Five Dimensions for the Growth of Your Blog (Part 4)

I’ve enjoyed writing this week about five dimensions for growing your blog starting with growing warmer, then deeper, and yesterday, stronger. Today I’m tackling how your blog can grow broader.

One of the proudest moments of my life came at a men’s retreat a few years ago in the backwoods of southern Missouri. There was a clay pigeon shooting contest and I arrived with my single-shot 20-gauge shotgun. I’d paid roughly $65 for it when I was a kid and hadn’t shot it since I was 13 years old. I was competing against guys who had hundreds or even a couple thousand dollars invested in their guns and gear. It didn’t look good for me.

I won. Not only did I win, I didn’t miss a single shot – eighteen out of eighteen fake birds (discs, really) died, pulverized to powder! Later that day we watched a man demonstrate a shot from a special magnum .22-caliber, like no other .22-caliber rifle I’d ever seen. From 400 feet, he hit a milk jug full of water and it exploded because of the velocity and the air rushing toward it. Shotguns don’t do that.

For the most part, your blog is a rifle. You take aim at your niche and pull the trigger. Either your spreading a message or marketing a product, but you know your ideal potential consumer. This is a good practice.

Sometimes, however, you need to broaden the scope of your blog with shotgun inaccuracy. Shotguns use shells filled with shot which spread apart out of the end of the barrel. Less precision means the ability to hit a rabbit running across your path in a split second.

There are thousands of potential readers out there who would probably enjoy what you have to offer, but you must be creative enough to find them. Sometimes that means thinking outside your niche long enough to throw something their way. Here’s my challenge:

• Study and read something beyond your niche today, that you don’t normally read. It can be related, but don’t let it be something you would normally find on your own blog.
• Meet someone you wouldn’t normally meet and converse about things you don’t have in common.
• Write about something you don’t normally write about and pull the trigger, see what happens.

I’m not encouraging you to go too far off subject or you might be viewed as irrelevant. I just think we need to broaden our horizons on occasion.