Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time.
In Sun Tzu’s classic The Art of War, he said that a person who knows both the enemy and himself need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Of course, no one is implying that your readers are your enemy, but still, such an idea can be projected, re-shaped and applied to bloggers and their readers.
Know your reader
First of all, the blogger should know what the purpose of her blog is. Some bloggers don’t want to be known and all over the place, they simply want few interactions with a selected few. But for others who want to create their own personal brand, or even a corporate one for their business or the company they work for, they should consider providing interesting and useful material.
How to find/create content
Now the content can be presented in so many ways, be it content curation by selecting “good” content and re-posting it to their readers, that can work for any type of blogger. Be it by creating content themselves. Now the latter is a bit trickier, because it requires more time, more dedication and the point that was mentioned at the beginning of this post.
2 words: Interesting and useful
So yes, if the blogger knows their readers (more or less), noting that this would be much easier if it was a business blog, because they know who their clients or prospects are/should be and what they’re looking for, then the content created will only be based on what these readers will find “interesting” and “useful”, flavored with your own added value.
Expect nothing in return, and you might actually get it
The blogger shouldn’t wait for something in return, except feedback maybe… Moreover with time, readers/clients/prospects will trust the blogger, and perhaps the original intention that started with the blog, be it personal branding or customer relationship building, will manifest itself.
Photo source: http://djheights.com
Go Social Media! 
Very interesting and helpful. Will keep that in mind as I have just started… Thanks 🙂
a very interesting post, with so many goodies to know about
Thanks for the useful info!!
Reminded me of the workshop you gave us on blogging. It was a fantastic workshop. I still blog by some of the rules you suggested..
Excellent post! When I started, I didn’t know my audience..now that I know my audience, it has made me redefine my purpose, and adjust my content to suit!
Thanks for contributing useful information to the community!
Oh this is really encouraging of you guys, thanks for your comments, I am trying to simplify things, if it’s gets too obvious or simple do let me know!
Nadine, i have to admit that it was that workshop that inspired me into thinking more about these things in a way or another, so I have to thank you for that opportunity 🙂
If i may just add one more: Know yourself – What you are good at, what you are bad at, what you love to read, what type of content you look for and cannot find… and that MAY be interesting to your readers and may be a VERY propituous niche.
Yes darine, definitely 🙂 I took that for granted and didn’t mention it