Matthew Gates 5m 1,130 #audience
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Blogging To The Invisible Audience
Blogging began in the 1990s on the Internet in the form of a journal, originally starting right in our own heads as a thought, to a text file, to a word document, to finally, a voice on the Internet. When writing a journal, we imagine who might read it someday, only to realize, we probably want one reading it. The only one who might actually read it is us when we get older. There is no doubt that writing makes our minds more broader and makes us think more about different types of things, but when it comes to our audience, who exactly are we blogging to and for?
As I sit here and write this blog post, confession, I imagine who is going to read it, who might be interested in reading my ramblings, who might take time out of their busy day to give me a few minutes of their time. For that, I thank you, dear reader, but personally: I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why you are reading. But I must admit: I care about you! I really do! I think you’re the best thing that happened to me because you acutally took some time to read what I wrote! During the day, I feel like no one ever listens to me, and I’m invisible at work (or at least I try to be), and here you are, giving my voice some purpose! Thank you! Thank you for believing in me and what I am saying! Thank you for visiting this Confessions of the Professions.
I sometimes wonder who is actually reading my articles though, reading the articles of the contributors on this website. Are you a kid? Are you a teenager? Are you a young adult? Are you in your 20s? 30s? 40s? 50s? Maybe you just turned 80? Who are you? How was your day? What is your life like? Why do you visit Confessions of the Professions? Did you learn something on here? How many times have you visited this place? Do you like the website? Do you like the articles, confessions, infographics, and goals of Confessions of the Professions?
As I blog to my imaginary audience, I can only hope that even just one reader is good enough for me to have an audience and learns something from what I wrote and loves something I wrote. I remember when my audience was my mom and my girlfriend. That was it! Yay 2 visitors when I first began! I even had seen it get to as high as 1,000 visitors in a day. I think the most may have been 5,000 in a single day, depending on the virability of the article. It all depends on the trends of the world and what they are searching for and the decisions of the “powers that be” otherwise known as Skynet (i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and all other search engines) who felt my article was good enough to get some readers to it.
My invisible audience keeps me company and while I have never seen or met any of you, nor have I ever asked anyone I met if they ever came across Confessions of the Professions, I can imagine just who you are, businessmen, businesswomen, college students, construction workers, web cam models, police officers, lawyers, doctors, which I do know for a fact that people of those professions have cross this website because of the emails I had received of you admitting your job occupation.
It surely doesn’t define who you are. I mean, you go home, and you’re just a human being, aren’t you? You aren’t a cop at home. You aren’t a doctor at home. You aren’t a teacher at home. Sure, you can “turn into” those in nearly a second, but that is not who you are, exactly. You are just you, a human being who is interested in this or that, reading this or that, replying to this or that, and just enjoying your free time away from work, outside of work, or maybe you are in work right now reading this, and maybe it helps you in whatever way it can.
We have the opposite side of the coin too, as there is always ying and yang, in which I am just as invisible to you, as you are to me. My photo exists somewhere on this website, but you never really see me. You just see the words I typed a few days, weeks, months, or even years ago. Pretty cool when you think about it. I have no idea where you’re from, either. I mean Google Analytics tells me you’re mostly from the United States, but quite a few of you come from India, South Africa, Australia, England, and Canada, along with many other countries.
To have that power to “reach the world” is quite an amazing power that all of us human beings are capable of. Where in history could you even remotely get that kind of power? To get a message to the world centuries ago, you had to pretty much die and leave something that lasted. We’ve got Leonardo DaVinci, Nietzsche, Socrates, and the many great philosophers and artists of history throughout the century, but it was not a thought in their minds that they could reach someone from the other side of the world. To even get a message to the other side of the world just a few hundred years ago required a ship that could bring messages back and forth. Nowadays, I can talk to someone in China as if they were right next to me.
We blog to an invisible audience because it is the voice we have, the voice we can use, the voice in which we can reach others, whether we want to give or sell information, we have that audience. What makes that audience most real is usually when the buy something or comment on something you wrote. However, blogging to an invisible audience is what helps the passion remain alive. If you knew your audience and they stopped reading, what would be the motivation? With the imaginary audiences we have, it makes blogging one of the most remarkable experiences we can have as a human being, knowing the potential that the “connected world” can read what you wrote.
So, there is a point to you reading this. I want to give you a FREE Confessions of the Professions pen to know you are more than just my invisible audience, especially if you’ve been a reader after so many years and still reading. All I ask is that you pay the shipping costs. There are just 239 Confessions of the Professions pens remaining. Get yours today and have a “piece” of the confessions.
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