If you’re anything like me, you’ve got millions of thoughts swimming around your mind at one time and would like nothing more than to share those thoughts in a blog post.
Sometimes reining in all those ideas so I can pick out only the ones that are relevant to this blog can be challenging.
If developing targeted content is a struggle, here are a few ways you can better pinpoint what your main audience wants from your blog.
1) Develop A Customer Profile
Before you can develop topics that resonate with your audience, you first have to understand them.
A customer profile outlines the important details and characteristics of your target customer, and it’s something you can reference if you’re unsure about the value of a certain piece of content.
Does the article speak to the characteristics in your customer profile? If not, tweak it so it does.
2) Don’t Ask For Solutions, Look At Problems
Henry Ford once said, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Customers don’t know what they want. They just know what problems they’re experiencing.
It’s a customer’s job to express his problems; it’s your job to think of solutions for them.
Keep an eye on the comments section of your blog and consistently check your competitors’ blogs to identify common pain points you can address with your writing.
3) Leverage Your Analytics
I love using data and you should too because it doesn’t lie (most of the time).
Use Google Analytics to see which posts have collected the most visits. Tools like SocialCrawlitics can help you see which articles are being shared across the social network.
Collect the top 20%. Make observations and identify consistent themes/topics. Then use those themes moving forward when drafting new content.
4) Look At Your Competitors
When all else fails, see what your competitors are writing about.
Look at their most popular posts and analyze everything from the title to the length of the content to the formatting. SocialCrawlitics can help you here too with social competitor research.
Identify a few key elements and try to incorporate them into your own content.
The more targeted your content is, the better response you will see from your readers.
How do you identify what your target reader wants from your blog?
