Identifying your Audience as a content creator

Great content tends to attract an audience, but it does not guarantee it will be the best audience for your brand. Defining your target audience, ensures you are creating the right content for the right people. It allows you to create content that benefits your readers, viewers, and or listeners.

Understanding your Audience

To understand your audience you have to ask yourself some questions. What benefit does your content bring? You need to understand why your content exists and it should relate to that purpose. Who is your current audience? You want to identify those who are consuming your content and categorize them based on different criteria. For example, are they viewing your live streams, are they interacting with you on social media or are they viewing other content? Once you have answered these questions you’ll have an understanding of why your content deserves to exist, who is going to read and why people should choose you over your competition.

Finding the Essence of your Content

The objective of finding the essence of your content is to understand the difference between what you do and what you need to talk about. A mistake often made by new content creators is that they talk about themselves rather than the things their audience really cares about. At the center of your content is what you do, this is your main objective. For some content creators that could be helping others find their voice. The goal however is to expand on the core of our content and the more we do that our focus shifts to what our target audience really wants.

Tips for Creating Content to build your audience

Brand identity

We have talked about branding in a previous post so let’s just touch on it here. You want to build a brand that is welcoming and accommodating to your target audience. It almost needs to feel like a good friend that engages with the audience you want to target. Remember to stay true to your brand’s niche.

Be True to your niche

A popular saying is that you can’t please everyone and this is true in content creation. Not everyone is going to consume your content regardless of how hard you try so the content you create should always revolve around your niche. Don’t try to be too diverse, instead focus on those who already consume your content. As you create more targeted content and people interact with it you will increase your exposure.

Understand your Audience

You need to have some idea of what your target audience is looking for. This can depend on age ranges, personality traits, and more. Using analytics can help your narrow your audience. Tools such as google analytics, or google trends and using prominent keywords can give you insight into what people want and how they are engaging online. You can also watch social media to see what your audience is searching, and interacting with. You can join Facebook groups, discussions, and forums to observe the market you are attempting to get into. Doing this research will allow you to know what your audience wants and needs in terms of content.

Social Media

Social media is a great way to build your brand’s presence, keeping in mind that over 3 million people use sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, etc. to consume content. You want to engage those users, interact with them on a regular basis and make them feel like their opinions matter.

Utilize Different Content Channels

As you grow your brand you want to make use of all content channels. Utilizing video content (YouTube, TikTok), blogs, podcasts, and social media is a great way to reach more potential consumers. One strategy for many is to convert blog posts into video content or podcasts allowing you to engage with both types of audiences with the same content.

Create Great Content

The best way to build an audience is to make content that people can relate to. No matter the content you are creating your audience needs to absorb some kind of quality material. You need to create content that is not only relevant to your brand but that also provides information that your audience not only wants but needs.

There’s an entire audience out there waiting for your content. It’s up to you to produce content that will provide the information your audience is looking for. You need to find the best audience-building methods that work for your brand. You won’t know that is unless you try, so go out there, try different avenues, and experiment until you find something that works.