How to Find Your Target Blog Audience

Who is your target blog audience?

Not knowing your target blog audience is like blogging in the dark. It’s a risky approach that hinders your ability to set goals and limits your potential for profit. Understanding your audience is the key to successful blogging.

You need to have a target blog audience before you start blogging.

It doesn’t just come to you automatically after you start blogging.

If you’re having trouble finding your blog audience, you’re in the right place. In this blog, I’ll show you how to find your target audience so that you can get back to blogging and building your profit machine.

What is a Target Blog Audience?

A target blog audience is very important in blogging because it is the people who you are writing for.

It’s important because you’ll be able to create targeted content by knowing who to write for. A target audience that receives targeted content is more likely to become loyal readers of your blog. Knowing your audience will bring you success, more ideas to write about, and better promotional strategies.

Knowing your audience is the only real way to make money with your blog. You’ll understand what products and services to create based on their needs and wants.

You need to know a lot about your target blog audience. You need to know their buying intentions and what motivates them to make a purchase. You need to know any information and education about them that you can possibly have. Demographic and local information will also be helpful.

The more you know about your target reader, the better your blog will be.

Define the Purpose of Your Blog

Before you can identify your target blog audience, it’s crucial to define the purpose of your blog. This purpose will guide your content and ultimately attract the right readers.

What’s your blog about? You need to have a mission for your blog. You need to know what type of content you plan to put out. You need to know your niche and have a narrowed-down niche that isn’t too broad to try to promote.

What do you want to achieve with your blog? Setting achievable goals and objectives is key. These should be within your reach, leading to larger goals. This approach empowers you and keeps you in control of your blogging journey.

What topics will you be covering with your blog? These are your cornerstone content topics. These should be limited to just a few areas you want to build your authority. You can blog about unlimited sub-topics under those main topics.

Once you check these questions from your list, you’ll be able to move closer to determining your target blog audience.

Determine Your Blogging Niche

Do you actually have a niche? Do you know your exact niche? You need to know this before you start looking for a target blog audience.

Your niche should be something you’re deeply passionate about. Let your passion inspire and motivate you. Choosing a topic you’re truly passionate about will make you an expert in that niche and give you a competitive edge.

Choosing a niche is just the beginning. To stand out, you need to narrow down your niche to a few levels and focus on a specific topic. This strategic approach will help you become a known expert in your niche, rather than being lost in the crowd.

You can’t know your target blog audience without knowing your blog niche first.

Analyze Your Current Audience

If you have an audience right now, analyze them to better understand your target blog audience.

Look into your analytical metrics. You should have these. If you don’t, start looking at them now. Install a plugin or add code to your blog where you can start tracking analytics for it. I suggest using Google Analytics 4 or GA4. You can also use the Monster Insights plugin to make tracking metrics easier. Pay close attention to these metrics, as they will help tell a story of who is reading your content.

Locate and analyze the demographic metrics of your current audience. Look for trends. These metrics include age, gender, educational level, marital status, ethnicity, location, income level, and overall interests.

Create avatars or personas of your perfect reader. This is like drawing out who your perfect reader would be. What are their demographics? What are their pain points? Why are they reading your blog? What should they get from reading your blog? Knowing your target blog audience is better when you know them individually based on your defined persona or avatar.

Develop various profiles for readers. This is when you create different avatars for each type of reader. This can help you choose what content to create on your blog.

Determine the audience’s interests in your niche and cornerstone content. What are their biggest needs and wants in the niche? What goals do they have in the niche, and how can those goals relate to the information you provide on your blog?

The only way to know your audience is to research and study people who fit that category, especially those who are already watching you.

Conduct Research, Surveys, and Interviews

When trying to find your target blog audience, you should be researching potential audience members away from your blog, too.

Create some really good surveys to learn as much as you can about your potential audience. Their needs and wants are important. To encourage more survey takers, you might need to offer a lead magnet or do a prize giveaway.

Interview your existing readers to gain a deeper understanding of why they read your content. If you can, try to do Zoom interviews with them. You can typically learn more in a “face-to-face” environment, even if virtually. If you can’t do a virtual interview, at least do an email, or messenger interview with them.

Research your competition. These are other blogs like yours. Understand who they are targeting, what information they’re putting out to their audience, and how they’re engaging with their readers. Sometimes, your competition can answer all your questions.

Research your audience on social media. Find your target blog audience, look for competitors, and research everything. Look at posts being made. Look at each comment and what kind of engagement is taking place. Understand the most viral forms of media and content that is being posted.

The more you research, survey, and interview your potential target blog audience, the more you’ll be able to know who to write to.

Utilize Social Media to Find Your Target Blog Audience

Social media is going to be one of the better ways to find your target blog audience because that’s where most of your audience will be.

Don’t just choose one social media platform to conduct research. Look at many of them. At least look at all the popular social media platforms. You want to make sure you find which platforms are where your target blog audience is at the most.

Utilize social media analytics to get a better understanding of those who are following you. You can gain a lot of great information about your blog audience by understanding these important metrics. Each platform has its own set of metrics, too.

The more you research your audience on social media, the better you’ll be able to understand their biggest needs and wants, which is what you want to blog about.

Go Where Your Audience Will Likely Be

Go to other internet sources where your potential target blog audience will likely be.

Social media groups are a great way to engage and research your audience. There are many groups and communities on different platforms that align with your niche. Discussion forums are also a great way to research these potential blog readers.

Join Quora and start looking at the questions being asked in relation to your niche. This is a great way to not only research your audience but also share insight to help you build authority in your niche. Quora is also great for getting new ideas to blog about.

Simply use Google Search for keywords related to your niche. The search complete suggests People Also Ask, and the sponsored results and organic results on page one will tell you the type of content people in your potential audience are searching for.

Go to review sites and apps to find your potential target blog audience. Many of these websites and apps are designed specifically for your niche.

Go wherever you can find those within your niche. Research them and understand their biggest challenges so that you can start marketing to them today.

Engage with Your Current Audience

Make sure you’re engaging with your current audience and continue to do so as your readership grows.

Encourage comments and feedback. Encourage them on every blog post, on your blog pages, on your social media, and on any other feedback source you might have, such as a newsletter or online community. Conduct feedback surveys frequently. Make it easy for others to contact you.

You should respond to every comment made to you until you literally can’t respond to every one of them. Unless you’re getting thousands of comments a day, you should be replying to every one of them and encouraging a continued discussion.

The more you engage, the more readers you’ll gain. Engagement is often said to be just as important or even more important than the content itself.

Utilize SEO to Find Your Target Blog Audience

Search engine optimization will effectively help you locate your target blog audience if you use it right.

Use keyword research tools to find your audience through niche-related keywords and search intent. There are many great tools for researching keywords. SEM Rush and Ahrefs are some of the better ones. However, Google Keyword Planner and Keywords Everywhere are often the more affordable choices.

Finding relevant keywords will also help you overall at blogging. Each piece of content you write should have a target keyword. That’s how you get listed on better search engine results.

SEO is a very important subject that every blogger should know about.

Evaluate Your Existing Content

Take a look at your existing content and see what is performing best. This can also help you find your target blog audience.

What posts are getting the most comments? What posts are being shared the most? Look at your analytics and see which posts get the most views. Knowing this information can help you determine what content is being read and enjoyed the most and by who.

Identify patterns of your content that resonate with your current audience. This is the content that is being engaged with the most. This will help you decide what to write about next. You want to blog about topics that readers are relating to.

Every time you publish new content, you’re publishing a metric that you can research later and use to better understand your target blog audience.

Adjust and Refine as Needed

It’s important to improve your blog and content strategies as improvements are demanded.

When you find new trends and metrics that paint a story of who your readers are, refine your strategies to reflect their needs. This may require you to niche down and focus your content on a specific topic. Do what is best for you and your readers as a whole.

Continuously monitor new data and insights to understand if you need to make changes. Become an expert at reading your analytics. These are going to be some of the best tools to help you find your target blog audience.

You can’t and will never be able to do everything one way. You’ll always need to adjust and refine your blog as needed, but you need to make sure you know when to do that, too.

Creating Your Target Blog Audience Avatar

The following is a very basic way of creating your target blog audience avatar to help you understand who you should be writing for.

Get the name of your avatar. You can learn a lot by name, such as ethnicity, uniqueness, and family history.

Understand the age groups that consume your content the most. This will help you further research the kinds of information that each age group is seeking.

It’s important to know the gender of your target blog audience. This will help you decide who to craft your content for, as different genders will often see things differently.

Discover your readers’ occupations. This can help you understand who is seeking content from you and whether it’s meant to help them with their careers.

Knowing the interests of your readers can help you decide what to blog about. This includes hobbies and passions.

It is very important to know your readers’ goals. Once you understand their goals for reading your content, you can ensure they achieve their goals with your content. This will reward you with active and loyal readers.

Find out the biggest challenges and pain points of your target blog audience. Solve them in a way that makes it easy for them to understand. Watch this significantly grow your blog and make your content go viral.

Every blogger should create the ideal reader for their blog by creating an avatar of their perfect audience member or blog reader.

Now, Over to You!

Now that you know how to find your target blog audience, it’s up to you to find them. Reply to tell us what methods are working the best for you to research your audience. What other methods would you add to this article?

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About the Author

Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers who follow this blog. Shawn also offers various services for extra help in content creation and blogging.