If you dream of reaching a worldwide audience, you must focus on your audience, not on yourself.

Far too many bloggers, Twitterers, and Facebookers get it backwards. They make the following assumption:

All I have to do is announce I’ve just gone to the bathroom, downed a cup of coffee, or wiped my kid’s snotty nose, and readers will flock to my site.

Then they wonder why their site gets zero hits.

Have you heard of the acronym, WII-FM? (What’s In It For Me?) Most people are far more interested in themselves than they’ll ever be in you. So your social networking needs to be about them.

How do you make it about them? Through delivering WII-FM content.

Content creates audience

Look at the descriptors of the following top-ranked blogs, and note one element they all share:

• Tech toys
• Auto news
• Internet marketing tips
• Travel tips
• Movie news & reviews
• Going green
• Copywriting tips
• Gaming tips, news, and gossip
• How to make money blogging
• Science news
• Stock market news
• Food news
• Political news & commentary
• Celeb gossip
• Guest columnist or interview
• Home design innovations

What do these blogs have in common?

They’re built around a single, tightly-focused topic. The “going green” blog does not address financial scandals and the foodie blog ignores stock market news. Each blog highlights one specific topic. As a result of doing one thing extremely well, these topical blogs have become the go-to source of information about their subject area.

Reader-Focused

Now look at the descriptors for the top-rated blogs. Notice the terms tips, news, commentary, toys, gossip, reviews, innovations, scandals, and corruption. The best blogs are reader-focused-they imply visitors will learn something specific about the topic that will make them happier, healthier, or wealthier.

Other blogs, such as the ones that focus on gossip, scandals, and corruption, offer juicy water cooler fodder with the intent of entertaining visitors. In geek-speak, this is called “meeting a felt need” or “providing take-away value.”

I just call it WII-FM.

If you want to become the go-to source of information, commentary, or gossip about a particular topic, emulate the big guys. Choose a topic that interests you and structure your blog around that topic.

Then give ‘em WII-FM.

This article was adapted from my e-book, Blogophobia Conquered: Overcome and 7 Most Common Fears and Create an Amazing Blog. Order your copy today.

Related post:

• Who is the typical blog reader?