You’ve started your blog, but do you know your audience? Do you have a clear picture in mind of your “average” reader – or the person you hope will be reading your blog?
When you’re creating your content or writing blog posts, it can sometimes be helpful to keep this person in mind. Think of your post as a direct conversation with this person.
Think of your audience as a friend you’re chatting with. You know quite a bit about your friends, but only have a vague, foggy picture in mind of your intended audience. Creating a stronger, more robust picture of your average reader can go a long way towards establishing trust with your readership. In this case, it can help to try to put together a short persona profile of a (totally fictional) reader.
WHAT IS A PERSONA?
A persona is a hypothetical character that defines your target audience. Personas help you target your readers by understanding their behaviors, motivating factors, and expectations. By creating a persona it will help you understand who your audience is so you can create content that will resonate with them.
For instance, say you just started a fashion blog. You’ll want to understand just what motivates your readers, what they like, and how your blog can tie to their lifestyle. Let’s create a persona for your blog’s average reader, shall we?
BUILDING A PERSONA PORTRAIT
Name: Ashley
Gender: Female
Age: 26
Occupation: Marketing Associate; $40k
Dress Style: Trendy
Favorite Band: Cold War Kids
Favorite Drink: Diva (pomegranate martini) or Lavender Lemonade
Interests: Fashion, food, art, interior decorating
Profile: Ashley enjoys reading blogs about how to dress professionally but remain young and stylish. She frequently looks for tips on creating expensive-looking outfits on a budget. She gets her fashion inspiration from store windows, magazines, Instagram and Pinterest. And her favorite brands are Forever 21, H&M, Epress, and J. Crew.
PERSONA AND TARGETED MARKETING
Envisioning Ashley is the most important process of starting a blog. She is your target audience, as well as the person you’ll keep in mind when creating your posts and coming up with ideas for what she may be interested in reading about. Whenever you want to write a post, “get into character” as Ashley and put yourself in her (Stuart Weitzman lookalike) shoes. This will help you come up with ideas that best speak to Ashley (and the rest of your readers).
For example: A blog post that Ashley may want to read might be, 10 Tricks To Make Your Target Clothes Look More Expensive. The content shows that you, as the blogger, understand your audience’s problem and that the content is customized to address their needs and answer their questions.
PERSONAS AND TARGETING YOUR MARKETING
Another reason for using a persona is to help focus your marketing efforts and understand the profile of those who are more likely to become regular visitors, as well as where you can expect to find them online. As a typical reader, Ashley’s buying, spending, and social habits would likely look a little something like this:
Demographics:
- Female
- mid 20’s to mid 30’s
- Professional
- On a budget
Found on the following marketing channels:
BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR AUDIENCE
Once you have a solid understanding of who your audience is, you can start to build a relationship. Just like any relationship, it takes time to establish trust. Trust is the most important aspect in building relationships with your audience. A trusted blog will receive more traffic, more repeat visitors, more social shares and a larger audience. The key to building trust:
- Honesty. Talk about what you know and admit when you don’t know something.
- Personality. Be yourself and show your audience know who you are.
- Create good habits. Post regularly, make sure your audience is aware of the frequency at which you post so they know when to expect new content to be published.
- Don’t make it all about you. Engage our audience, ask and respond to questions.
- Create useful content. Provide meaningful and valuable content that speaks to your services.
With the right persona, you can build stronger digital campaigns and be more effective in your efforts. By creating content that puts your audience first, will naturally help you build trust and value. And that trust will build fiercely loyal followers, who will want to share your content.
