Starting a blog is fantastic! Starting a blog with no idea who you’re talking to is NOT amazing!
When you begin blogging, you need to know whom you’re talking to. Like, know this person as if they are your BFF.
If you’ve been in business for over a year and are now looking for ways to expand your reach and begin creating impacts in a bigger way, then a blog can be a most excellent fit. And one of the first things you need to ensure you have in place is an audience.
Having an audience, or your avatar, in place will help you curate content specifically for this person. Knowing your audience will give you the ability to write as if you are reading your avatar’s mind!
If this is something you’re struggling with, no worries. I am going to teach you how to find your ideal audience so you’re not wondering who that is and spend time writing content no one cares about or even relates to.
How to Identify Your Ideal Audience
Before I begin, I will be using the terms ideal audience, avatar, and ideal client all interchangeably. Know that they all mean the exact same thing.
When you begin a business or a blog, you need to know who you’re serving in order to sell your product or service as well as communicate what you do for them. While you can I want you to ask yourself the following questions:
- Who do I love serving the most (male or female)?
- Why do I love serving them?
- What industry are they typically in?
- How long have they been in business?
- What about them do you love?
- What age range do you seem to attract?
- What is your main goal of serving these people (think purpose)?
These questions will begin to clarify whom you love serving. I find that I love serving women who are in between the ages of 40-55 years old (sometimes older) who have been in business longer than three years and are looking for ways to give back to their communities and help the younger generation with their wisdom.
This doesn’t mean to say you’ll always serve women. This past summer, I had the honor and pleasure with serving two men who were incredible and wanted content strategy and blogging help to move their business forward.
If you are finding that your client’s age range is all over the place, then consider what about them that draws them to you or you to them.
Remember, identifying these key factors will be the key to unlocking your blog’s content!
Get to Know Your Avatar
After establishing whom you serve, then it’s time to get to know your avatar. This is an exercise I give out to my clients and those who take The Confident Blogger, my online course, but in a sense, it’s all about creating an avatar persona so when you go to create any form of content, you have this persona in the back of your mind and you’re talking to him/her.
You can find free versions of a working template on Digital Marketer and Optin Monster.
An avatar can be a fake or real person you know that will help you create and craft content because you are getting into their world and understanding their pain, struggle and what keeps them up at night.
Here are nine questions from my workbook, Get to Know Your Avatar, that you can answer right now and get an idea of the person you’re speaking to.
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What is his/her name?
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How old are they?
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Where do he/she live?
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What does he/she look like (hair, eyes, height, body style)?
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What does she/he do for work?
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How much money does she/he make?
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What are his/her strengths?
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What are his/her weaknesses?
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What is keeping him/her up at night?
Once you know whom you’re speaking to and what is keeping them up at night, it’s time to hear directly from them to get their words to write epic and convertible content!
Conducting Market Research
Now it’s time to begin researching in your audience’s words what they want to learn from someone like you right now. If I am a content strategist, that means I need to ask my audience who is female service-based business owners what they struggle with in regards to content in their business. Whatever is their responses is my content for my blog, services, and products!
Here are two excellent blog posts that will guide you in conducting effective market research so you can gather data to create blog content:
4 Successful Ways to Conduct Market Research for Your Business
How to Conduct Market Research for Your Blog’s Content
And if you need help in writing better copy that sounds like you, here’s a post where you’ll learn how to begin building a tribe of followers through your coaching blog.
Your next step is to download the Create Attention-Worthy Content Now Workbook that takes everything you learned from this blog post into action by knowing exactly how to write content that seeks out the attention of your audience easily!
