If there is one thing you should focus as soon as you start your blog is to find your target audience. Even better, if you target your blog audience before you start your blog and it isn’t that difficult.
Let me tell you something.
Imagine you’ve set up a professional website, already planned out the content, ready to monetize your website and have a product to sell. Days passed, and you are marketing every day. But – no clicks, no shares, and no sales!
What is it?
Are you targeting the right audience?
Do you know if they are the people you want to speak to?
Have they ever felt a connection with your blogging voice?
Finding your blog audience is a key component to growing your blog in the right direction. Without having a target audience, your blog is just an online personal book. That is quite okay if you want it this way 😉
But for those who want to grow their blogs, and make an impact online you definitely need to find the right audience for your blog.
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How To Find Target Audience For Your Blog & Why It Matters?
When you’re starting out as a blogger, or a small business owner, you really need to focus on fostering the relationship with your audience.
In this post, you will know;
Why there’s a need to find a blog audience?
And, how to get an audience for your blog?
Let’s cover the first part.
Why it’s important to find your own blog audience?
I’m sure you have come across several posts on ‘build a blog audience’ before and yes, this is what I’m discussing too.
A lot of bloggers in their early days of blogging start to focus on networking. They definitely should network with other bloggers but they need to focus on target audience first. As they are the people who read your blogs, take time to leave a comment, share your posts with their audience and eventually help you grow.
So, why your blog audience matters?
1- They are your loyal fans
People, who find a connection with your blogging voice, are trusted fans. When your target audience finds out that you are the person to seek the best advice, and content, they become your fans! They are the first to read your blog posts, leave comments and often give a link to your site.
If they further found your post helpful in any aspect, they further give it a social share.
Aren’t these people most valuable?
Related post: How To Get Your Blog Noticed? 11 Experts Share Their Top Tips
2- Your audience is your tribe
If you are into this online blogging world, you might have read the term ‘tribe’. This simply means that a set of a target audience that helps to grow your blog. Your small online family!
As soon as you build your tribe, you will most likely achieve your goals sooner. You know exactly what they need, and how you can solve their problems.
3- You can collect feedback
When you start a business or blog, it’s important to know your audience reaction and feedback. If you have products to sell on your website, then feedback is crucially important.
For that, you can simply ask your audience beforehand. If there’s a post you want to write about, a pin design or a product idea you would like to create, your audience is the first to take opinions.
This will give you an overall idea of whether your audience is interested in such topics or not.
Because it’s obvious that their decision matters!
Helpful post: 20 Things To Invest In Your Blog For Less Than $100
4- They help you to market & sell
I’m sure you know why people build email lists, grow their facebook groups or even increase their website traffic.
It’s obvious they want to market to them. They want to sell their services, products, coaching etc.
And, when you’ve got a trusted audience base you can easily earn a significant profit.
Related: How to create a customer community for your online business.
4 Ways To Find Target Audience For Your Blog
Before we cover the ideal places to find a target audience for your blog, it’s important to create an audience persona so that you know exactly what your blog audience looks like.
First, let’s create your own target audience persona.
Create Your Blog Audience Persona
I have designed this short workbook to ask you questions that help you reflect on who you’re trying to reach. Once, you have figured out who you’re trying to speak, you can communicate with them.
And, sell to them.
Here are some easy ways to get your blog audience;
1- Start with blog comments
Take the easy path.
Read all your blog comments, and note them aside. Screenshot, and keep the questions & feedback in a Google doc or swipe file. Go through all the important questions, and find out what your audience is interested in knowing. What problems they generally face? And, what blog posts help them overcome their problems.
Secondly,
Read the blog comments of your competitors, or other blogs that write on the same topics. The comments section is the area where a reader leaves his feedback, asks the question and probably shares how exactly a post has served them.
You need to take notice of comments that can help you focus on your own target audience.
Related post : 9 Surefire Tips To Get More Authentic Comments On Your Blog
2- Use Facebook groups
Facebook groups are huge! Not just because of the amazing support you get, but they can also help you find your target audience. There are thousands of Facebook groups around different niches.
But, you need to find the right group to target the right people.
Every other person quickly hops over to facebook groups to ask a question, or share their own problems. You need to be smart at noticing them, and what they generally ask!
You will definitely find your blog audience if Facebook is the place where they hang out! And, most people use facebook these days. If they don’t use Facebook, find out what social channel they use.
If you’re still not part of my free facebook group, I invite you to join ‘Bloggers Camp’. This is where I run daily threads to promote my awesome blog squad. You can ask questions about anything related to blogging.
Tip: Turn on notification icon for your favorite groups so that you get notified when people ask a question, or discuss something.
3- Follow hashtags
Okay.
How can we use hashtags to find blog audience?
When I talk about hashtags, I usually mean Instagram and Twitter. This is where these hashtags are commonly used, and people rely on them. Though, hashtags are also getting popular in facebook groups.
Take an example from Instagram.
If you use hashtag #fitnessregime you probably know that this hashtag includes content that is either shared or posted by people who are interested in fitness. This will eventually help you find an audience who is interested in the similar niche, and are possibly looking to get their problems sorted.
However, these hashtags will also help you find other bloggers in the same niche. So, why not use hashtags to find relevant people?
If you want to find hashtags for Instagram then I outlined a free method to find top performing hashtags.
This also takes us to our next point.
4- Follow other people in your niche
Does networking help you build your blog audience?
Yes!
As a blogger, you follow other bloggers who share a similar interest and usually cover same topics. When you follow them and engage, they will follow you back. And, this happens when you genuinely believe in forming a relationship. Here’s how you can build a blogging network by following 2 solid steps.
You start following another niche blogger, and she follows you back. Now, you both are supporting each other. You share each other’s blog posts, mention them in Instagram stories, or you give them backlinks. All this helps in increasing your own audience reach. As the target audience is almost similar then you wouldn’t have to do anything extra other than giving a support.
That’s it!
Start with following the above-mentioned steps, and know your audience! Stop waiting for them to come to you, and ask you. Why not you approach them, and ask if there’s something they need help with?
More posts;
How many blog posts to publish before launching a blog?
How to create content that converts?
What other tips you know to build a target audience?
Among all the above tips, what have you found most helpful? Or, what is that one area you would like to focus to build your blog audience?
Let me know in the comments below.
Blog comments really are the easy path Arfa. Much better to just scan comments, to mine blog post ideas from readers and to target your audience through simply serving them what they want. 1 or more blog post ideas reside in virtually all comments spanning more than a line or 2. Capitalize on this concept.
Hey Arfa, these are great tips.
To add on, Google Analytics can help you understand your audience as well. Look at your popular posts, country of your readers, the time at which they are free etc. All this can be put together to know what the audience is like.
Besides this, Pinterest new insights into the audience is a win. It has made it easier for pinners to understand their audience interest and what is popular amongst them. This helps you focus on creating content that really matters
Hey Chavvi,
Thanks for adding this valuable tip here. Google Analytics is a big one and the only reason I did not mention was that it might overwhelm new bloggers. I love every feature of GA because it gives so much all for free!
Oh, Pinterest! It truly gives extra information about the audience. Their interests and likeness. Just like GA, pinterest analytics feature is a helping guide to target the right people.
It’s so good seeing you here.
Hi Arfa
Thank you for sharing this useful tips on audience awareness. I think is a very important part of blogging or indeed any business principles. Without knowing who your customer is or audience, you really don’t have a clue who you are targetting. It is the same for all business models including blogging, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, etc. You need to know where your tribe hangs out as you rightly pointed out. If you miss this step then the chances of succeeding in your business venture become really difficult. It’s good that you are making your readers aware of the topic, especially the new and aspiring bloggers. I wrote a similar topic in one of my articles to inform new and aspiring entrepreneurs of this issue. They are the one who often needs the correct guidance right from the beginning. Best wishes
Rabia
Arfa, I think interactive content (questions, polls, surveys) within the blog article and specific to the topic can be a good avenue to understand your audience better. The difficult part is that it needs a lot of dedication and focused discipline to achieve the objective. Knowing your audience can take time and I am sure many bloggers either don’t do much of it or if they do, they don’t remain consistent with it. I liked the idea of Facebook or social media to know your audience better. Good article and important topic. Cheers, Ahmad
Thanks so much Ahmad for adding value to this post. You’ve made such good points of using questions, surveys and polls within blog content. The same can be used on social media to know your audience better. Well, this is definitely the hardest part and it definitely needs dedication to do that. Even if some bloggers know their audience, they don’t particularly target them. So, this is an important aspect too.
This is really helpful.
I just realized that I have to know clearly my target audience. For a while I was just following what others are posting and engaging in the new community. But forgetting to approach my main audience first. Thank you afra for writing this. I hope I can finally improve my blog views and engagement☺️
Hey Arfa, thank you for this. I was actually reading the post on growing my blog traffic but when I saw this post I knew finding my target audience was the reason my blog was not getting enough traffic so I had to read it and I was not disappointed.
Facebook groups will definitely do it for me. I need to connect with them on Facebook.
Thank you Arfa
I am very encouraged. I will definitely concentrate on knowing my audience and giving myself some time. Now I know that it takes patience. Thanks
Thank you! Yes, audience matters the most when it comes to growing your blog. Surely, it takes practice and patience.