one of the principles that rev. adam hamilton introduced to me in one of his sessions was the idea of a pyramid applied to any amount of people.
(did all that just sound like a bunch of garble? read the post on leadership first then come back! 😉
in the example he gave, he applied it to his congregation and called it the discipleship pyramid. basically his congregation (and most congregations in churches) fall into specific percentages based on their relationship with God:
(for clarification – i’m in that 30%)
he used this “model” to figure out his sermon series – what he would preach about and how he could interject things into a sermon that would reach out to the entire pyramid population. pretty cool huh?
i was all inspired by his talks and immediately starting applying this to my blog and business. today we will just talk blog though. i want to tackle the business side in another post.
take the number of followers you have (however you measure followers is okeydokey with me!) and apply it to this pyramid.
so – i have 196 GFC followers.
20 of them are engaged readers (read + comment every post)
40 of them are loyal readers (read + comment sometimes)
58 of them are occasional readers (read when they get a chance)
78 of them are fairweather fans (read when something’s in it for them)
that seems about right, doesn’t it? does it work out that way for you?
i don’t really care where people fall in to be honest and maybe some people shift in and out of categories. i feel like for most blogs i fall in that “loyal readers” category. i read them religiously but i rarely comment. and i should change that.
but anyways – the point i’m making is that in a way, to become a successful blogger, you need to craft posts that reach each segment of the follower pyramid. i will probably never reach each and every follower with one post (if you know how though – please fill the rest of us in)!!
next go round i will share the way rev. hamilton crafts his sermons to do this. and then we can talk about how to apply that to our blogs. sounds like fun, right?
so how do you craft a blog post that can reach people in so many different places in their lives? that is my question to you – share with us how you write your posts. do you tell a story and then reveal the lesson? do you give out instructions or perhaps keep it light and funny? what part of you do you interject into your blog in order to reach all of your followers?
This is so true!!! One thing that I'm learning lately is that your Best picture needs to be the first picture in your post bc that's the one that blog readers pick up and if it's not interesting then people will skip right over the post.
so here is a neat little tip for you: use bufferapp.com to schedule your tweets and FB posts and it lets you pic the picture it uses so that you can at least use the best one for your social media posts. I LOVE BUFFER.
<> bahahaha
Great pyramid Skye! I need to figure mine out too! 🙂 I am loving all of this business/blog talk and successful women series! You are rocking it girl!
thank you cassie!! i have had a lot of fun exploring this side of my brain. 🙂 i'm glad you are enjoying it!
This is such a great way to look at things. It totally makes sense, and I can see how this pyramid could easily apply to so many things. Right now I'm thinking about how my 12th grade English student would fit into this pyramid. Ha!
it was very eye opening for me because I want all of my readers to all be engaged all at the same time. clearly not going to happen but it at least made me feel like i was part of the norm, you know? i loved it! thanks for stopping by and leaving a sweet comment! happy monday!!
This is a great way to look at readership and easily get a glimpse of how things are adding up. I feel like I'm always rushed and blogging on the fly so I don't give this nearly enough thought. I really would love to plan out posts and write more organized content. For me the biggest obstacle is time.
time is never ever ever on my side but i have figured out that i make time for what is important to me. and sometimes blogging isn't at the top of the list! i'd much rather take my time blogging and put up meaningful content than throw something up just to have a post for the day. having a plan and a schedule has helped me immensely!
Interesting post! This might be a good way to gauge how well you're doing at engaging your readers: even if your monthly numbers remain unchanged, are more of them moving up the pyramid? Are you getting more comments?
Hmm. Food for thought.