How to know your target audience

I’m not sure what my readers are interested in and what they want to know about. How do I know what to write when I don’t know who I’m writing for?

Yes, it’s difficult to know your target audience when it feels like you’re sending your posts out to crickets! Honestly, I’m not sure you can ever feel 100% certain that you know your target audience. I actually wanted to tackle this subject today because I’m currently questioning who I’m writing for! My target audience is something I’m constantly refining as I interact with more people and realize and develop my own strengths. It’s something that has evolved over time as I fit the puzzle pieces together.

Like a lot of aspects of business and blogging, there is a cycle in discovering and refining your target audience. You gain sudden moments of clarity when everything comes together perfectly, then the next week you question everything. It’s an uncomfortable feeling — I usually doubt everything and wonder if I’m offering anything of value at all when I can’t clearly answer who I’m writing for. But I’ve found (and I’m writing this now as a reminder to myself!) that the discomfort usually comes right before those moments of clarity. You’ll see a pattern, or all the ideas in your brain will suddenly click, and you know exactly who to write for and what they need from you.

Here are a few things you can do to help the process along:

YOU are probably representative of your target audience.

Always look to yourself first. Usually the people you can help the most are the ones who are in the same position you were in last month or last year — or even the one you’re in now. What have you struggled with? What questions did you want answered? What are you learning now?

The people you can help most are those in the same position as you were last year — or even now.
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Ask and they will tell you.

Ask people questions whenever you can. Create surveys, and don’t get discouraged by a small number of survey responses. The people who take the time to respond are the ones who want to hear from you the most — so listen to them! Set up auto-responders for your email list. Ask questions in your blog posts and on social media. Be genuinely curious.

A few weeks ago on Twitter, I shared a blog post I liked and mentioned the author. The author responded with a question to continue the discussion. It took me by surprise because I — and pretty much everyone else out there — would usually simply thank the person for sharing and move on. How many opportunities are we missing to learn more about the people we want to help?

How many opportunities are we missing to learn more about the people we want to help? Be curious.
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Look for trends.

I mentioned this tip from The Middle Finger Project before, but it’s worth mentioning again. Create a humans notebook. Save every interaction from your readers — comments, tweets, emails. Trends will emerge. And — bonus points! — people are telling you exactly what they want in their own words. Which means you can give them what they want in language they can relate to.

Most importantly, remember that you don’t have to know your target audience overnight. And you don’t have to change it overnight either. You can tweak things as you go along! It’s a natural part of business growth. Yes, you will lose some people along the way, but the people you do attract will be that much more enthusiastic about your work.

You don’t have to know your target audience overnight. You don’t have to change it overnight.
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As a fun little exercise, I’d love to hear from you in the comments: who are you writing for?