Find Out Why You Need to Rethink What it Means to Have a Small Blog Audience

Imagine walking into a fairly large room full of people.

Men and women ranging in age, background, and life experience.

Let’s say there are 50 people in the room. All sitting there patiently waiting for you. You walk in and their eyes grab onto yours. Any sort of murmuring ceases and they have given you all of their attention.

You open your mouth and start to speak. Would you be a little bit nervous? Would you feel a little overwhelmed with the number of people sitting there looking at you and waiting for you to talk?

Now, imagine you are a football coach on game day. You walk into the locker room and sitting before you is a locker room full of men awaiting your leadership and direction. 53 people sitting anxiously awaiting what’s about to come out of your mouth.

Are you a little nervous and intimidated by all of these people relying on what you have to say? Does it seem a little overwhelming?

In both situations, you were left alone to provide something of value to a group of people ranging in size from 50-53.

Think about this when you start talking about the size of your blog audience. Or lack thereof.

At face value, you may dismiss an email list of 53 people as “too small”. You may find 53 followers on Twitter to be a joke. You may think that your last blog post where 53 people saw it over the course of a week was a failure.

But it isn’t.

Change Your Mindset

The size of your audience is irrelevant, the value – at the individual level – is not.

The sooner you can come to grips with this mindset, the quicker you will be able to serve those that actually decide to listen.

The sooner you can realize your list’s value resides with the person instead of the number, the quicker you’ll be able to find true happiness in what you are doing online.

Don’t get wrapped up in numbers. Don’t feed off the expectations of growth and what you “should be doing”.

Continue to grow organically and make true connections with people.

If you gain one new follower a week, or a month, that one new follower is a genuine connection.

Don’t blindly push to bump your social media follower counts or blog visits by taking short cuts. Be engaged with those that are truly interested in what you have to say and grow the right way.

Here are 3 reasons why having a small following is actually a good thing

Easier to Manage

We are all extremely busy. Who has time to manage or interact with 250,000 followers? It would consume you. What typically happens is you tap out and turn over your account to virtual assistants or automated tools.

While having a large audience may be beneficial for some reasons, managing the relationships is not one of them.

More Personal Relationship

Having a smaller group in your tribe means you are going to have a more personal relationship with them.

You will start to learn not only about their professional life but also their personal life. Genuine friendships will evolve and more personal relationships will take root.

Bi-Directional Value

As these relationships start to take form, a natural sharing of knowledge will take place.

You will have the time to talk with people and to understand their experience and perspective. Not only will you provide them value but they will also enlighten you in return.

Everyone brings something to the table. Position yourself with your audience from the beginning for more personal and engaging conversation moving forward.

Foster Growth, the Right Way

Look, we all want a bigger audience. We all hope to gain real traction and have our message heard across the largest spectrum of readers. But we also don’t want to have that large number for the sake of having it.

I believe if you are reading this you are probably not one of the number chasers. You want something more with your audience. You want genuine connection and engagement at a different level.

If you continue to foster this relationship with your small audience, there is no doubt you will actually start to grow…the right way.

This may sound a bit ironic given the value we just covered with having a small audience.

But, what you will have formed is a true community. A community where relationship, collaboration, and mutual respect rule the day.