When writing blog posts, it helps to know who your audience is. What kinds of people read your blog? It may help to profile a few fictitious readers who represent your audience. Write down each character’s traits, what they do for a living, and what problems they have. Name them something memorable. For example, you might come up with Blogger Betty as one of your typical readers. She is a suburban mom of two small children who works in an office during the day. At night, after the kids go to bed, she stays up for an extra hour to write blog posts.
Whenever you write in your blog, picture your readers looking at your articles. Try to solve their problems. Speak to them.
Here are some ways you can identify your audience:
List every type of person who reads your blog.
Create a persona for each type, like the example of “Blogger Betty” above. Write down who they are, what they do, when they read your blog, where they read it from, and why they come to your blog.
Read the comments on your posts.
Which posts have the most comments? What kinds of people are the top commenters?
Stalk your readers a little.
Follow them on social media. Engage in discussions with them.
Ask your readers who they are.
Conduct surveys and polls. Or if you want to go for more direct contact, e-mail individual commenters and say hi.
Do you follow similar blogs?
Look at what type of people are active on those blogs.
Trial and error.
At least in the beginning, publish a variety of different types of posts and gauge the response. Which posts attracted the type of response you want? Write more of those kinds of posts.
Crunch the data.
Use Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, etc. to find out who visits your blog.
Once you have an idea of who your audience is, use the knowledge to write content that they care about, understand, and gets their attention.
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