Are you making the deadly mistake that causes 99% of new bloggers to quit blogging in their first year?
If so, don’t worry. You’re not alone.
I’m talking about producing blog posts without knowing who your blog’s target audience is.
Because trust me, neglecting them will cost you tons of time and money in the long run.
Luckily, finding and defining your target audience isn’t as difficult as you might expect.
And your efforts will pay off, I promise. You will save heaps of time when you know exactly who your ideal reader is and what they need from you.
Thus, if you’re asking yourself: “Who is the target audience of my blog?”, you’re in the right place.
In this post, I’ll walk you through the easy and quick process of finding your blog target audience step-by-step.
I’ll also share with you a few practical blogging tips that will help you create better, more relevant content for your readers with every blog post you write.
Keep reading!
Here are a few related posts you may want to read, too:
- How to Start a WordPress Blog on Bluehost in 30 Minutes: Step-by-Step Tutorial
- 10 Deadly Blogging Myths That Will Kill Your Success
- 4 Profitable Blogging Tools to Help You Make Money Online
What is a blog target audience anyways?
Let’s start with the very basics here. Simply put, your blog’s target audience is the group of readers who your blog can help the most.
They’re the people who find the most value in your articles and who are most likely to fall in love with your content.
Therefore, regardless of what you do with your blog, you should always keep your target audience in mind. Let’s look at a few critical reasons why…
Related: 6 Worst Blogging Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)
Why your target audience is so important
When you’re just getting started with blogging, you want to make sure you’re using your time and money as wisely as possible. You have a lot on your plate, so you want every minute of your time to pay off.
The best way to make sure your efforts aren’t in vain is to know who you’re writing for. That’s the best way to make sure your articles are generating as much valuable traffic as possible.
So, do you know who’s reading your blog?
If not, there’s no need to worry. We’ll look at how you can find your target audience in a minute.
But first, let’s consider a few of the biggest benefits of knowing who your target audience is.
Recommended: How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed With Blogging and Boost Your Productivity
Benefit #1: They help you create better content
And I mean WAY BETTER content!
Here’s why:
When you target a very specific audience, you have a better idea about what they need and want.
When you know their struggles, you can offer the perfect solutions, too.
Hence, your blog posts will be the perfect answers to the questions and problems your blog target audience is facing.
Therefore, they’ll find much more value in your articles as long as you’re aware of who they are. Which leads us to our next point…
Related: 4 Powerful Blogging Strategy Tips to Help You Succeed
Benefit #2: They keep coming back
Ideally, you want to find readers who keep coming back to your blog. You want them to know your blog inside out and to devour your latest blog posts time after time.
When you know who you’re helping with your blog, your readers will fall in love with your content because they see the value in your posts.
As long as you stay consistent and focus on helping your readers, they’ll keep coming back.
Bit by bit, your loyal readers will help you generate a steady flow of readers – even if you take a short break from promoting your content.
Benefit #3: They help you become more successful
When you know who your target audience is, not only will you see a steady flow of traffic to your blog, but you’ll also find them sharing your content more frequently.
You see, when your readers find valuable information on your blog, they are more willing to share it with others. And when they start engaging with your content, you’ll see even more traffic to your blog.
Related: 6 Powerful Secrets to Successful Blogging You Should Know
Benefit #4: They help you find the best blog post ideas
When you’ve established a foothold in your blog niche, you’ll start interacting with your audience more and more. They’ll leave comments on your blog posts and send you messages on social networks, for instance.
Whatever discussion you engage in with your readers, make sure you take notes on their feedback.
Find out what they’re struggling with and see if you can write new articles to help them out.
Related: 5 Simple Ways to Find Awesome Blog Post Ideas Quickly
Benefit #5: They help you create the perfect products
If your goal is to make money blogging, you may want to consider creating your own products to sell to your readers.
Especially if you’re just starting out with blogging, keep in mind that your target audience will become your potential customers in the future.
Again, make sure you engage in active discussion with them. Find out what they need to make their lives easier. Gather every bit of feedback you hear and keep track of the questions they ask you.
Then, when it’s time to create your first product, put all these bits and pieces together to build the ultimate solution to the questions and problems your target audience is struggling with!
Benefit #6: They are willing to buy from you
At the end of the day, every bit of interaction you have with your readers will help you build a relationship with them.
So, once your product is ready to launch, you already have a bunch of potential buyers visiting your blog. They know who you are and that you’re there to help them out.
Thus, the more you know about your target audience and interact with them, the more sales you can expect when you release your products.
The longer they’ve been following your blog, the more they trust you and your content. They know your articles are top-notch in quality and they expect your product to be nothing less than that, right?
Why finding your blog niche isn’t enough
Alright, so knowing who your target audience certainly has its perks.
But do you really need to figure out who they are?
Isn’t it enough to choose a profitable blogging niche and let your audience find you?
Well, here’s the deal:
A blog niche is just an area of interests. Thus, a single niche can include multiple demographics who need different things.
Finding your target audience goes one step further.
Knowing who you’re writing for allows you to take full advantage of their wants and needs. Since you’re only targeting a narrow group of readers with similar interests, you can produce more valuable content for them.
It’s all just pure mathematics, really. Just think about writing your blog for a single person. You’d know exactly what they want to read about and what they’re struggling with. You could address those problems in your posts and your target person would love it.
And that’s the point with finding your target audience. You want to find that one single persona who represents all your readers.
Let’s see how you can do that…
How to find your blog target audience?
Once you’ve chosen your blog niche, it’s time to answer the burning question:
“Who is the target audience of my blog exactly?”
Now, this can be a bit more tricky than you might expect.
Also, your target audience may turn out entirely different from what you might think.
So, where should you start looking for your potential readers?
First, make sure you understand your blog niche.
Ask yourself:
“How will I be helping people with my blog?“
When you know the answer, it’s time to find out where people in your niche are hanging out and what they’re talking about.
Let’s look at a few helpful tools you can use to find your target audience:
1: Quora
Quora is my go-to place for finding out what questions people are asking in my blog niche.
Since the entire platform is based on questions and answers, you can find tons of helpful insights here.
Just do a few searches with some basic questions about the most important topics in your blog niche first.
Then, use the “Related questions” on the right-hand side to find more relevant ideas people are talking about:
2: Discussion forums
Forums are helpful for you as a blogger in many ways, including finding your target audience. People use forums when they’re looking for help or when they want to share information with others.
Using forums may even be enough for you to find who you want to blog for if you manage to discover the main questions your target audience is asking.
Also, you can use forums to find popular keywords in your blog niche.
3: Google search
A simple Google search is one of the quickest ways to find your ideal group of readers.
Just remember to look for people who are interested in the information, not for the information about your search queries itself.
You can start off with a broad search using your blog niche as a query first. Then, you can dig deeper by refining your search gradually.
Can you see a few questions on Quora and other discussion forums in the search results?
4: Facebook groups
Even though Facebook isn’t sparkling as brightly as it used to a few years back, it’s still a huge platform for finding out what people are talking about.
Search for public groups and discussions about your blog niche and the topics you could write about. See what kind of content people are sharing with pictures, articles, and videos.
Pay close attention to questions you see and the answers people have written. Are they similar to those you found on discussion forums? Is there something important missing?
5: Pinterest keywords
Pinterest has quickly become my #1 source of blog traffic in the past couple of years. Not only is it a powerful platform to find new readers, but also a great place to look for popular keywords and topics for your blog.
Pinterest is a visual search engine so you can use it much like Google. Let’s see how you can easily find relevant keywords on Pinterest:
When you start typing a search in Pinterest, you see a number of suggested keywords to go with your query:
And when you hit Enter to search, you’ll see even more related keywords to use:
Use these search terms to find out what people are looking for on Pinterest.
After all, Pinterest doesn’t suggest them just for some random reason. These keywords are guaranteed to bring traffic from Pinterest once you start sharing your content there. (You’re welcome!)
If you want to learn more about how to use Pinterest to grow your blog traffic, head over to my step-by-step Pinterest marketing strategy guide to get started.
6: Other blogs
This is a somewhat controversial point because it can be misused so easily.
What I’m saying is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just gather some information about your competitors and find out what posts are performing well for them.
You can do this by using BuzzSumo. It’s a paid tool, but you get a few queries every day for free.
7: Review sites and apps
Using review sites and apps helps you find out which products and services people are interested in.
If your blog is about travel, make sure to check TripAdvisor.
For services in your region or in specific areas, check out reviews on Yelp and Google, for example.
How to create your target audience persona?
When you’ve gathered enough information about where your target audience hangs out and what they need help with, it’s time to create your “buyer persona”.
Finding the “buyer persona” is just a common term for what we’ll do next. Don’t worry if you’re not planning to sell anything on your blog for now.
So, what’s a buyer persona exactly?
It’s simply a representation of your ideal reader.
Your goal is to define your target audience in as much detail as possible. This will help you create content (and products) that fit together perfectly with what they’re looking for.
Here’s what you should do:
Think of your buyer persona as a real person who you’d like to help with your blog posts.
Put everything down in a document and start by thinking about the following points about them:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Occupation
- Education level
- Income level
- Marital status
- Personality and behavior
- Interests and hobbies
Finally, the most important point to consider is their online behavior:
- Where do they hang out online?
- Which social networks do they use?
- How much time do they spend online each day?
The most important thing is that you identify them in as much detail as you can. Don’t be shy about drawing them, naming them, or writing short autobiographies for them!
Each detail you “know” about your target audience or persona will help you succeed in your blog niche. You’ll attract the right kind of visitors and a bigger share of them will fall in love with your blog.
And hey, if you feel like your blog has multiple target personas, don’t worry!
Try to focus on the most relevant persona first. Then, as your blog starts to grow, you can slowly start expanding into the realms of the next one.
How to use your buyer persona while blogging?
Ok, so you’ve found your persona? Awesome!
The next step is to put them into action. The most important thing you should do is to check up on them whenever you plan new content for your blog.
When you start a blog and create a content strategy, do it together with your target persona. I know – it’s going to be a monologue – but don’t make the mistake 99% of bloggers make and neglect your target audience.
If you’ve done your homework properly and figured out who your target audience is, don’t forget to take advantage of that information.
Use the details you gathered about your ideal readers in every stage of your content creation process.
You should know who you’re targeting with your content from the moment you start planning your editorial calendar all the way to promoting your articles on social media.
Related: 7 Critical Things You MUST Do Before Launching Your Blog
Final thoughts: How to find your blog target audience?
What you need to keep in mind is this: your target audience is probably already reading your blog.
But here’s the problem:
They aren’t getting as much value from your content as they could. They mix with other readers, and all of them feel like your content is OK. But you’re not giving any of them the entire show with all the fireworks you have stored up.
Here’s what you should do: Get more personal!
Don’t be afraid to narrow down your target audience to a very small group of readers. This will help you create more relevant content, attract “better” traffic to your blog, and establish a solid foothold in your blog niche in the long run.
When you’re done finding your target audience, it’s time to start planning your blog posts and content strategy. Head over to my article on how to find profitable blog post ideas that will generate massive traffic to your blog. I’ll see you there!
Here are a couple of helpful articles you may want to read, too:
- 10 Instant Tips for Writing Better Blog Posts
- The Best WordPress Themes for Your Blog (Free and Paid)
- 9 BIG Reasons to Self-Host Your Blog if You Want to Make Money Blogging
If you enjoyed this post on how to find your blog target audience, please drop me a line in the comments below!
P.S. If you found this article helpful, please share it with others! Thanks for your support!
