Regular readers know that my
mantra for entrepreneurial success is Fill an
Unmet Need. A couple of readers have suggested that this might also
be the formula for blogging
success.
I got some confirmation that this might be true from reading the
results of an exhaustive
survey of 17,000 readers of 50 top political blogs conducted by
WebAds. Key findings for this unique
category of readers:
- Their reason for reading these blogs is to get news they
can't find in mainstream media (80%), get better perspective on the
news (78%), get news faster (66%), and get more honest coverage of the
news (60%)
- Politically they tilt somewhat liberal-libertarian (only
22% Republican), and their favourite blogs in order are Atrios,
DailyKos, Talking Point Memo, Drudge Report and Washington
Monthly Political Animal (formerly CalPundit). They don't tend to read other political
blogs or blogs on other subjects (the median number of blogs read daily
is 6, and most read one of the above top 5 more than once a day). They
spend a median 90 minutes a day reading blogs.
- Demographically they're 79% male, affluent (median family
income $80,000), close to middle-aged (median age 37) and
disproportionately techies or students.
- They're heavy readers of other print news and analysis
media (22% read The New Yorker,
more than any other magazine) but rarely catch TV or radio news. Only
one in five has their own blog.
What are we to conclude from this data? Here's my take:
- This group is not representative of all blog readers (for a
start, the respondents don't appear to read the enormously popular tech
blogs). In general, there is no such
thing as an 'average' blog reader. Blog readership consists of
perhaps millions of very discrete and different segments, all reading different blogs for different
reasons.
- Most women blog readers (who according to other surveys
make up close to half of all blog readers) are reading very different
stuff from most male blog readers. Since the two most popular
'categories' of blogs, according to Technorati, are political and
technical blogs, that also suggests that women read a much broader variety of blogs than men do.
- These immensely popular political blogs are filling an
unmet need for detailed news and analysis with a liberal slant --
precisely the need that The New
Yorker, their favourite magazine, also fills.. For
conservatives, that need is largely met by the preponderance of
low-brow right-wing talk radio shows (which also have an overwhelmingly
male audience).
- For the 80% who don't have their own blog, these blogs'
comments threads also fill another unmet need -- an outlet for
expression of readers' personal views on matters that are important to
them. The equivalent of dialling in to talk radio.
If you use Shirky's
Power Law, you can compute that these 50 political blogs, almost
all of which are among the 250 most popular blogs overall, attract
about 10% of all blog reader
hits -- about three million hits per day. But there are an estimated
100 million blog readers worldwide, who between them read 30 million
blog posts in a given day, only half of which is directed to the top
250 blogs. And there are a lot more non-blog
readers out there Googling to find something that meets their unmet
needs.
So if you're one of those bloggers (or prospective bloggers) who
defines 'success' as a lot of readers, how do you go about finding out
what current (and prospective) blog readers' needs are? I suggest you
can do this the same way you identify unmet business needs: by doing focused research and getting creative. Here's where to
look for unmet needs (this is exactly the advice I gave budding and
struggling entrepreneurs looking for unmet consumer needs, except I've
changed the word 'business' to 'blog' and 'buy' to 'read'):
- Changes:
Look at changes and trends in society. What issues are hot,
and what do people need to know about them, that they're not getting
from the mainstream media? How are people's attitudes changing? How are
their reading
behaviours changing? What do people care about that the mainstream
media aren't talking about? For example, if people think the news has
too many facts and not enough answers, too much cold, objective
information and not enough candid admission of fear and doubt, can you
attract an audience by writing
something deeply personal and heartfelt about it?
- Complaints:
What are people complaining about, when they talk about the media and
about other blogs? Every complaint reflects an unmet need, and an
opportunity for a new blog. For example, if people think the news is
too serious, can you attract an audience by writing something humorous
about it?
- Problems:
What problems are people facing? What's keeping people awake at night?
What information or reassurance could you offer that would let them
sleep better?
- Empty
Niches: What small "niches of information, inspiration or
entertainment need" exist that are not satisfied by the media? What do
some people think there's never enough information about? For example,
can your blog fill readers' unmet passion for information about
the arts, or about language,
or good photography?
- Information
Gaps: What are the gaps in the 'information spectrum'? Are there
personal insights or first-hand accounts you could provide, because of
your unique position, experience, knowledge or physical location that
would help fill those gaps? For example, do you have a unique perspective about your community
that gives meaning to the barrage of meaningless facts you read in the
news?
- Drilling
Down and Following Up: Likewise, is there a new information
service that you could 'attach' to an existing media outlet or blog?
The media and the most popular journalists, writers and bloggers never
have enough time or resources to do follow-up stories, in-depth
research, surveys or interviews about things they have written about,
and when someone else fills that need they are usually more than
willing to link to it, sending a horde of new readers your way.
- Discontinuities:
Business guru Peter Drucker identifies seven areas of innovation
opportunity resulting from what he calls discontinuities, all of which can
be used to identify prospective
issues that have not yet been covered in the news, that many people
would probably like to read about:
- Unexpected or 'what if' occurrences (if Kerry wins
in November, what should we do first?)
- Perception/reality incongruities (when we realize that
greenhouse gases will bring about massive climate and environmental
change in our lifetimes, how will this affect our lives?)
- Weaknesses or needs in political and social and
educational processes and systems (some believe the electoral college
is an anachronism -- should it just be disbanded?; Is there a better
way to measure well-being than GDP?)
- Industry and market changes (what will $160/barrel oil
mean to us all?)
- Demographic changes (with a huge number of people
retiring in the next 10-20 years, what will we do with our time?)
- Peoples' attitude and priority changes (is the trend to
'cocooning' unhealthy -- is it narrowing our perspective of the world
and our ability to see other points of view?)
- New scientific and business knowledge (how will RFID devices change the way we
live, shop, work, and protect our privacy?)
- Basic
Human Needs: Look at basic, overarching human needs: Health,
safety, education, time,
decent quality of life, meaning, recreation. How are our experiences of
these things currently unsatisfactory, why is that, and how might they be improved?
- Personal
Insights: What lessons from history, or your own personal
history, or the history of people you know, can you relate that would
increase understanding of the meaning of all the news we're bombarded
with? For example, do you know of Palestinians or people from Darfur or
Rwanda whose personal stories
you can tell to explain what's really going on there and why it's
happening?
- Exploiting
Blogs' Advantages over Traditional Media: Consider the
advantages of blogs -- comments threads that allow feedback; intimacy;
speed-to-market; independence from shareholders and advertisers -- that
you can exploit. The newspapers and magazines carry recipes, for
example, but a blog would allow you to actually converse about how the recipes
turned out.
- Helping
People Out: What ways can you help
people, by drawing on and writing about areas where you have particular
expertise, experience, insight or talent?
How do you discover these unmet needs? By talking to people who spend
some time online, asking them questions and listening. By reading
voraciously. When you find them, make sure they're needs you can fill:
If you discover that people want to know what life in North Korea is
really like, there's no point trying to satisfy that need unless you at
least know people who've lived there. And you might sometimes discover
that the reason for an information void is that the information people
are seeking simply doesn't exist.
And here's a reminder about what, from my own previous research and experience,
blog readers want to see more of (each of which implies unmet needs):
- original research, surveys etc.
- original, well-crafted fiction
- great finds: resources, blogs, essays, artistic works
- news not found anywhere else
- category killers: aggregators that capture the best of many
blogs/feeds, so they need not be read individually
- clever, concise political opinion
- benchmarks, quantitative analysis
- personal stories, experiences, lessons learned
- first-hand accounts
- live reports from events
- insight: leading-edge thinking & novel perspectives
- short educational pieces
- relevant "aha" graphics
- great photos
- useful tools and checklists
- précis, summaries, reviews and other time-savers
- fun stuff: quizzes, self-evaluations, other interactive
content
How important is it that you have a single theme to your blog,
something that will keep readers coming back, and not annoy them with
stuff they don't expect to find on your blog and don't want to read
about? As the owner of the world's most themeless blog (I'm always at a
loss when people ask me what 'category' or 'type' of blog How to Save
the World is), I would suggest it is somewhat important, but not
important enough to let it get in the way of your muse. Readers will
tell you (by their declining numbers, or lack of comments, or by
e-mail) when you're no longer filling a need. Most blog tools allow you
to establish different categories for different blog posts, or even
maintain completely separate blogs with no cross-posting, if your
subjects have completely different audiences.
But what if you don't care
how many readers you have? I would suggest that, in that case, blogging
fills an unmet internal need
for you personally. Whether that's the ability to think out loud and
clarify your own thoughts, or to keep in touch with a small circle of
friends you can't meet face-to-face as often as you'd like, or to
practice your writing skills, or to organize and document your personal
filing cabinet or your 'personal memory' before information and ideas
are lost or misplaced, these are important personal needs (for some of
us, anyway) that blogging fills. But you might just find, as I did,
that in the process of filling those personal needs, you also fill the
unmet needs of others, and your audience becomes surprisingly large.
And then, like me, you'll begin to feel a responsibility to continue to
fill that unmet need for your readers. That's when you know you're
hooked on blogging.
And if you quit blogging, as most bloggers do, I'll bet it's because
either you, or your readers, have found something else that meets your,
or their, unmet needs better.
Photo from Agence France Presse via the excellent Global Policy Forum, a reminder that for many of us, there are unmet needs more urgent than information, inspiration and entertainment.
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