Are you writing your blog to reach a wide audience, or is your blog for a few select clients and friends?

Or in other words, are you looking for popularity and wide-reach, or in-depth one-on-one with your specific target group?

Both these approaches are valid in the blogosphere. Don’t assume that to be successful your blog has to reach a wide mass market. Isn’t blogging all about being outside of the mainstream media? Well, yes and no. More and more blogging is coming to the foreground as a viable medium in its own right, and, as dad always said, “With those rights come responsibilities.” Your responsibility is to your own audience, whether it is 24 close readers, or 2,000 mildly interested people, or 100,000 bots.

Have you seen that kind of devil-may-care stance that many bloggers affect or express becoming a little more mannered, as the audience widens? It becomes, in fact, the blog-style of choice. There is a blogger voice, a social attitude that many would-be bloggers might feel they have to emulate. Don’t. It isn’t necessary. If all the popular kids in high school do this or that, it doesn’t invalidate your particular voice or approach in any way. Once we get out of high school we realize this. There is no need to perpetuate the tyranny of social hierarchy and its many discontents through the blog world too.

Your blog is your own. Do what you like with it. If you are reaching out to a few select readers, in depth, speak directly to them. But if you are reaching out to the “masses” then by all means uses the blogger-voice, the wise-cracking bon mot, the shock factor, the now so-last-night Paris Hilton name-dropping, whatever it takes, right?

If you aren’t up for all that, just remember that reaching your client group through your blog can help them keep in touch with what you are up to, and it may not be really important for you to water down that message by adding references or keyword groupings that will up your google juice.

Now there some truly wonderful popular blogs out there too, and there are really good solid ways of building popularity and widening presence.

How do you want to interact – person to persons, or broadcaster to public? It’s all within your reach. Understanding media is all about understanding audience. If we want humans reading our blogs, we have to demonstrate some humanity to speak to humans. Then we can layer on the purpose of your blog, the intended people you wish to reach, the message you wish to give and the communication and community you want to build .