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Maximize Content Value: Find And Write For The Right Audience

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The Right Audience

Most bloggers use the word “you” somewhere in their content. But they usually don’t place any thought on who that word is targeted at. And that’s a serious problem.

Face it. You can’t write for everyone and every single audience. So you’re going to have to focus your content on the right group of people.

Here’s why it’s important to pick the best one: If you focus on the wrong type of people, it won’t perform well. But if you decide to place the focus of your content on the people who were your friends all along, the people who promoting your content the whole time, your content will bring you to new places: one of them being success. Doing this helps you maximize the value of your content without doing too much extra work in the first place.

If you don’t know who you’re writing for, stop and think. What group of people have given you the most during your blogging career?

For me, it’s other bloggers and other webmasters interested in blogging. That’s one of the kinds of people I focus my writing on. After all, I often blog about blogging. I also place a lot of focus on people you are interested in SEO, because I’m an SEO consultant.

But what about you?

How To Find The Right Audience For Your Content

Take A Look At Your Community

A great way to find out who your content is supposed to be written for is to look at your community, or in another word, your commentators. Get to know who they are and what they do. This won’t just help you make friends with them. It will also help you find the kind of people that will talk about promote your content for you.

For example, if some of your best commentators are people who write about PHP coding, (a random example, I know) focus your content on these people. While you also want to deliver for PHP beginners, focusing on the experts as well might just help your make-believe blog with PHP commentators get to the top.

Find Out Who’s Tweeting About You And Your Content

Personally, this is my favorite way to both find my target audience and make friends with other people. Make a quick search on Twitter and see who’s mentioning your username. Whether it’s to retweet, mention you in a FollowFriday, or something else, these are the kind of people who’ve actually visited your blog and liked your content enough to give it to other people.

These kind of people may just be the right kind of people for your content. After all, they went through a click or two just to get the word out about your content. They wasted space on their Twitter profile just for you! And shouldn’t your content be focused on people who like it? Twitter can easily give you the answers about who really reads your blog, but only if you use it correctly, of course.

OK enough about finding the people you want to write for, how do you actually focus your content on a group of people?

Actually, this should be fairly simple. To satisfy your target audience even more, you’re going to need to think of them when you’re writing. That’s it. Just write with them in mind, answer any questions you think they may have, and write words that make them stop and think. That isn’t so hard, but it will bring you results in the long run. After all, as a blogger, your job is to help people, why not help yourself too?

What do you think about this post? Got any more tips for find the right people to write for? (if that was a pun, it was intended ;)) I didn’t cover actually writing for these people too much, so why don’t you do it for me in the comments?

Thanks for reading! R-E-T-W-E-E-T-I-N-G is cool. 🙂

About

Karan Singhal is a well-known professional search engine and social media optimizer. He founded the Trafficke SEO Consulting Firm. He also shares more advice at the Trafficke Blog

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{ 22 Responses }

  1. Biodun says:
    Sure knowing your audience leads to better writing, really if you want your visitors to use or buy your service, you need to focus on their needs and desires.
  2. Sachin says:
    Wonderful post Thanks for sharing Interesting Points. :) ;)
  3. Colleen says:
    "Actually, this should be fairly simple. To satisfy your target audience even more, you’re going to need to think of them when you’re writing." Agreed! The catch is knowing who your target audience is. All we have sometimes is our server stats to go on for traffic.
  4. Laura Davis says:
    That's really good advice! I've never thought of using twitter to determine your audience base. Thanks!
  5. Gabrielle says:
    How do you find out who is the target audience for beginners? I have a few people (3) that are clicking the like button for my posts. I suppose that is a good start. Do I start with these 3 people?
    • Karan Singhal says:
      I'm assuming that the like button is for Facebook, so if you're active on Facebook and want to please the people who like your content further, why not? Just don't get to carried away, since you've only got 3 people clicking the "like" button on your content. Just pick the largest "demographic" (like businesses, other bloggers, etc.) in your blog community and roll with it.
  6. Tia says:
    You make really good points. One thing I would say is that sometimes, people discover that the people who are reading and promoting their content are not their target market. The challenge then is to make an effort to start tailoring your writing to the true intended audience while at the same time retaining blogging buddies. My advice is to do so over-time. It might mean fewer comments for awhile, and less sharing, but it's all in effort to really serve the ones your blog is intended to serve.
  7. Dev - Technshare.com says:
    Hey karen, Awesome post buddy. You've give some great advice. Really Great post. Thanks for sharing this great Post. ~Dev
  8. Nabeel says:
    Hi Karan, I agree with you. You should definitely know your audience. You will be writing better and connecting more with them. Regarding "How To Find The Right Audience For Your Content", Mars from marsdorian.com mentioned something about Twitter too. He said look at which 'lists' other people include you in. This will also give you an idea of how people perceive you/your blog. Kindest, Nabeel
  9. Louie Lazaro says:
    I dont know i you know this but, facebook's like button now lets you track the people who clicked it. Thats a great way to find out who are your readers (customers).
  10. Gary David says:
    Thanks for sharing this Karan. This is an awesome post. I totally agree with you about finding who's mentioning your username in Twitter. If you can create a content for those people, then you are really targeting the right audience. Treat them and make friends as well, that's the most important thing in business, when we have a lot of friends. Kind regards, Gary
  11. Christina says:
    Sound advice, your audience vary but as mentioned by one of your commentators...it is still very important.
  12. DazzlinDonna says:
    Loved this post, Karan. Knowing your audience - even if that audience may vary somewhat - is very important. Tailoring content to that audience ensures that you're giving the readers something they want to consume. One additional idea is to give the readers something they are interested in, but may not yet already know much about. If the users are php programmers, expand their minds a little and talk about the newest no-sql database technologies, for instance. Some may know about them and have used them, some may have heard about them but not experienced them yet, and others may know nothing about them at all. By understanding your audience, you can anticipate related topics to explore that might be just slightly outside of their interests, but still close enough to pull them in. Finally, I usually write as though I'm sitting right in the room with one or a few of my readers. Using the same conversational style that I would use if I were actually face to face with that person, or group of people, makes me feel more comfortable to communicate with them in a natural way. Hopefully, that comes across the way I want it to. :) Great topic. Would love to see you explore it even more in future posts.
    • Karan Singhal says:
      Exactly, Donna. People focus too much on providing content that they forget that they content can't just repeat what people have already said. I covered this in my blog post The Golden Rule For Writing Stellar Content and always remind my blogging clients and friends that content doesn't mean much if it isn't truly unique, and not just "in your own words".
  13. Robert says:
    Alot of the time my content changes, sometimes it's common tech news, other times it could be specialist tech information or opinions on things that guest bloggers post for me. For the tech industry it's kind of hard to figure out who you're writing for. Sometimes it can be advanced geeks, and other times it could be your common joe who doesn't know a whole lot about the tech industry. so it's hard to find a balance, go into to much detail and the nerds get bored, not enough detail and your average joe won't understand you
  14. Aaron says:
    Good tips Karan. It's good to look at things from another perspective sometimes. I find myself being too technical for my readership sometimes as well, so its good to have an explanation for both.
    • Karan Singhal says:
      Thanks for your thoughts, Aaron. I agree completely. As bloggers, all we do is think of ourselves and how to get our content to the top and forget about our readers, when thinking of them is what'll really help you.
  15. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Hi Karan, Great common sense advice here, some of which I hadn't thought of ;) I like to write for my commentors. By staying on topic I target my audience. When I stray readership tends to drop because my readers aren't clear on what I am offering them. When I decided to stick to 2 topics - network marketing and personal development - I hit a select audience which continued to return, comment on my blog posts and share my content on twitter and FB. Ryan Biddulph
  16. Tushar says:
    actually i am one of those who uses you too much in your post.... although i have not had much negative comments or mails on that, still your post has forced me to think about its usage
  17. DiTesco says:
    Hmmm, not so sure about this Karan, but you do have an interesting point. Maybe I will just add my two cents and complete your advice by focusing your writing to your chosen niche or blog topic. I think this way you are not only targeting those people that are interacting with you but also others who may eventually have the same interest. All in all, I think that when people comment or tweet something you have written, it will be most like that what you wrote is relevant to your topic, right?
    • Cindy says:
      I agree with you, DiTesco... I guess it depends if the blogger's purpose is to monetize his content, then he might need blog on topics that follow a certain "trend". Personally, I blog on topics that I'm good at which can be very technical to some, so I choose my crowd who share the same interests and who I can possibly educate.