PhoneBoy Makes The Local Paper
Ok, this doesn’t put me in the big leagues, yet, but you have to start somewhere.
A local reporter at the Peninsula Gateway, the local Gig Harbor newspaper, was doing a story on bloggers in Gig Harbor. She managed to find my Vox blog through a series of Google searches and wanted to interview me for the piece. Being the attention whore that I am, I agreed.
I think we talked a lot about blogging in general and not so much about being tied to the local community. I’m more well connected with people outside of Gig Harbor than I am to people in Gig Harbor. Maybe it’s just because I just moved here. Then again, I lived in Port Orchard for 4 years and didn’t feel all that connected. Certainly not through online.
For me, anyway, blogging is about connecting with a community that is not bound by geography. If I happen to connect with some local folks, that’s a bonus. Who is my community, though? Who is my audience?
That’s a good question–one I’ve been trying to come up with a succinct answer to. It started with a post from Andy Abramson that ended up answering that question for his own blog.
I blog so many places now, it’s hard to keep track. For a lot of my other blogs, the audience is fair clear: Gadgets Weblog is for gadget-related things, VoIP Weblog is for VoIP-related stuff, my Vox blog is for pictures of my kids and stuff of a more personal nature, The Mobile Technology Weblog is something I pull mobile-related content from other Creative Weblogging blogs into, I Got Spam is for spam-related stuff, and my S60 blog is for device convergence topics, obviously with a Nokia spin.
After all that, what’s left? Seems like the blog that defines my brand, i.e. phoneboy.com, kind of gets the leftovers these days–things that aren’t appropriate one of these other places for one reason or another.
Let’s take a quick snapshot of who reads phoneboy.com:
- Other bloggers, including people with a real following like Andy Abramson
- People in the VoIP business (Skype’s PR guys and Jangl folks read it for sure)
- My friends, both real and virtual, who are interested in my tech blatherings
While I’m not re-evaluating my happiness with that snapshot, at least I understand who my audience is right now. That’s a start.
Clearly I need to let these less than fully formed thoughts marinate a little while longer. If you have any suggestions, or if you think I missed a key part of my audience, please leave a comment or contact me privately.
