Target Your Audience

As you sit down to write a blog you need to ask yourself—who is going to be reading this and how can I help them? As I have mentioned in several of my blog posts the trick is not to create something with the intent to "make" it go viral. The trick is to create a blog that contains valuable information and is well written and then it will go viral. This same principle applies when looking to increase your readers’ interaction. Interaction increases continued readership. You can read more about fostering readership in our article, How to Create a Strong Readership at http://www.mymark.com/articles



I have a good friend who owns a helicopter flight school, when he sits down to blog he is communicating to an entirely different audience than you or I may be intending to communicate with. With this in mind make sure that you are targeting the correct audience. If your blog is geared toward an audience looking for information on kite building you won’t want to write a post that directs most of its attention to model airplane building. You may want to write a blog comparing the similarities and difference between the two but your main goal of the blog post should be appealing to your readers’ main interests.



You may want to write a list of questions that you would be interested to know the answers to if you were new to the niche which you are blogging in and answer those in a blog post or two. Make sure that your blog posts do not wander from the main subject. The more on target your posts are, the more likely your readers are to return to your blog and share it with others they know. Blogs are meant to be dedicated to one subject such as professional networking, vintage car restoration or triathlon training.



I would like to leave you with one last though when targeting your audience in your blog posts. It is a good idea to re-read your blog posts from the perspective of a reader while in the editing process. Make sure that it captures your attention. You want to be sure to give complete thoughts in your writing. Give your readers some food for thought to spark their own ideas and comments on your blog.



For this and other articles by Brad Hess please visit http://www.mymark.com/blog. Brad Hess is CEO and Founder of MyMark. I made my mark with MyMark, providers of an integrated personal profile, blog, and home base for professionally branding you. This original post can be found at http://www.mymark.com/blog/bradhess/2010/07/26/target-your-audience/