HOW TO DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE & GROW YOUR BLOG BUSINESS

The more tightly defined your audience, the more optimised and effective your blogging strategy will be.

When most of us started blogging, we did it for ourselves, we wrote what we loved, shared our passions and we were lucky to have more than our nearest and dearest as an audience. Fast forward 5 years and now blogs are major publications with premium, magazine worthy content that huge global audiences flock to on a daily basis to consume and engage with. Whilst I truly believe you should still blog for yourself and write about the things you feel passionate about, today having an understanding of who your audience is, what content they love, the topics that they interact with the most, and generally what they’re looking for from your blog and content more generally is invaluable.

As blogging turns from hobby to business, and even hobby bloggers want to grow their audience and viewership, knowing who reads your content, who you want to read your content, and therefore what content will allow your blog to grow is a critical factor in blog success. You may also want to consider if there are any SEO faux pas that are holding your website back.

Getting under the skin of your audience is essential, and there are a number of ways to do it. From getting to grips with Google analytics and using it to understand who currently visits your blog, what content they engage with and how regularly they visit, to analysing your social followers and fans through owned platform analytics (Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook all have analytics tools within the platform, and there are a number of Instagram apps that help analyse your insta audience & engagement too), to simply asking and engaging directly with your readers (like I did with my recent Q&A) … the insights can be invaluable. Not only helping you have a better understanding of who your audience is (which is interesting in itself), but importantly what it is they come to your blog for, which can then help define, shape and focus your blogging strategy moving forward.

When it comes to defining your audience, think about who currently visits your site but also who you believe your brand is intended to talk to … Your target audience. At the end of the day you want to find that sweet spot of your personal passions and your audiences too. The more tightly defined your audience the better really (think age, income, passions, location, usage frequency, influence & potential) – because it’ll allow you to truly focus & make a mark for yourself within your blogging niche.

WHY WILL IT GROW MY BLOG?

More Relevant Content

Understanding who your audience is will allow you to create more relevant, more popular and therefore more traffic generating content … Content that not only attracts your audience once, but makes them want to come back again too. Understanding what content works the hardest for you (the content your audience loved, viewed, engaged with) is really helpful in optimising and shaping your future content strategy.

For example I know that you guys love to read my blogging tips features and these features always garner my most engagements, shares and views, but equally some of you aren’t bloggers at all and you come to mediamarmalade for outfit inspo and travel features – Knowing this means I always ensure I have a good balance of content so that whenever you visits there’s a new post that interests you.

Better Distribution Targeting

Of course knowing who your audience are is not only essential for content production, but also for content distribution too. Dependent on the type of content I’ve produced, the priority social platform I share my features on will vary. For example Twitter and bloglovin are invaluable for blogging and career tips promotion because many bloggers on these two platforms are seeking this content and my features do well there (likes, clicks, shares etc), whilst Instagram and Facebook are much more useful to my ‘non blogger’ blog readers who follow on these platforms seeking fashion and lifestyle inspiration.

Knowing who your audience is, what content they enjoy, where they discover your content and even the days / time of week they visit your blog (and the frequency of their visits) can help with not only where you promote your posts, but can also inform your content strategy itself (and not just new content, but revitalising old content too).

Powerful Influence For Brands

Finally, truly understanding your readers and carving a very clear target audience for your brand is not only impactful on your blog growth (through improving the relevancy of your content and the ways in which you promote it), but also having a clearly defined, engaged and loyal audience is also valuable to brands seeking an authentic voice to talk to such audience. Having a clear brand and well defined audience is appealing to brands looking to work with bloggers and influencers on content collaborations and sponsorships – if you are able to offer an authority and strong reach versus a specific audience then this is incredibly valuable to an advertiser. Providing you with a great business platform and opportunity for the future.

YOU MIGHT ALSO WANT TO READ

. HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY TRACK & GROW YOUR BLOG TRAFFIC . 5 GEEKY BLOG TIPS THAT’LL MAKE A HUGE IMPACT ON YOUR BLOG SUCCESS . HOW TO USE GOOGLE ANALYTICS TO IMPROVE YOUR BLOG . 5 INVALUABLE BLOGGING TIPS THAT STEP CHANGED MY BLOG SUCCESS . . THE 80:20 BLOGGING RULE: WHAT IT IS & HOW IT CAN HELP GROW YOUR BLOG .

The most important thing is to find a good balance – it’s essential you blog about the things you love and want to talk about (and don’t just create content for the sake of latching onto a zeitgeist or trend – your readers will see through this and it will jar), but equally it’s incredibly valuable to understand who your audience is, what they love ant what they want to help not only grow your blog, but also your blogging business.

Do you have a clearly defined audience for your blog? How do you analyse your audience data and optimise your stragegy based on these insights?