Sunday, May 3, 2009

Answer: An Increase in Female Readership




Question: What is HLAC not seeing much lately?

I'm not one to complain. Okay, maybe I am, whatever. While I seem to be reaching a broader audience, I seem to have an inordinate increase in male readers and not so many female ones. I asked myself, "How can I maintain my current readers while attracting a more feminine audience?" (I didn't say this out loud or anything. I'm not that crazy.)

One of the ideas I came up with was to change my blogger template to include flowers, butterflies and Care Bears riding atop flying unicorns over sparkly rainbows. This was a thumbs down because it might cause me to lose some guy readership, not to mention it would place my honorary man card in serious jeopardy.

Then I thought, "I know! I'll ask Sherri the girly girl to guest post for me from time to time. But alas, this wouldn't work, as she is spending less time blogging these days. No really, she is. She blogs about it all the time. You should check it out.

Then the idea came to me all at once when I didn't feel like writing a blog post and wondering how many deviled eggs is "too many". What if I asked Billy Coffey to guest post for me on a regular basis? Now you may be asking yourself, "How do you increase your female readership by asking a Virginia redneck, manly man to guest blog for you?" The answer is, go look at his comments section. Chock full o' women! If Nicholas Cage had a blog where he wrote short stories, he would get the same kind of comments. No, wait...Sparks...Nicholas Sparks. The Notebook guy. Chicks dig that guy.

So, starting tomorrow, Mr. Coffey will be guest blogging for me on a semi-regular basis. And by "semi-regular", I mean whenever he has the time to write a story that he won't be posting on his own blog or writing for a publication.

How long will Billy guest blog for me? I'm not sure. Probably until some publisher comes to their senses and decides to give him a book deal. (Or when he gets a call back from "Dancing with the Stars" - whichever comes first.) Until then, I will simply be grateful that he's agreed to write here at all. It will class the place up a bit without having to add any extraneous rainbows unicorns or butterflies.

Tune in tomorrow...

In the meantime, you can check out Billy's blog: What I Learned Today

And Billy - Keep reaching for the stars!

19 comments:

Candy said...

Thanks for introducing me to Billy. Yes, you've just kicked your blog up a notch (like it needed it) but don't you know women love hot, manly men of God? He's like Nicholas Sparks with an iBible.

Carol @SheLives said...

Well, I think it's a brilliant idea!

Either that or you're just doing it because he's really hot in which case it's a brilliant idea!

I totally talk to myself out loud. Otherwise it's called thinking and why would I do that?

Billy Coffey said...

Well...

Guess I'll have to stay inside today since now my head's too big to fit through the door.

Using me to attract a more feminine audience? Still trying to figure out if that's a compliment or a verbal kick to the groin. Since that came from you, I'll take it as a little of both. ;)

I see lots of women on here and don't think there's much to worry about. You're a man's woman, like Elaine on Seinfeld or that hot chick with the cool accent in Pirates of the Caribbean. You'd never see them with Care Bears and flowers.

Carry your honorary man card with pride.

Wendy said...

Using Billy as man-candy? Shame on you! Now do it some more.

Peter P said...

Ok, so how do you get Billy Coffey to guest blog for you semi-regularly? What did you have to pay him?

The only better person would be Rudyard Kipling and I don't believe he writes to much these days.

Michelle said...

Ok I think I will be back. Billy is kinda cute. So yes I will be back!!!

Bradley J Moore said...

Its funny how when we blog we don't actually end up with the audience we were aiming for. I was aiming for corporate/business managers who are interested in spiritual life. I guess that market must not exist, because I got alot of everything else - preachers, wannabe preachers, Moms, wannabe writers, wannabe motivational speakers, Hey - there's a lot of wannabe's out here in the blogosphere! IT's ok, though, 'cause we're all wannabeeing together.That's what I concluded. We're all in this writing/reading/encouraging thing together, so let's all make it work.

JML said...

I think I have the opposite problem. mostly chicks read my blog. :) I will say though, you have a larger readership than I do, way to be! (not that that is any sort of accomplishment, it's comparable to pushing a drunk four-year old over.... yeah I did.)

Peter P said...

Most of my readers come from HLAC. So I'm all for an increase in HLAC readers!

Thanks Kat and Billy.

Peter P said...

Bradly, I think you're displaying a case of 'we make our plans but God directs our steps!'

It may not be the audience you were after but it is the audience God wants you to have.

katdish said...

Ladies! For shame! I asked Mr. Coffey to guest blog for me because he has the ability to paint a beautiful word picture of everyday life situations with deep spiritual truths. The fact that his profile pic is mantastic has nothing to do with my decision. (Side-ways winky-smiley face.)

Billy,
"Still trying to figure out if that's a compliment or a verbal kick to the groin." - I'm an uncomplicated woman. I assumed you understood that the answer to that question is "yes".

Peter P - I dunno. Just lucky I guess. Also, because I thought of it first.

Hi Bradley - I'm heading over to read your latest series. It looks really good. Have you seen Francis Chan's sermon about the camel fitting through the eye of the needle? It's good.

Jake - That's rather baffling to me as well because I figured the reason I like your blog so much is because I think like a guy more times than not.

Peter - well said.

nitewrit said...

Well, Katdish, first the bad news. Ya got yourself another male follower (not in the stalker sense, you know, Blog reader sense).

But the good news (with a small g, because we both know what the Good News with a capital G is), I have some female followers of my Blog (www.nitewrit.com), who have a lot of female followers of their Blogs. So maybe you could check out my Blog then follow the links to Tamela or Farrah or Tracy or Charlotte or so on and see how they attract so many of the feminine persausion.

And maybe stick around and read some of my stuff.

If it is safe with a name like Katdish, since my oldest daughter is known as Kat and Katrangler, and she and her younger sister both work at animal shelters and my wife collects cats like under the bed collects dust-bunnies, a Katdish many be in some danger.

Still, I invite you to take a peek.

Now I need to make a comment on Billy's post so he knows I came here to your Blog from his.

Larry E.

Beth said...

If I could clone myself, then you could increase the female readership, and who wouldn't want TWO of me??? :)

Dude. I am girly girled out after this weekend. Don't get me wrong....it was awesome in so many ways, but sometimes I found myself thinking...if I see one more cutesy-ootsey thing, I might have to throw up on it.

My plan is to get some of the gals I met this weekend reading my blog which will in turn cause them to read your blog because of your fanstastical awesome comments on my blog. A foolproof plan, right?

Tina said...

I guess Billy's effective, I'm in :)

I have three boys, one girl (who also has an honorary man card so technically she doesn't really count as a girl) and have been married to a man's man for almost 25 years, I used to be a girly girl but all the testosterone I'm surrounded with has all but quashed any and all inclinations towards care bears or flowers.... No wait, I still like flowers... in my garden, a vase, but not necessarily all over the place. Any way Hello

Travis said...

I know you were looking for more women, but I think you might have landed me instead.

I don't know why, but I was unaware of this cool blog. I guess you'll have to settle for a Texan instead...Cuase I'm likely to return!

Helen said...

Katdish, I am glad that Mr. Coffey's (he will remain"Mr. Coffey" until he friends me on facebook) stunning good looks did not play a part in your decision to guest blog, because that could actually backfire. Wholesome, faithful wives such as myself may find themselves unable to come here and look at his fine picture. He was only thinking of not causing sin in others when he posted the picture of the back of his head on his own blog. Keep that in mind!

Helen said...

Hi Billy!
I've been confirmed! WOOHOO!

Joanne Sher said...

OK - I'll be following you. Gonna read back a couple posts (and yeah, Billy drew me here!).

And don't hate me for having a rainbowish header on MY blog. (;))

sharilyn said...

please, PLEASE!!! no CareBears or unicorns! or i shall surely not be able to come to visit!! (the nausea would be to much to endure!) :) but, yes! to guest host billy coffey! he is an amazingly gifted writer, and i do wish some publisher would get smart and get a book contract started!!

i've seen your comments on billy's blog and was planning to come check you out anyway... partly because i love that crazy title!! :) it's almost as good as being distracted by shiny objects!

and hey, if you can attract a mostly-male readership, there's something cool to be said for that as well!