I've had several people over the years suggest that I write a blog. So I finally decided to give it a shot. I've always liked writing. When I say that I've always liked writing...I mean I've ALWAYS liked writing. I started writing my first novel when I was in high school. It was absolute garbage. I mean it was incredibly terrible. I started writing it my Freshman year in High School and finished it my Freshman year in college. You could see a clear progression in my writing skill from the beginning to the end.
One of these days I would like to go back and rewrite that novel. I'm getting way off topic though. The topic is...why did I decide to start a blog.
One of the most important things as a content creator is to know who your community is, and to know how to reach them. That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's no secret that I'm kind of an elder statesman in the streaming community. Threads has helped me learn that I'm not alone in that. Your typical streamer tries to make you believe that anyone over 20 is about to die, but there's lots of us streamers in our 40's or older that are still kicking and making content.
I tried making YouTube videos. It's not something that I've given up on, but it's not my preferred method of getting myself out there. I would rather stream as much as possible than to take time away from that by filming and editing videos and clips. I'm a fast writer...for the most part. Whether it's the best way to do this or not, I can usually start typing on of these posts, finish it, and do a rough skim/edit in 30 minutes to an hour. It takes several hours for me create/edit a video.
I also realized that because I'm an old(er) streamer that my demographic is going to be in the upper years as well. Do I think that a high energy streamer in their 20's could get away with trying to grow through a blog? Probably not. That's why YouTube is filled with videos that have retention edits and cuts every 5 seconds. The attention span of the average viewer your bounce of the wall, scream every time they die type streamer brings in is more than likely not long enough to read a blog.
I think...or hope...that the attention span of my demographic is...a little bit longer. I hope that their tastes are a...little more refined. They've experienced life. They want a chill place to hang out. They want someone with personality. They want someone that's a little bit off the wall, but at the same time they don't want to have to worry about the person they're watching randomly dropping a slur because something happened that they didn't like in the game they were playing.
I talked in the "Who Is Joe?" post about how I always have to be doing something creative. It's true. I feel like I'm imprisoned in my own skin if I'm not doing something creative. This is another way for me to "scratch that itch." It gives me the ability to pick a topic that I've had on my mind recently, ramble on about it until I feel like I've said whatever it is that I want to say, and then post.
I think this is going to be the best place for me to find my community. I think it's going to be the best place for me to find like minded streamers, bloggers, content creators, beer enthusiasts, and people that might just be interested in reading my blog and watching my streams. I'm aware that not every single one of my posts is going to be super popular.
Actually, I expect this place to be somewhere that I mostly talk to myself for quite some time. That's really not a bad thing though. It's almost therapeutic. Getting out everything I'm thinking in a way to feels...rewarding. I don't know if that's necessarily the right word to use there, but I spent way too long thinking of what would be the best fitting word, and I just ended up using the first word that came to mind.
I think a blog is the perfect extension of the community that I'm starting to grow on Threads. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get the people that know me on Threads to come here, the people that know me here to follow me on Threads, and to eventually get both groups to check me out on Twitch. That would be the ideal, perfectly encapsulated circle.
In my "Lost" post I also talked about what I believe I need to do in order to be able to sustain myself through streaming. One of the biggest things I mentioned is that I need to build myself into a position where I'm capable of getting brand deals and sponsorships. I believe that what I'm creating here will help me establish a foundation that I can use to show brands that I have value.
The number one thing any brand is going to want is to be able to visibly see that you have reach, that you have an audience, and that you can immediately get eyes on whatever product it is that you are representing for them. That's something I know I can build here. Once I get a larger foundation of posts I'm going to experiment with writing posts as if they were for a brand deal or sponsorship so I can point to the kind of numbers that they accumulate.
Sure, they won't be actual sponsored posts, and I will mention that they aren't sponsored posts when I write them. What I can do though, is when I reach out to request a sponsorship, I can point to those posts saying that they brought in this amount of traffic, this number of interactions, and this percentage of people clicked through to take a look at the product that I was talking about.
So, in conclusion, there's a fair amount of reasons that I've decided to come around to writing a blog. I've had people suggesting it for years (but I'm the kind of person that has to come upon a conclusion in my own terms...that's a blog post for another time). I love the creativity of it. I love having the opportunity to speak my mind about what I'm going through or just whatever the hell tends to pass through my brain. I love the fact that through utilizing a tool such as this that I can build a community that appreciates my content and who I am as a person...not just likes me because I'm playing "Call of the Two Time Tatman 2: All Out Of Queso" at the time.
Anyway. I added a way to subscribe on the main page. I think I'm going to try setting up a notification email or newsletter or whatever is the best way to let people know when I make these posts. If you'd like to know when I post something...I think that would be the best way to do it.
The plan is to make a post every day, but I don't know if that's too much. Asking whether or not that's too much is actually another post I'm going to be making soon. I'm rambling at this point though. If you've read to this point then you're an absolute legend and probably the MOST likely out of anyone to subscribe to know when I make these wacky posts.
Here's a link to how to subscribe. Look for another post tomorrow.
Yay
Comments