Smart Ways to Drive Female and Male Blog Readership
Before we can talk about the ways to attract more readers of both sexes we need to know who exactly is reading our blog. How can we find out? There are two most common measurements of blog reading, each of which involves two different types of behavior. According to recent data, a quarter of all adults read blogs (of all adults who use the Internet, that is). On average, 11 percent read blogs on a daily basis. Almost half of adults have read online blogs at least once. It is commonly believed that women read more blogs than men. Surprisingly it is actually the opposite – in the US, 35 percent of men read blogs compared to 32 percent of women. With this in mind, how do you attract readers of both sexes?
Table of Contents
Home-related topics for mixed blog readership
Contrary to popular belief, men and women are not interested in entirely different issues. Naturally, if you are writing about homeschooling, you will get more female readers, but topics like art and photography are equally interesting to both sexes. Household topics do tend to attract more female readers – a lot of women are interested in things like redecorating, for example. However, if you add some information about home repairs to your blog, you will attract more male readers and strike a balance. You can write about doing things around the house in general and attract readers of both sexes.
Parenting topics
If you are writing about parenting, you will get more female readers. This is not because men care less – they just do not look for advice online, but instead go and read books on it. However, more and more men are turning to the Internet these days. This is a good thing because men can be extremely helpful, especially when it comes to raising boys. It is important to get the perspective of both genders, as well as the perspectives of married parents, single parents, widowers, custodial parents, and divorced parents of all walks of life. Parenting is something everyone, everywhere cares about.
Sports for both genders
Sports are equally interesting to both genders on a whole, but who you attract specifically depends on the type of recreational activity you have chosen to treat. Traveling, hiking, swimming, and tennis hold universal appeal, while extreme sports are more popular with men. Avoid being sexist at any rate.
Beer, biking, tattoos – the turf of male audiences?
Topics like beer and biking are becoming more interesting to women and are no longer the turf of male audiences alone. Then, humor works well with both sexes – there is no such thing as male and female humor. When it comes to humor, try to choose topics that people universally try to avoid or identify with. Do not enforce gender stereotypes in any way – both sexes find them equally distasteful. Tattoos are also interesting to men and women alike – to women slightly more – and heavy metal has a strong female following today.
Last but not least, there is the issue of whether you want to attract more men or women. Some people are happy with their blogs being an all-guy or an all-chick zone. But then, if this goes for you, you wouldn’t be reading this, would you?
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Co-Authored With
Melissa Dean writes about Airline credit cards and other types of credit cards