Filed by Bil at 8:01 pm under Love, Pop Culture, Religion, Shameless Plugs, The Media

I’m gonna say it up front: I have no idea who this blog’s audience is. It is entirely possible that we have NO audience, and that the hit counter is just making shit up so that we don’t fire it.

That being said, I still take it as bad news that teenagers and pre-teens are reading fewer and fewer blogs these days:

Teens Spurn Blogs, Twitter

In light of the fact that it’s going to get harder instead of easier to pull an audience, I think it’s time to ask myself: what do I want from this blog?

Obviously, I want people to read it, but that’s the lamest answer there is, so I don’t accept it. If my intent is simply to be read, there are easier ways to get my thoughts shoved down your throat.

If I intend to impart some thoughts and ideas upon an audience of readers, what is it I hope to give them, and why?

In the end, I think my goal – ambitious as it may sound – is to get people thinking. I like to turn people on to good art when I can, and hopefully that art gets people thinking, too. I like entertainment that makes me consider how I interact with society, and how I can do things differently…so I want to return the favor and hope that it gets paid forward over and over again.

I suppose this is my way of changing the world. I write an article about something I care about, I provide ideas and explanations, and I hope that my words stick in someone else’s mind. I’m no Rush Limbaugh – I don’t want to be followed blindly and without question. I just want to be considered.

But then – why, exactly, do I want to be considered, not followed? Because I myself prefer to consider things, weigh them out, look before I leap, hypothesize consequences…and I genuinely feel that if more people did this, then the world would be a better place. But don’t just take my word for it. Think, really think about it for yourself.

This is something I figured out here, now, in asking myself this question and writing about it. Just now. I just made it up. It’s true.

Is it narcissistic of me? Am I presumptuous to assume that more people behaving like me would be such a great thing? Maybe a little. But I don’t think that I’m wrong. My philosophy is rock solid. Just ask me about it sometime.

But back to the point: what, then, do I want from this blog? I want open minds. I want people to be entertained by engagement, not escapism.

And it’s a wasted effort if no one reads the blog. So…moving forward, I think I’m going to focus a little more on building an actual readership. It may be hard to get the teenage audience, but I won’t give up. And besides, there’s a much larger adult audience floating around in cyberspace, and I’ll try to get them, too. As anyone who has ever watched me try to start a campfire can tell you, this should be good for a laugh. Let’s see what happens.

Focus: audience building.