Blogging: Importance of learning from feedback

When you blog, it's difficult to get any reader.  Even after you get some readers, it's really hard to get honest feedback from the readers.  So when you get some feedback, you hold on to them, try to analyze what each one meant, and see if you need to make some course corrections.

Good news is that I have been getting a few feedback.  Bad news is that I have been getting some honest feedback.  One in particular stuck with me today from Reddit /r/startups:

"This blogs fails . You shouldn't be encouraged to be stupid, it should be encouraged on any idea, how do you validate you can not only execute but find customers. You can talk about a billion crazy ideas, but doesn't matter if you can't execute or don't know how to "

I thought about it for a bit.  What is going to be my response?  Should I reply at all?  Then my focus gradually shifted to the substance of comment.

Obviously the reader did not find the value from my post.  Why was it the case?  Where did I go wrong?  What could have I done differently to serve the reader better?

When I started thinking about what the reader might have been expecting, I began to see that I made a number of mistakes.

I self posted to /r/startups without spending enough time reading and figuring out what type of content resonated with the community.  I did not do the homework.  Only after I got the honest comment from one of readers, who by the way actually bothered to comment on my out-of-place post, I realized that /r/startups was much more about sharing hands-on startup experiences.  The community expected the war stories of launching your own startup or advice needed posts on new startups.  And there I was sharing a content about how not to get discouraged by nay-sayers. (The post was this, btw).

For most of readers of /r/startups, they already have made the jump to chase their own dream.  Many of them were already working to look for their paying customers.  I didn't not have to convince anyone not to get distracted by those who stopped you from implementing your idea.  Now that I think of it, I did not even get the audience profile right.  The post was focusing on corporate environment, and the post was made on /r/startups.  Good heavens.

I also pointed out the problem of nay-sayers when bringing about changes.  But I did not talk anything about how to handle those objections and help the readers move ahead.  All I did was to state the obvious then I left it there.  No pointers to how to handle the objections.  Not even experience of my failed attempt to draw the lesson of what not to do.

Now that I think of it, I might as well have posted that importance of daily exercise to professional athlete community.  I did not add anything.

I am very thankful for the honest comments readers provide.  I am fortunate that I have them.  Especially the honest ones that set me straight.