Getting to Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience inside out is a critical part of blog success. If you do not know who your reader is and what they need, how can you possibly delight them? Your blog has to be for your reader first and you second.
Yes, before anyone comments, there are notable successes with huge audiences who largely ignore their readers. These people are the exceptions. If you want to go that route, good luck to you. You will find in most cases that only works so long.
So how do you get to know your reader? I have spoken before a few times about things like surveys and creating a pen portrait.
Unlike many people I have an advantage, I have clients and I have a forum. Clients tell me everything as part of working with them, and my forum is a rich source of information too. I didn’t create my forum only for this reason but I have a wonderful resource in the form of the “introduce yourself” thread. No guessing involved for me, my audience tells me, sometimes in detail, who they are, what they do and where they want to be with their online activities. Through the discussions we get to know each other (a really nice bunch of people too!).
There will almost always be a forum or discussion list for your niche. Join up and take note. Who is the typical member? Who are most motivated, willing to read and learn, experiment? You don’t really want those who want to sit back and have everything spoon fed, go for the enthusiastic, energetic and open minded people.
As your audience grows, get to know them. Email, chat, IM, Twitter and speak to your readers. Encourage them to talk to you, to ask you questions. Make it clear you are open to communication.
The secret of course is being interested in your reader …
By Chris Garrett. Posted in Marketing
Chris,
Before I write an article I decided if that subject or device etc interests me, that way I am find I am very enthusiastic in what I write. Is this a mistake I am making?
I do think about my audience but not as deeply as you suggest.
I write most of my tips etc for beginners to intermediates.
Maybe I should think more of who my readers are.
Regards.
Definitely agreed. How you interact with your readers creates loyalty and a bond between you. Keep them happy, and they’ll keep coming back.
Hate to link in the comments, but here’s three great ways to get involved with your readers on your blog in your comments section. Getting to know readers on a more personal level makes a huge, huge difference.
Good point and timely reminder…without relationships things fall apart. If you’re able to communicate intimately with readers, clients, and prospects – they’ll always be more loyal to you.
So true! Often the people who are our regular audience truly VALUE what we share.
Who WOULDN’T want to reinforce and interact with that?
I like to give my readers polls on a regular basis to get to know them better. I used to do this more often, and I am going back to that model. My last poll was about their age… it was about what I expected.
Polls are great, because you can ask your readers anything you want to and they can anonymously answer you. I get much better results from polls than from comments. Where I might get 4 comments, I will get 100+ poll entries.
Some other great ways to engage your audience are to add more personalization to your blog through maybe a Flickr plugin to show people who you are, twitter plugin so people can see what you say, and running contests on your blog.
@jsanderz – Passion makes a big difference but I could be passionate about the Rocky Mountains as much as I like here but will my audience respond unless I connect it to new media, marketing or blogging?
@James – Nice post, thanks for the link
@Chad – Yup, you have to make the first move and if you do it right then you get rewarded. Too many people put the rewards first.
@renee – Exactly, as I like to say (probably too often!) it is common sense but not always common practice
@George – As you might have seen, I like polls too, but you get different sorts of results through polls, comments, and just chatting. It’s good to have a 3d picture
@SEO – Yup, occasionally I will leave a Flickr link on a picture, plus anyone who sees me on Twitter can discuss any old stuff with me too
Hi Chris,
I recently discussed something similar in my guest post at Easy Wordpress.
I think it’s really important to make it easy for your users to interact so you can find out what they want to be reading!
Keiron