Well, here’s the thing. It’s perfectly fine loving all genres. But the thing is, in order for something to succeed in today’s world, where the whole world is essentially connected and available to everyone, is that you have to find a niche…a smaller target or focus. We all can’t “afford” to be interested in everything and involved in everything, so we “weed out” what is slightly less important. We look for that thing that interests us 101%.

Your website/blog will be more likely to succeed if you find SOMETHING to center it around…something a little more specific than just “writing.” If you don’t want to center it around a genre, then you can center it around your location, and try to find writers near you. Or you could target writers in your age group. (I have no idea what age you are, but I can imagine that grandmother writers would love to have a place to gather, or that moms of teens might, etc.) Or you could center it around writers-who-live-in-the-country. You could even pick something quirky, like writers who love yellow or writers who love to go barefoot. Of course you’d welcome writers (and readers) who love pink a little more than yellow, or writers who really don’t go barefoot all that often…but just the fact that it’s got this “grabby” idea…like barefoot talespinning…will make your visitors more interested, and also make your blog stick in their minds a little more.

Have some fun with ideas!

You said your goal was to build community, so let’s consider that.

The next question is: WHO do you want to build community with? “All writers” is a goal that’s too broad. I’m guessing you’re like most of us and would love to find writers who’d have interests in common. Perhaps YA. Perhaps Poetry.

How about another question?

Pretend there are thirty other aspiring authors/writers out there who are exactly the type of people you’d love to meet and get to know online through your blog. What makes those thirty different from the other thousands out there?

For example…I’m not really all that interested in meeting horror writers. Yes, I know they’re probably great people, and there are probably a few that I could be good friends with…but we all know that loving the same types of books is a very powerful and significant indicator of friendship. And I don’t read horror. At all. So it’s very likely that I am not going to share as many interests with a horror writers as I am with a sweet romance author, or a YA author.

Why am I asking this question? Well…when those thirty future friends of yours happen across your site, HOW will they know that YOU are a prospective friend of theirs? If they read 5 or 10 of your posts, they might sense that you’re “kindred spirits” (to quote Anne Shirley), but what if they’re in a hurry?

Sooo…what can you do to portray YOUR interests and tastes in less than three seconds? (Because that’s about how long you have to catch your visitor’s interest.) Maybe adjust your catchphrase slightly. ie: “celebrating poetry and _insert genre_ young adult fiction.” …something that narrows your field of interest down, from “all the written works and authors that history has every known” to a much, much, much more specific group of writing and authors that will be the common bond between you and your followers.

See what other ideas you can come up with. Put yourself in your prospective friend’s minds…if you happened across one of their sites, what two or three things, that you’d notice right off the bat, would tell you, “Hey, this is someone I’m interested in!” Now add those two or three things to YOUR site.

Feel free to ask again, if you have an idea and aren’t sure how to go about implementing it!

I’m barely in the get ready phase! Oh, my!

Thanks so much for your helpful posts!