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What Does Your Audience Want To Read?

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What Audience Wants

Figuring out what the audience wants is no easy task. This becomes even more difficult to judge when it comes to written material. Whether written for informative or promotional purposes the most important thing for the writer is to keep in mind who they are writing for.

How do you do that? It surely isn’t easy to determine what it is exactly that your audience wants to read. However, there are certain ways of judging it and one of the foremost ways is to talk to them. Asking them what they want is the most effective way of delivering closest to what your audience wants.

Every marketing process starts by defining your target audience. So that when you ask them what they want you will be able to make proper use of it. Consider contacting them in a way that will gain their trust. Use platforms like social networking sites to engage with them.

The process of determining what the audience wants to read begins by first determining who your audience is. To start this process you will first need to understand the following characteristics of your target audience:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Geographic Location
  • Educational Background
  • Lifestyle
  • Social Status

The demographical characteristics help you determine the level of language that you need to use. Other psychographic characteristics will have deeper implications. Their lifestyle will determine the kind of material that will interest them. Their social status will be an indication of how strong their word-of-mouth is.

However, there are also some general rules to writing that would make the content readable for the  maximum number of audience. Some of these rules followed by most of the popular copywriting agency are:

BE ENGAGING

Written material that is engaging is preferred by the readers. Try to adopt a writing style that will keep the readers engaged in what you are trying to convey. One of the tricks for doing is to make is sound like what you are telling the reader is very important to them. Talking about them and how what you are telling them will improve their lives is a proven writing tip.

MAKE A CONVERSATION

Conversational content writing style is highly preferred when it comes to writing for blogs and social media websites. Another advantage that it has is that it attracts more readers and tends to have a longer retention period as compared to a formal writing style. Overly sales-pitched sounding reading material is also not seen as a good form of writing.

INFORMATIVE

Readers want to be able to extract some information from what they read. That is why it is important that they feel what you are writing is providing them some sort of valuable information. Being informative does not mean that you need to fill up your writing material with facts and figures. Even an idea or an opinion can also be considered as informative as it broadens a person’s perspective.

CURRENT

What you write should be of the current times and not of the past. People are not really interested in past trends, but rather in the current ones. Discussing history is another matter all together.

EXCLUSIVE

Every writer tries to keep their material exclusive. That is why it is important to cite something when it is being quoted. The audience does want to read about things that interest them, but when it is exclusive that just adds to its charm.

With some general writing guidelines and some specific relative information to the target you can produce a very useful piece of reading material.

If you really want to go all the way to make sure that you understood the target audience correctly, share some sample work with a test focus group to get their opinion. That will help you ensure that you are on the right track and with some tweaking you will probably know exactly what your audience wants to read.

Image © CandyBox Images – Fotolia.com

About

Hi, I am Shaly, Journalist by profession and blogger by passion. I love writing on various topics that interest readers. Interacting with readers gives a feeling that you are around your love, in spite of busy schedule you are social and deliberately affecting the world to some extent.

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{ 15 Responses }

  1. Toshiba Burton says:
    You've made some really interesting points in this article, but the one that stands out to me most was being Informative. Provide value with something that's going to educate them by maybe answering their questions, solving any problems or confusion they are misunderstanding is the key. If you continue to do this then they will start looking at you as the go to person or shall I say the expert in your field. Thanks Shaly!
  2. Rajnish says:
    It is the most important and hardest task of blogging but if you find solution for this then no one can stop your from being successful, while browsing i found a blog which was asking for what you would like to read next time below every post, I think that would be easy and straight way to know what your visitors want to read.
  3. Jakes says:
    Hi Shaly, Well-written post. I guess one we establish ourself in the brand identity in the blog-o-sphere, one should start studying about the current audience of his/her blog. Tools like Alexa, will help us to identify the age group of our audience and all. Since readers are our customers, we should study about this and devise some strategies not to lose our valuable audience. Study about them properly and serve accordingly :-)
  4. Dewane Mutunga says:
    Shaly, I agree, asking is by far the best way to find out what your audience wants. When it comes to writing for them, i think your writing style (your personality) and the way in which it's structured/communicated are paramount.
  5. Steve says:
    Very resourceful article Shaly! Well done! I mean one should get the perspective of one needs to actually get the niche what an audience by & large demands on a whole aspect! No doubt niche is the most important one! I always make my readers the most optimum information 1st!
  6. Mariella Lombardi says:
    Those are some great points to consider Sharly. I think most readers decide in the first 10 seconds if they're gonna keep reading a blog or not. So as some say it all depends on first impressions and after that, it depends on originality and flair.
  7. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Hi Shaly, Adopting a conversational tone helps foster engagement. Writing in a stuffy, academic style - or sounding like a shill, as you note - turns readers off quickly. Write how you talk. Chat people up. Lighten up. Readers feel your energy through the written word. I can feel if someone feels stressed or strained when writing. You can feel it in the words, see it, sense it. Can't explain this on a conscious level really; it's something you sense. Asking for feedback is the quickest and easiest way to discern what readers want. One note: not all feedback is equal. Gauge the opinions of your readership but never ignore your intuition. The small, still voice you hear within will never lead you wrong, no matter what people around you say. Thanks for sharing! Ryan
  8. JamesW says:
    Really great post, we always need to test and to ask our audience about what is that they want from our blogs or website. Their opinion can only help the online business. thanks for sharing
    • Shaly Criston says:
      Thanks James for liking the post, these motivation really works.
  9. Anton Koekemoer says:
    I do agree with you Shaly. When it comes to engagement with a user online there is almost nothing that can make them return to your website as regular. This is not only valuable for PR and business connections , but you get a lot of SEO benefits and can help create a good Online Reputation for yourself and or your brand.
    • Shaly Criston says:
      Anton, It is true that engaging a reader is hard. You need to be engaging, the post should carry sense of humor and most importantly it should value the readers and his perspective.
  10. Ben Troy says:
    I think what the audience really want to read with blog posts are: Detailed and in-depth. Lengthy enough to be packaged as a “resource.” Non-obvious information that is valuable to your audience. Insightful and “real” based on your own experiences. Makes your audience say “Wow, this is what I have been looking for, and it’s free!”
    • Shaly Criston says:
      Ben readers very rare say "WOW" but if you are successful in getting the one you actually are turning into a authorize writer. :)
  11. Andrew Stark says:
    Hi Shaly, To me it's the blog layout, headline, formatting, and story telling and formatting that will decide if I'm engaged enough to read a blog. Here's my reasoning. A poor layout with lots of flashing adverts for "dodgy products" makes me think this is a splog I'm wasting my time here, and close the browser. The headline needs to contain a benefit, and with the amount of copywriting available online it's pretty easy to be more inventive that list posts. Formatting, I hate long blocks of text. It reminds me of trying to read chemistry journals, I'm looking to be entertained by your blog post not having to squint at small print and think too much. Adding in some headline tags as you did is a great way to break up the text. Story telling, when writing on a blog you need to inject some passion. Have an opinion and most important of all don't write to target a keyword. Andrew
    • Shaly Criston says:
      Andrew, I totally agree with you, layout, formatting and writing style matters lot. In-fact these are the convincing tool but the main motive is to engage readers. The matter of the write up will actually define the retention of readers.