Blog Basics

Identifying your blogging goals

The first step toward developing your blog is to know your blogging goals. The two main questions to consider in order to understand your goals are:

• What's the main reason you want to start a blog?
• Who do you want to read your blog?

Review the graphic below to get an example of how a few typical bloggers might answer.

Three bloggers

The main reason you want to start blogging is your primary goal. However, most people have more than one reason for blogging. These extra reasons are your secondary goals. Examining your primary goal and your desired audience can help you identify your secondary goals.

For example, as you can see from the image above, Jessie's primary goal is to keep her friends and family updated about her kids. However, the blog is not just for those people—she says she'd also like for other moms to read her blog. So one of her secondary goals might be to:

• Meet new people and be part of a community of moms who blog

If she's interested in having a lot of people read her writing, she might also have this common secondary goal:

• To become a better writer

In short, anything that motivates you to blog, no matter how minor, can be one of your blogging goals. As you develop your blog, keeping your goals in mind will help you decide exactly what you want your blog to be like.