Why Define Your Targe Audience?
A crucial step with every new project is to define your target audience.
You must know as much as possible about the people you’re going to serve.
When you define your audience, you know how to speak to them.
And you figure out their needs, wants and challenges.
You get a picture of what they want.
And you can provide solutions.
In other words, you know where to start.
Not Defining Your Target Audience
It’s like shooting in the dark.
You post and publish content, hoping that something will stick eventually.
And it does. It’s just that it takes a long, long time.
I saw this multiple times.
It happened with some of my projects. And I saw it with other people’s projects, too.
The approach is valid, it gets you started.
It’s just that it takes more time than you’d want to.
More than you can afford to spend.
My first blog was like that.
It took a looong while to gain traction.
It did, eventually.
And I was able to transfer that traffic to another project of mine (a podcast).
But there’s a better way.
Talk To Your Audience
Your audience has problems and challenges you can solve with your expertise.
As an example, my girlfriend is a translator.
Recently, we had a conversation about the technical challenges translators have.
The discussion proved fruitful.
She was having a tough time managing multiple documents she had to translate.
On multiple occasions, she receives archives containing multiple document formats.
The archives contain images, word documents and PDF files.
All she wanted was to print them all at once, instead of going file by file and print them manually.
Upon hearing this, my software developer background kicked in.
I jumped immediately and started developing an app just for her.
Just to merge those files from archives.
A few days later, she had a functioning app.
Identifying This Blog’s Audience
I’m at the point of defining my audience for this blog.
Here are the categories I believe I can add value to, that I’ve identified so far:
Translators
my girlfriend is a professional translator, I have direct insight into her field
Digital Creators
- Audio Editors
- Video Editors
- Course Creators
Beginner DJ’s
I learned how to DJ as a hobby
Software DJ’s use
Mixing In Phrase
Voiceover Artists
Digital Marketers
It’s so much easier to write knowing who I am writing for.
Whose problems am I trying to solve
How are my creations supposed to improve my reader’s lives?
My creations are supposed to improve the lives of people in these categories.
As I mentioned, it’s crucial to know your audience.
Even if it’s not perfectly defined, it’s where you start.