Once upon a time, in a blog far far away, there was a computer scientist. He wanted to be the best computer scientist that there ever was, so he attended classes, universities, and workshops to hone his skills. He joined various organizations and teams, working every day to become better at his craft. Every day, he would wake at the dawn’s early light and head to his job at the prestigious research center to work on varying projects of ever increasing complexity. The projects ranged across multiple disciplines, including television digital broadcasting, image processing, medical applications, control systems for nuclear submarines, and even portions of the space program. Eventually, he left that job and started his own software consulting company. He hired a few like minded individuals and enjoyed the fruits of a profitable business.
One day, he decided that he would be retiring from that prestigious profession and realized that perhaps his days would be better spent in other endeavors. He sold his company to one of his contractors and embarked upon a pursuit of adventure and travel. He traveled across his country in search of new things to experience. Motorcycling, fishing, hiking, bicycling, and exploring filled his days. Sadly, our protagonist injured himself in a motorcycle incident and was laid up for an extended period of time. He was not able to continue his adventuring and was instead scheduled for a surgery that would lay him up for several months. Sedentary minds quickly go to waste, so our hero searched far and wide to find an alternative way to spend his days that might make use of his previous work and life experiences. After talking to his son, he realized that they might have a mutual interest in marketing. Upon researching the field of marketing, our hero quickly realized that there were technical aspects of marketing that aligned very closely with his work background. Also, he was able to find some online resources that could bring him up to speed.
After a few days of online research, he discovered that a company called Udacity provided just the sort of training that could quickly bring him up to speed on the latest approaches and technologies in digital marketing. A blog that he had been writing for many years came to mind as something that he could turn into an enterprise. He had tried to market his blog through various random postings on social media and other blogging sites with limited success and very little growth in readership. Upon discovering the Udacity Digital marketing course and completing a few of the lessons, he realized that he was approaching it in a completely backward way. Instead of the “if I build it they will come” approach, he learned that he would need to discover the needs of his audience and then craft his content to meet those needs.
With a fresh approach and some survey results from his target audience, our hero was able to define the content and an approach to marketing his blog such that the goal of increasing readership could be met. After some preliminary market research, he quickly found that the focus of his blog did not match the needs of his customer/audience. As a result, he decided to take a new direction with his blog this year, to address the concerns and focus of his readership. The blog readership consists of mainly retired folks with a desire and penchant for topics that address their lifestyles and interests. Today’s retiree is quite unlike the retirees of yesteryear. Instead of a focus on a relaxed and sedentary lifestyle, today’s retirees are active and engaged individuals with a zest for a healthy and engaging lifestyle filled with new experiences and adventures. These goals aligned coincidentally with the retirement goals of our hero. A match made in heaven!
