The Six Shapes and Colors of Blog Readers
This is the first post of a mini series aiming to help you get more loyal readers and increase your community.
You are a blogger. Chances are you employ some statistics programs on your blog. So, you must know by now that there are people reading it. If it happens that you use FeedBurner (or something similar), you are aware that some of those people are loyal readers.
You may be satisfied with the knowledge you get from such programs. However, there is another kind of classification which could help you adjust your writing according to the category of readers you wish to target.
1. The Lurker
The lurker is the quiet reader of your blog. Interested in the topics you write about, he comes back often (maybe he bookmarked your site). He seeks and maybe follows your advice, but he seldom leaves a comment.
Possible lurker profiles:
- Beginner bloggers, looking for tips on how to run a blog, overwhelmed by the huge quantity of information available, not perceiving yet that there is a dialog going on out there.
- People from outside the blogosphere who find your site interesting and keep on coming back, but do not know they are allowed (and even encouraged) to leave comments.
- Advanced bloggers (is this where the “A” may be coming from?), in search of interesting material for their blogs, busy and focused to get the latest news before others do.
- Stumblers (a.k.a. StumbleUpon members), who press a button and abandon themselves to the odds that bring them food for their thoughts. Usually they don’t even stop by enough to read a full post (not to mention commenting). However, if something on your page attracts their interest, they would bookmark you, give you a thumb up or even write a review about your site.
2. The Troll
Trolls are attention seekers. Their mission is to derail the conversation and community you have built up on your blog and have everyone focus solely on them. You don’t write for the trolls. You don’t need them.
If you want, you can even participate in the Troll Eradication Project.
3. The Marketer
Marketers are the ones who have their own blogs or other online businesses, and who comment on other blogs as a promotion channel. As they don’t want to be perceived as spammers, they try to make pertinent and interesting comments, so other readers would click on their name. Marketers are valuable to you. Some of them may be your future partners or friends. Some others may offer you good feedback. If challenged, they can even fill your blog with spammy comments for the sake of an ephemeral $200 link, hoping that the almighty Google God will count it and reward their efforts.
4. The Spammer
No further explanation necessary. You don’t write for them, but they keep you busy. Ask Akismet.
5. The Seeker
Seekers are persons who found you via organic search. They can make an important part of your audience (depending on your SEO skills and on your blog’s age). They come and get their info, they might leave some comments, then they continue their online journey and you may never see them again. If your blog is very focused on his topic of interest, the seeker will bookmark it for further reference. As many of them may use del.icio.us to keep their bookmarks, they can be valuable to your blog. Del.icio.us bookmarks can bring you traffic and lots of links, if you manage to get to the front page. Another characteristic of seekers is that they would click a contextual ad to find out more about the researched topic. If you are after making money from your blog with contextual advertising, they are the ones who would put bread and butter (or maybe some caviar?) on your table.
6. The Loyal
This is the category that rewards you most. They like your writing, they gladly come back often to share their thoughts with you. They are your motivation for becoming better every day. They are your community.
Conclusion
Do you think your blog readers fall in other categories than the ones described above? Feel free to add them in the comments.
Aim of this exercise: try to keep your readers happy, and your blog healthier, by getting to know your audience better.
If you enjoyed this post, stay tuned in for next Tuesday’s topic: How to shift a reader from lurker to loyal. To keep up with the series, please subscribe.
Ronald Huereca says...
Simonne,
This is a great first post. I’m interested in seeing how to turn the lurker into non-lurkers and the seeker into loyals.
inspirationbit says...
WOW, Simonne! I’ve never thought of blog readers in such an organized structure. What a fabulous way to launch your guest spot.
I doubt I can add any other types of readers to your thoughtfully structured list. Can’t wait for the next Tuesday to pick up more tips from you.
Simonne says...
Thank you. I hope that we will all end by adding some improvement to our blogs, to make them sticky for lots of readers.
Bes says...
Congratulations Simonne on a splendid article!
This is a very nice list. My site has a lot of lurkers, and they are usually very nice people, even if they never participate.
I have a lot of what you call “trolls” on my site, though they rarely comment in public. They usually contact me to disagree over a certain post, and many of them threaten me personally also. Imagine getting restraining orders against online people; it is a weird thing to do.
I am guessing many, if not most, of the bloggers try to be marketers by commenting with useful or sometimes not so useful information with only one purpose: to publicize their urls. They are also very nice people most of the times.
The spammers are what Akismet keeps at bay, though my contact form is not starting to attract these people.
The seekers can bring big bursts or busts of traffic to your site if you write detailed articles on something, or if you post specific information regarding some topic that people may be looking for.
I am guessing almost all of my commentors are loyal readers, like you, Ronald and Vivien here, and I owe my blog’s success in part to them [and you] since without them [and you, ayyya, this is becoming too redundant :p] , I would have no traffic.
I think my blog readers fall into all those types.
Nice post, Simonne. I am looking forward to the next in the series.