Welcome to the first Day!
Yesterday I made a post introducing this series, go ahead and give it a read if you haven't already. Each day I will cover concepts I learned growing my YouTube channel. They will build upon each other in order to beef up your Steemit blog. If you're already familiar with a certain concept, or already doing something I recommend, then fantastic! You're on the right track :)
Who is your Target Audience?
The first thing to consider when creating content (on any platform: Steemit, YouTube, Instagram, etc.) is who are you creating content for? (If you instinctively answer this question as "I create content for myself," then start to think about what you have in common with people who will be reading your posts.
Some things to consider about the people you want to reach:
- How old are they?
- What are their hobbies?
- What do are their wants, needs, fears?
- Are they a specific gender?
- What do they do for work?
- What drives them to wake up in the morning?
Creating a fictitious person that represents all the qualities of your target audience is an exercise you might find helpful. I used to work on social media for a company and we did this exercise in order to create a "company voice" that we would use when interacting with customers and fans on Twitter. We came up with a guy named Colby. He lived in Boulder, CO and worked as a software developer. He was single, but dating (his favorite dating app was Tinder.) He liked Thai food, preferred Vim over Nano for text editing, etc.
After taking some time considering what types of people you want to read your blog/who your blog is for, you'll want to draft a one-sentence statement summing it all up. This is important, because, you'll be able to track how narrowly you're able to define your target audience over time as you edit your statement.
Here are some examples of a target audience statement that evolved over time for my YouTube channel.
- My channel is for people interested in enhancing their cognition.
- My channel is for students who want to increase their focus and productivity.
- My channel is for professionals who want to increase their focus and productivity to be more successful in work or school, so they can get that promotion - or - increase their GPA.
You can see how in #1, my statement expressed an interest people may have, but I didn't identify who these people were or why they had that interest.
In statement #2, I identified my target audience as students and I narrowed down the interest, but I was still missing the why.
In #3, I actually broadened the type of people I was reaching (this was actually based on a poll I did for my audience) because I found only about half of my viewership were students. The interests they had were the same, but I finally included their motivation as well.
Defining a Target Audience is a Process
You might not know exactly who you want to reach right away, and that's fine. You might also not want to narrow down your content right away, and that's fine too. I'm writing this series on Steemit because I want to try something new, I don't necessarily have plans for this to be a marketing blog. The point is to think about it and do the exercises. Something to consider, if you're blogging in an area that is saturated with content (kind of like how gaming channels are on YouTube,) then narrowing down who you're reaching will help you grow - because you'll be connecting with specific people who feel like your blog is for them.
Resources
Article: Learn What a Target Audience is in Marketing
Article: 6 Steps To Decoding Your Target Audience
Free EBook: The Secret to Building your YouTube Audience (these principles apply to Steemit)
Do This Interactive Exercise Now!
Take a look at this blog and comment below what you think the statement for the target audience could be!
See you Monday, 04/09/18, for Day 3 of this series!
Steve Cronin