sell niche ads on niche networks for a high CPM. The problem is the market is limited to the size of the niche.

It's really easy to fool yourself with how well you're doing. Early growth is fast, because the community is small and insular. But you hit the top of your market size really quickly and then your growth is limited to the growth of your market.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Captain Marc — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:55:12 -0000

The problem is that very few bloggers understand what art is.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

dawnkey — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:13:39 -0000

As I say in my 2008 predictions, I think blogging is going to change significantly beginning this year. Blogs (and bloggers) are going to be thin-sliced so that when I automatically get content from Fred Wilson, for example, I don't get all the music stuff that I don't care about, but the VC stuff that I do.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Steve Woolf — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:05:26 -0000

Robert: thanks, we really appreciate the support and encouragement. People in their 30's to well into their 50's watch and post comments on our shows, which tells us we're making content that's intelligent enough for a broad audience. Our reinvention was the result of having the luxury of being able to make mistakes. That's what's missing from the traditional model these days, imo.

We'll be looking forward to seeing what you announce in a couple of weeks.

Re: “What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

Robert Scoble — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:37:53 -0000

Eric: if you ever feel lonely, just look behind you. We're all following your every move. :-)