Today's blog post was totally unplanned, but sometimes things happen unexpectedly that in turn warrant a quick blog post. This morning, such an event occured.

Let me give you some background first. During my four years at Seattle University, I spent two of them as a Writing Consultant at our Writing Center, learning how to help others with their writing and consequently learning how to be a better writer myself. One lesson I took away from that experience was the importance of stepping outside yourself as a writer and reading your writing as the intended audience would. However, I also learned that this is one of the hardest things to do.

Out in the real world, though I don't write nearly as much as I had to in college, I still have to remember this lesson for every 500 word blog post I write or paragraph I add to our website. I have to think about who my audience is and how they will perceive what I write. That's where I went wrong in my blog post title last week, and it hit me like a bag of bricks this morning.

As I wrote my blog post about how awesome and amazing the concierges are, I happened to be listening to Beyonce's song "Run The World (Girls)". As I came to the end of my post, I was left with the title. The title is always a challenge because I want it to be relevant, include keywords for SEO, and also be somewhat clever/entertaining (at least in my mind). That third goal is where I went so wrong.

Much like comedy is subjective, the things that I find clever and entertaining are not particularly what my audience will find clever or entertaining. So when I titled my blog post, "Multifamily Industry: Who Run the World?" as inspired by Beyonce's lyrics, I failed to take into consideration that most of my audience would not know what I was referencing and simply think I am a grammatical dunce.

This morning, the latter came true in the form of a comment on my blog post from last week. I was so excited to see that someone had responded, until I saw what they actually had to say, and I quickly turned red in the face. However, instead of harping on it for too long, I decided to add the missing "S" to "Runs" so as not to confuse anyone else, and decided to share this lesson with others: you are not your audience!! Before you post something, step outside yourself and think hard about whether the people reading your blog post will understand what you are saying and/or referencing. Then do it again. And again. And if you think it's perfect, it's not, so have someone else read it before it goes public.

That's why instead of titling this post "Drama, Drama, Drama!" as I would like to (referencing that famous line from How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days"), I'm going to choose something a little more relevant and a little less obscure.

Now, I know I'm not the only one who has experienced something like this when writing a blog post (or any kind of writing that is public). Don't leave me hanging - share your stories below and other lessons you've learned in writing!

-Cate, Customer Success Manager

http://www.activebuilding.com/blog/bid/62882/Multifamily-Industry-Who-Runs-the-World