A friend sent me an email the other day asking for help. “Can you read through my blog post and make some 
suggestions for how to improve it?” he asked.
“Sure.” I replied. “Could you tell me who your audience is? I can’t evaluate anything without knowing who you’re writing for.”
His response showed that I’d thrown him for a loop. “I don’t write with an audience in mind. Is that a problem?”
Know your audience and increase your effectiveness
Actually, it is a BIG problem. What impresses one person could mean absolutely nothing to a different kind of person.
It’s incredibly important to think about the kind of person or employer you want to appeal to in order to create your personal brand strategy.
Some of you will be shaking your head at this. There are a lot of people who never think about their audience–and they do fine. You might already be doing well without considering your audience. Why add in the extra step?
The truth is, knowing your audience can drastically increase the effectiveness of your personal branding efforts. That’s because if you know who you are trying to reach, it’s easier to determine where to concentrate your efforts.
Let’s say you want to work at a small, cutting-edge marketing company. Then you need to make sure your personal brand shows that you know and understand all the new marketing trends. You should actively be using multiple forms of social media and focusing on building connections with other online marketers everywhere from Facebook to Twitter. If you’re not, it will have a negative effect on your brand.
Know how you measure up
In fact Joseph Jaffe of the new marketing firm crayon just declared, “If you don’t blog, you can’t work at crayon.” Hubspot, an inbound-marketing company, looks at the Twitter Grade and the Website Grade of potential employees’ personal websites or blogs to see if they have their act together. Those companies want to potential employees to be connected online and actively using social media tools.
If you’re looking to participate in a more conservative field, however, your personal branding needs to be drastically different. On your blog, you need to focus on serious material that shows you are constantly learning about the field and have a strong depth of knowledge. You’ll want to focus less on Facebook, and more on building your profile on LinkedIn.
A good example of this is Jeff Ogden, who is looking for a job as a senior executive. On his blog, CEO Ideas, Jeff writes about the studies, white papers and articles he reads, and shares his advice on how to grow a business in tough times. His blog demonstrates strong thought-leadership in his field.
Having a clear idea of your audience is important because it gives you a barometer to to determine if you’re accomplishing your goal or not.
Every time you participate online, you can quickly check to make sure it supports your personal brand by asking “How would example person of your audience view fill in what you’re doing online? Would this impress them?” If the answer is yes, then you know you’re on the right track. If not, you can change what you’re doing until it does fit.
Get lucky by doing everything possible
Of course, there’s always the possibility that you could get lucky and naturally create a personal brand that will catapult you to fame and fortune in the exact area you’d love to work in. Some do.
But in a tough hiring market with hundreds of others looking for work, wouldn’t you rather do everything possible to make sure your personal branding is as effective as possible?
Related posts:
- It’s Not About You I hate to tell you this, I really do....
- How To Transition or Expand Your Brand to Two Topics I have a dilemma. I have a blog about...
Loading ...
Very much easier said than done. Commentors, poll-respondents, people visible via connections in twitter or FB… each of these is a distinctly non-random self-selected sample. I try to keep a finger on the pulse through these easily available channels, but I neither trust the answers too much nor expend the extra effort to get a true ‘read’ on the audience. That, unfortunately, still takes money and professional analytics services.
And this comment box is horrible. Everything appears grayed out as I type.
@Venkat. It’s true it’s much easier said than done. But it’s not about finding the audience who is already reading your stuff, it’s about deciding who you want to be reading it. Then, you shape your personal branding efforts in order to attract that audience.
It’s still not easy to do that, but it doesn’t involve expensive analytics.
I never really thought about it before. Now I realize that I do have a target audience and I do write for them. But now that I fully realize that I bet I can improve my blog further to cater to that audience.
Blogging has to be looked at like a business. You can’t just open a store and say it caters to everyone. Your going to advertise and talk about your store in a certain way to really hit home with your target. Blogging is no different even if your not looking to make money.
Great post!
I could probably target a specific audience, but my writing is mostly for my own education. If I write for an audience, then I’m not writing for me.
Exactly! You have a specific purpose in what you’re doing and you’re fulfilling that purpose regardless of what “best practices are in blogging”. Your purpose to blog is for you and no one else.
It’s the same with every venue utilized to express your brand. As Katie recommends, who is your audience? Even though I’m very active in Twitter, I have a very specific target niche that I’m after. It is reflected in my bio, who I engage in active conversation with and who I follow or follow back. Without a focus, even in your social networking efforts, you’ll be like a social butterfly flitting from one conversation to the next, chasing everyone at a cocktail party and having conversation just long enough until the next prospect comes along. Truly, when someone like that has interacted with you, how do you feel?
Kudos to you for recognizing the purpose of your blog….too often people jump in and think later.
I completely agree. It’s very easy to get drawn into writing / blogging for its ownsake and totally miss the audience. Followers of your work will self-select of course, but you have the opportunity to target your work in such a way that the audience you want to reach will find you compelling. Don’t look at who you’re reaching now, but instead towards the audience and perception you are trying to create. Every on-line interaction has the potential to support your brand or significantly damage what you work so hard to create.
@Katie, great blog post here and it’s great to see a nice response on a Sunday! I think knowing your audience is extremely important to grow and expand your business. If you target the wrong type of audience, you won’t get a positive response from them and that wastes advertising money, as well as overall effort.
@the weakonomist You raise a very important point. If you’re just writing for yourself, you don’t have to worry about an audience. But then you do know your audience… it’s yourself!
This is the hardest part that many have ignored. everything must be done deliberately, focus must be known and this will detremined who a personal is trying to reach. When this is known the content can be structured to get great results.
Thanks Katie fromm drumming this load.
Identifying your audience shouldn’t be seen as limiting at all. In fact it will help you develop a niche and be more useful to your readers.
Writing your “about” page should help you define who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish:
There’s a great post about this on Problogger.net, which says that the “about” should address the following 4 points:
1. who you are…
2. your expertise and how it addresses…
3. their problem or goal, and how they can…
4. contact you
Here’s the link: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/11/24/how-to-write-your-about-me-page/
Firstly thanks for this post,
My blog on computer & I also want identify my audience so I reach here from google. But this time I have no idea about it how identify them.
In simple terms my blog audience is that which like computer or technology related information. But this is half infromation & I dont know much about my audience.
You have any idea about how I identify my audience.
at the end nice writting & keep it up.
God Bless U
______________________________________________________________
Tech 2 Computer
Knowing one’s audience — so called customer intimacy — is critical, Katie.
Today, I received an email from Singapore. My airline guru told me what airline CEO’s are telling him. He asked “Should we change the topic of our upcoming webinar?” My response “Absolutely.” Our goal is to help them help themselves.