Caught Between Writing for An Audience and Writing For Me

Hello everyone!

This is going to be a quick post, but it’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately. If you read pretty much any online advice about blogging, you’ll be told to find your niche and build an audience accordingly. As you can tell if you’ve been reading my posts for a while, I don’t really have a niche. I started this blog to cover my summer travels, then launched into high school advice, but I’ve covered many topics completely unrelated to both of those things. Even when I work on my creative writing, I think about this: should I have a signature writing style? How can I make my writing more likely to get accepted/selected for publication and contests? I write to create and I do want to share it with the world, but how much should I be angling it towards others’ enjoyment?

I’ve tried to brainstorm ideas on how I can turn what I’ve been writing about into more of a specific niche. So far, I haven’t really come up with anything, or tried to. I like the ability to write about whatever I want; it also makes it a lot easier to come up with new and interesting post ideas. I don’t want to feel constrained in a hobby I started for fun. On the other hand, if I chose a niche focusing on something I love, wouldn’t that still be fun? I’m not sure. I’m so conflicted on a lot of things I’m doing at the moment- I start activities for fun, but it quickly turns into wanting to get better and needing to appeal to others to do so.

I’m not sure if I should keep writing about whatever I please. I know I would most likely grow my blog a bit more if I chose a niche and stuck to the typical tips expert bloggers will give you, but I feel like it’s too late to do that now. I can’t change everything I’ve written so far (especially the name and URL of this blog), and I don’t want to start a new blog and abandon this one that I’ve put so much time into (7 months of my life, posting almost daily). I know I usually don’t get a lot of comments or engagement on my posts since this is a small blog, but I would love some advice right now. What would you guys like to see, and what brought you to my blog in the first place?

I could go on for longer, but the base of my internal conflict at the moment is this: should I keep blogging the free-form way I have been so I can do whatever I please, or should I pick a niche, clean it up, and try and make my blog more appealing to others? Feel free to leave any thoughts you have or let me know if you’ve had any similar struggles. It’s cheesy but as I’ve ended a lot of posts lately, we’re all in this together 🙂

Brooke