Complete the following statement:
The purpose of my blog is to…
Say it out loud, or quickly write it down. I’ll wait….
How did you do? Did you finish the statement without hesitation or uncertainty? Clearly and concisely?
If you’re like me, you stumbled at first and second guessed yourself when you finished. But that’s a good thing. It means you recognize the complexity of creating such a seemingly simple sentence.
A purpose statement is hard to write because you have to answer several questions about your blog before writing it—that is, if you want to write a quality purpose statement.
A quality purpose statement communicates your blog’s topic, your positioning within that topic, your target audience, and the promise your blog makes to your audience. It’s a statement that implies your blog’s values and strategy—why your blog is important and why your blog is different.
A blog’s purpose statement is sort of like the thesis statement of an essay or the elevator pitch of a start-up company. Not something to take lightly. After all, businesses can be made or broken on the quality of the elevator pitch, and essays or articles with poor thesis statements don’t get read (at least not willingly).
Clearly, a lot rests on the quality of your blog’s purpose statement. It requires serious thought, time, and energy, but it’s well worth the effort because it guides and focuses your blogging activities; it reminds you of the promises you’ve made to yourself and to your readers—two things that are all too easy to lose sight of.
So where do you start?
Start by Clarifying Your Blogging Purpose
It’s hard to write a purpose statement for your blog if you haven’t clarified your purpose. But with so many moving parts it can be difficult to articulate exactly what it is you are trying to do with your blog. If you’re having trouble, keep in mind that all blogs essentially have one overarching purpose: to transform an audience in some way.
Ask yourself then, how do I want my target audience to be changed after spending time on my blog?
If you need help answering this question, start with a specific action you want your audience to take; then work backwards to discover the underlying changes you are really asking them to make. For example, let’s say you want new visitors to donate money to your nonprofit. In this case, what you are really asking them to do is to undergo the following changes:
1) Move from not knowing much about the issue or problem…
2) to caring about the issue or problem…
3) to feeling compelled to help solve the problem…
4) to donating as a way of helping solve the problem.
Identify the desired action; then, analyze the changes in the audience that lead to that action.
Here’s another example, more specific:
Desired Audience Action: To hire you as a dissertation coach
1) From not knowing who you are or what a dissertation coach does…
2) to seeing the value of hiring someone to help them during the dissertation process…
3) to trusting in your ability to help them…
4) to choosing to help themselves by hiring you as their dissertation coach.
Okay, your turn. Take a moment to identify some of the key actions you want your audience to take on your blog. Broadly speaking, these actions won’t be unique to your blog, things like signing up for your newsletter, subscribing to your digital magazine, donating to your Patreon account, signing an online petition, purchasing your book, becoming an advocate for your political cause, or simply being entertained enough to revisit your site—you get the idea. But be specific when writing down these general actions as they relate to your blog topic. For example:
I want people to subscribe to my newsletter, DisAbility, to learn how to challenge negative social constructions of disability and to discover self-empowering resources.
After you’ve listed specific actions, break them into the underlying changes your audience must go through to take those actions. Look closely at these changes to ensure they represent your desired ethos for your blog. You should aim to be socially and professionally responsible, and your blog should be a helpful solution to a problem faced by your audience.
After examining these changes, look for a unifying principle of transformation—the macro change that you want your audience to make. (Unless you’re building a large blog or website that covers numerous topics and subtopics, you should be able to identify one macro change you want your audience to make.) For example, let’s look at the blog for the dissertation coach. The dissertation coach might offer help in a variety of formats (e.g., tiered coaching sessions, books, review and editing services, video courses, how-to articles, etc.); each service asks (helps) the audience undergo related changes, but the macro change might be summed up this way:
I want my audience to become more confident in their ability to complete their dissertation.
This macro change can now be incorporated into the first part of the purpose statement:
The purpose of my blog is to help students complete their dissertation…
Give it a try. After you know the what of your purpose statement—the macro change you want your audience to make—you’re ready to focus on the how.
State How You Will Change Your Audience
How do you persuade your audience to make the changes you’ve identified?
The answer is simple and not so simple.
The simple answer is you will persuade your audience with your content. And for that to happen, your content has to be good: You have to know your topic well, meaning you’ve done your research; you have to make sure that your content is important to your audience, meaning that it helps them solve a problem; and you have to present your content well, meaning you’ve taken the time to polish your work before publishing. The buzzphrase is quality content, and quality content is pretty much a standard aspiration if you want to grow your blog.
What is not so simple is deciding what type of content to create and how to make it stand out. Where do you spend your energy? Creating videos? Podcasts? In-depth articles? A little bit of everything? How often do you publish this content? What social media sites will you use to share your work and engage your audience? The answers of course depend on your skills and preferences, and on the needs and preferences of your audience—ideally, you want to find the intersection between the two. You may love creating intricate infographics, but your audience might prefer concise explanations written in your unique voice, or they might prefer to consume podcasts. Listen to your audience and don’t be afraid to try out new mediums and genres to present your ideas in ways that will better connect with them. You need to know your audience well to figure this out, so be sure to do an audience analysis before moving on.
After deciding the type of content to create, you must determine how to make that content stand out—how you will differentiate your content from other bloggers in your field. One part of this is positioning, which means narrowing your focus and specializing in a few things within your broader field. Another part—perhaps even more important—is style. I’ll talk more about style in a future post, but style is primarily concerned with gaining and structuring audience attention. Style is a complex topic, but keeping things simple for your purpose statement, try to think about how you will will attract your audience and keep them engaged. Think about what makes you interesting, what makes you different. What about you—your voice, your personality, your experience—will entice your audience to listen and come back?
What descriptive words might describe your style? Funny, insightful, interesting, entertaining, shocking, inspirational, serious, not so serious, poetic, straightforward, etc. Write down what you hope your audience will think of you and your content.
After answering these question, you should be ready to write the final part of your purpose statement. The final part of your purpose statement will list the specific types of content you will deliver, as well as convey a sense of the quality and style of that content. The keyword that will introduce the final part of your statement is by.
Let’s return to the example of the dissertation blog. He’re one way the purpose statement might be completed:
The purpose of my blog is to help students complete their dissertation by publishing engaging blog posts, creating short valuable videos, hosting free webinars, offering free and paid courses, and providing professional coaching sessions via webcam.
Not a bad start. We could probably narrow our description of students to say more about the target audience, but overall, this statement provides a way for the dissertation coach to focus her blogging efforts. It reminds her of what her blog sets out to do and how it aims to do it. And it can be updated to accommodate changes in technology, blogger preferences, and audience needs.
You can also see how the purpose statement communicates the key characteristics of the blog that I mentioned earlier:
Blog topic: Dissertation writing
Positioning within the topic: coaching, multi-modal instruction and advice
Target audience: students (or narrower: graduate students working in the liberal arts)
Promise to the audience: The blog promises to help students complete their dissertation; it will teach them effective writing strategies through the context of dissertation writing.
Blog’s values: Keywords, such as engaging, valuable, and professional speak to the blogger’s commitment to the audience and to the quality of her work.
Blog strategy: The blog’s strategy is suggested by the mix of content the blogger will focus on. Engaging posts and short videos might be published in a steady flow to attract new visitors and continue the relationship with the existing audience, and free courses and webinars might be designed to build trust and share information about premium services—essentially, you see the outline of a rhetorical strategy to create the desired change in the audience.
Now it’s your turn.
After you have completed your blogging purpose statement, put it somewhere easy to find. Review it anytime you feel a loss of clarity and focus, and revise it as needed to align with new priorities and goals.
Are you having difficulty defining your blog’s purpose? Do you have any other strategies you use to gain clarity and focus? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.