The most important task for any business is to know to whom you are selling. Who are your customers, and what do you know about them? These are critical questions that you have to answer if you want to succeed in your business. In the case of blogging, this is absolutely true.
Your blog will never succeed if you do not know who your target audience is. It’s like aiming in the dark with both eyes blind – ignorance is the sure recipe for failure.
But hold on! We want you to succeed. We are here to help you through every step and every difficulty so that your WordPress website succeeds with flying colors. That’s why we share so many insights and tutorials to help you.
In this article, we will discuss what the target audience is and why it is beneficial. We will walk you through finding the target audience for your WordPress blog. So get your learning hats on and absorb this key to success in blogging.
What is the Target Audience for your blog?
To put it in the most direct way, the target audience for your blog is the audience for whom you are creating content. It makes sense to know the people you are reaching out through your blog.
You must have asked many questions when you created your WordPress website. Questions like ‘which hosting to buy,’ ‘how the site design should be,’ ‘what keywords should I target,’ ‘which lead generation plugins I should use,’ are indeed critical. You are entitled to know the answers to these questions.
Yet, there is one question you must ask before starting your WordPress blog:
For whom are you writing?
If you are writing it for yourself, if it’s just a personal blog you want to use as your personal space, then you need not worry about knowing your target audience. You are the target audience in this case.
If you are creating the blog so that others would read it and find your content useful, then find out who these ‘others’ are. These ‘others’ are your target audience.
Let me share with you an interesting exercise that will help you find your target audience. Just close your eyes and picture someone reading your blog. How do you see this someone? Is he a college student? A career-oriented adult? A mother? How old are they? Where are they from? As you visualize your audience in this way, you will start to form a rough picture of your audience.
We will see how to make this picture clearer. We will also explore a few methods to know the target audience.
Let’s first understand how your website will benefit if you successfully identify the target audience.
Benefits of The Target Audience
If you are wondering why knowing the target audience is important, these following ideas will help you understand the importance of it.
How does knowing the target audience benefit you?
Here are a few answers.
- Knowing The Target Audience Saves Money and Energy
Without being aware of the target audience, you simply waste your time and money without any proper focus. This happens because you do not know to whom you are targeting.
There is no use of how much effort you put into your website’s SEO if you do not know the target audience. The knowledge of the target audience gives you a clear idea of where you should direct your efforts. You will also know which monetary investments will provide you with better output.
This knowledge can save you a lot of money and energy, which was not utilized for productive work earlier. Without this insight, you would spend a lot of money without understanding the worth of your investment. It is like you are blindly betting on pieces you do not see. Without knowledge, your returns will be purely based on luck.
Knowing the target audience makes you more focused. It keeps you away from distractions. Thus, you save your energy and channel it where it brings you the most benefit.
The knowledge of the target audience compels you to be focused on targeted efforts. Your SEO strategy is streamlined. You get a clear idea about the content you should create and improvements you must make. As a result, you get outstanding output for your investments, whether it be time, money, or energy.
- Your Content is Better because of this knowledge
You cannot write content relevant to your audience until you know what is relevant to them. What does your audience care about? What are their areas of interest? What are the things that are not relevant to your readers? What are the best ways to connect with your audience? Answers to all these questions will help you create content that’s way better than your guesswork content.
Knowing your target audience gives you clarity about the content. This knowledge inspires content ideas that catch your readers’ attention and keeps them hooked to your blog.
- Your visitors return to your website often
When you write fantastic content that your target audience finds useful, readers will keep coming back to your website for more content. Who wouldn’t want such loyal readers?
The key to loyal readers is the incredible content that answers their needs and provides some value to them. This type of content is possible with the knowledge of your target audience.
You need to keep your audience in mind as you make any decision about your WordPress blog. Apart from content, relevant internal links, good user experience also matters.
You can read more about internal linking in this complete guide for internal linking.
Improving your website is a continuous journey. Your target audience will guide you throughout the journey of your blog.
- Your Audience is willing to buy from you
As you build loyal visitors, you will develop a relationship with your readers. There will be a connection between you and them through the content you create. Since you have an idea about them (knowledge of the target audience), you can relate to them. This improves the chance of selling products to them.
Sooner or later, you would want to monetize your blog. You would need a lot many potential buyers to succeed financially. Imagine how easy it would be to sell something when your readers trust your content and connect to what you are selling.
Know your target audience and reap the benefits.
How to find the target audience for your blog
Deciding the right audience for your blog is the first thing you should do before starting your blog. You can determine this based on what value you are offering through your blog. Ask yourself for whom your content would be useful. The answers will give you a clear idea about your target audience. Once you have a preliminary understanding, how would you know more about the target audience for your blog?
Here is the step by step approach.
Step 1: Go where your target audience is
What do you do if you want apples? Either you bring apples to you, or you go the apples. If you let apples come to you, you will not know more about the apple – where it came from and how it landed in your hand.
However, if you go to the apples, you will know more about them. In the same way, to find your target audience, you will need to visit the places they visit. Be one of them to know all of them.
Here are a few places you can visit:
Quora
This powerful question-answer platform is one of the most popular places to seek advice or get answers from others.
Ask yourself what questions your target audience would be asking. Look for those questions and study the answers. You will soon notice your opportunities to add value through content.
Quora can help you understand doubts in people’s minds and the questions they have. You will also benefit from a broad range of related topics and questions.
Google Search
The most obvious and the most powerful tool that can help you find more about your target audience is Google Search. By looking at the keywords users type to get to the content that’s relevant to your blog, you can optimize your content strategy.
Facebook Groups
Facebook is a useful platform to get an idea of what people talk about and how they talk. Try to find Facebook groups related to your niche and join them.
Participate in these groups and observe what people share in these groups. You can get many content ideas from these shared pieces. The doubts people ask in Facebook groups can show you the opportunity to target content accordingly.
Blogs of your competitors
One of the most efficient ways to reach out to your target audience is to observe your competitors. By following what works for your competitors, you can get ideas for your blog as well.
You will learn many things from your competitors. These learnings come from the years of the effort they put into their website. It is wise to learn from their strengths and weaknesses.
I am not suggesting that you copy them as it is. I am saying you can get inspired by your competitors’ blogs and mimic the parts that work for them. There is much you will have to rework. However, learning from your competitors’ blogs means you don’t have to start from scratch. You have a great foundation to build on.
Step 2: Gather demographic details of your target audience
You should know who you are creating content for. This shouldn’t be a vague answer. What should you look for? Start with demographic details.
You can start noting the following details about your target audience:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Occupation
- Education level
- Income level
- Marital status
- Personality and behavior
- Interests and hobbies
Another critical area to look for is their online presence. Figure out where your target audience hangs out. Note down which social networking sites they use the most. Know their online habits. For example, how much time they spend online and which sites they visit the most.
Finding these details can be quite a task. But it’s worth it. These details will help you create content that’s tailored to your target audience.
Step 3: Figure out what problems you can solve
One great way to figure out the target audience is to focus on what you offer to them.
Why are you blogging? What problems do you aspire to solve? What value can you add to your readers? Focus on these questions.
As you find the apt answers to these questions, you will be more specific and clear about your content strategy. These answers will help narrow down your attention to what matters the most to you.
Once you know what areas you want to focus on, you can start to figure out the ‘who’ part. Your target audience is the one who wants the solutions you offer.
Step 4: Determine low competition keywords
It’s natural to go for the most general description of your target audience. However, you will benefit more from specifics.
The same holds true for keywords. If you look at the most popular and most competitive keywords, you will have a hard time chasing them. You don’t have that competitive advantage when you are starting your blog. It also takes a lot of money to compete for these keywords.
You need not focus on high competition keywords. Focus on low competition keywords. These are the keywords that your audience searches in more detail. These can mostly be long tail keywords. These types of keywords have low competition. You can create targeted content around these keywords. This targeted approach will help you serve content that will attract steady traffic.
You can know more about creating an effective content strategy.
Step 5: Think Like Your Audience
This is perhaps the most difficult task for you if you are not comfortable putting yourself in other’s shoes. However, this is the most rewarding thinking exercise that will give you a great advantage in your success journey.
How do you think like your audience? Here, the knowledge you obtained from demographics and other steps discussed above will be useful. You already have data about your audience. Put yourself in their shoes. Ask natural questions that easily pop into your mind.
The better you relate to your audience, the more mastery you will have in thinking like your audience. Thinking like your target audience will give you lots of insights about them and what you should do with your website. It will direct your efforts in the right direction.
Thinking helps. Think like your audience, and you will succeed.
Conclusion
Succeeding in WordPress blogging is not an automated process. It takes consistent efforts. Knowing your target audience is the first step toward the right direction of your blog’s success.
Here, we reviewed the term target audience and its benefits. We also discussed a step by step approach to finding your target audience. We hope this article inspires you to work towards finding the target audience.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments section. We are here to help you with anything related to WordPress.
