Targeted Audience

How to Write Content That Resonates With Your Audience

April 2, 2018 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

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This is a guest contribution from Anna Rud.

You wrote an exceptional article hoping for shares, likes, and exposure but it seems like nobody noticed your post. There could be a number of reasons for this failure: from silly typo at the beginning of the article to bad SEO. But maybe the real reason is even simpler: you’re not on the same page with your readers.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating content in different niches. Every particular niche has its particular audience, and you have to figure it out before embarking on writing.

In this post, I’m going to describe my way to finding niche patterns and features by exploring top blogs and niche questions.

Competitor analysis method

How to figure out your audience? It would take years to find patterns and understand preferences of your readers as all you can is to test different approaches and listen carefully to the reactions.

Well, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel as soon as you can benefit from your competitors by the analysis of their audience. Unless you’re a genius that found completely unique idea (or a weirdo that writes about something no one cares about) you do have competitors in your niche! So let’s find and analyze them!

#1 Find top blogs in your niche

Here I can suggest 2 simple yet effective ways to quickly find best blogs in your niche:

Google it!

The first thing you can do is to type your primary keywords into the Google search. For instance, if you’re running digital marketing blog, type “seo guide” into the search box and explore SERP top-10.

Note, that your query should concern a fundamental issue every ambitious blog definitely have written about. It’s clear that every SEO blog strives to write the most comprehensive SEO guide that will rank high. Thus, this query will give you the list of leading blogs.

Here you’ll find Moz, Kissmetrics, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Quicksprout, Wordstream, Neil Patel’s blogs. These results show that this simple method works well as we all know that these blogs are leaders in the digital marketing niche.

Find a listing

Another way, which is even simpler than the previous one, is to find a list of best {your keyword} blogs:

All work is done for you! You’ll find compilation of the established blogs, but you shouldn’t trust it entirely. Note, that leading blogs has:

Traffic about 500K — 1M and more (you can check it with SimilarWeb);
Social activity: likes, shares, comments;
Regular publications.

Select up to 10 top blogs and proceed to the next step.

#2: Find and analyze their most shared content

Now our task is to find out what type of content and what topics people in our niche like the most. Here I’ll use BuzzSumo tool that finds most shared content (for keyword or domain):

As you see, you can sort the results by FB, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest shares. Also, it allows choosing a date, content type, language, country, and even word count.

Here is where easy part ends. Now you should read a ton of competitor’s articles. I suggest choosing top 10 articles from each site we’ve selected earlier. Read all of them (ok, you can just glance through it) and analyze the niche. This research will give you a great insight into what people want to see on your blog:

What topics are they interested in the most?
How long should my post be (how many words)?
What writing style should I choose?
What type of content to post?
How many images should be in the post?
And more!

I suggest creating a spreadsheet to collect all information together in one place. Here is what it looks like for me:

Of course, columns in the spreadsheet may differ depending on your goals. You can analyze every single detail or estimate blog in general, as you wish. Our goal remains the same: learn from your opponents and find the niche patterns.

For instance, doing this small research, I got few important things about digital marketing blogs:

You always should be up-to-date! I found at least one article about Google/Facebook update at the top of each blog. Such posts often go viral!
Bring the value and prove everything you say. I see this pattern over and over again when reading guest post guidelines on different blogs. Small sites point that you can use 1 link per post / can’t use links in the body of the article at all. Large platforms are not afraid of links as far as they are relevant and bring value to the reader. So always refer to studies, investigations, influencers’ articles to prove your point.

To find content that is interesting to your audience at this very moment, choose “past month” filter. Check these blogs, conduct the analysis and come up with best topics for your blog posts.

As I said earlier, every particular niche has its particular audience. At the same time, even every particular blog has a particular audience. You can’t entirely rely on your competitors or leaders. Anyway, your audiences are similar, so this analysis could save you from some mistakes and give you an idea about your niche as a whole.

#3: Niche question research

I found out that there is much buzz around content marketing and SMM strategies these days. Also, there are a lot of articles about snippets update. I decided to write about content marketing. But what sides of this topic should I cover in my post?

This is where niche question research comes in handy.

Quora

Question-and-answer platforms can provide you with some specific ideas to cover in the post. Type your primary keyword into the search box, choose “last month” filter, and explore the results. Here are some interesting questions I found here:

Note that it should be a question that hasn’t been answered in full yet. Choose some exciting question and be the first one to create a comprehensive post concerning this issue.

Also, you can use a summary of your post as an answer to this question on Quora. Of course, you can leave a link to your post here as well!

SEO tool

Another way to find exciting questions in your niche is to use the SEO tool like Serpstat. It has “search questions” feature that finds question people frequently ask on Google, YouTube, and Amazon. All questions are asked by real people in real time. Here are some interesting things I found:

Quick tip: it sorts queries in the ascending order by the number of words in the phrase. Thus, the most interesting and specific questions are at the end of the report.

#4: Create an article!

Finally, we can focus on the fun part: writing! Let’s sum up the process:

Find trending topics analyzing top blogs in your niche. You can read their most shared articles or most recent ones that seem to be successful. It doesn’t mean that you should steal their ideas. Instead of it, you can figure out the trend, find something they’ve missed, and write content that stands out.
Look at these topics from a new perspective and get an insight into what people want to know on this topic by searching for questions people ask on the Internet. Sure, there’s nothing unique or special left in the world. That said, there are so many aspects of every topic. Niche questions help to find these aspects.
Turn question (that is related to the trending topic you’ve chosen) from Quora into the heading of your article. Now use questions from Serpstat as subheadings. These questions are LSI keywords, so you’re killing two marketing birds with one stone: since questions are asked by real people, we can assume that audience want to find an answer, at the same time, you’re using more keywords and getting more traffic as well!

The only thing left to do is to write an exceptional content, and this is where I leave you. This method will help you to find topics, ideas, and writing style that resonates with your audience. You, in turn, should take the responsibility for writing, listening to your readers’ reactions, and improving your content strategy according to them. And I wish you to be on the same page with your audience!

In Conclusion

As content creators, we need to show appreciation to our audience by creating content that will highly resonate with them. Before you publish a post, ask yourself if your target audience would care about what you are going to publish. If not, you might have to change your perspective, research more, and write content that is specific to what your readers want to know.

Have you already figured out your target audience? Are you writing content that resonates with them? Share your thoughts in comments!

Anna Rud is a Content Marketer in an IT company. She’s often writing useful pieces on how to rank higher, how to write for the Web, how to carry out PPC campaign and so on. Obsessed with the constant learning.

How To Get Your Audience Involved In Your Content Brand

February 13, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Most content brands follow a very simple structure. The content creator creates content and the audience consumes it. Sure, there are other things that go into it. You have to promote content, create a content calendar, and do things like that.

But at its core, most content brands exist as content providers for people to consume.

Advanced content brands flip that concept on its head. Yes, they still produce content, and yes, their audiences engage with their content.

But these advanced content brands do something different. They break the 4th wall. They get their audiences involved in their brands.

You’ve already seen this happen again and again. But you need to notice it happening around you for it to have an impact on your brand. Here’s what I’ve noticed from advanced content brands.

Invite Your Audience To Fill Out Surveys

I’m not talking about those five minute surveys that you make 10 cents on. Several years ago, I was filling out those types of surveys. It’s an easy way to make money, but 10 cents isn’t much to celebrate about.

I’m talking about the surveys that give them a voice in your future decisions. In these short surveys (you only need 3-5 questions), ask your audience what type of content they want to see more often.

These surveys allow you to determine what your audience wants. By providing more of what your audience wants, they’ll engage with more of your content. As your audience engages with more of your content, more people will come across your brand.

The best part about surveys is that your audience will appreciate being heard. They’ll appreciate giving you a suggestion and seeing you took action based on that suggestion just a few years later.

You’ll also get plenty of epic content ideas which are vital for all content brands.

Invite Contributors To Your Content Brand

As you promote your content brand and it gets older, you’ll hear more stories about people who have been engaged with your brand for several years. These are your core fans who love what you produce and want to help.

They are the ones who will fill out your surveys, but some want to help on a bigger level.

One of the best ways to activate your audience is to give them permission to contribute to your success. This is why I opened the doors to guest blogging on my site. As I write a blog post every day, I technically don’t need the help, but I’ll happily take it.

The great things about contribution relationships is that they’re usually win-win. Contributors help me by providing more content and promotion power, and I help them by putting them in front of my audience.

You can find contributors on other popular content brands (i.e. these brands’ blogs, channels, podcasts, etc.) and ask them if they want to contribute some content for you. As you get more of these people to say yes and publish more of their content, your audience will catch on.

Soon you’ll get plenty of submissions each day as more people become more involved in your content brand.

Reply To Comments

I don’t know how Neil Patel does it. He responds to every single comment. On time.

I respond to virtually all of the comments I get, but sometimes it takes me a month to get back to people.

It’s something I am working on, and I know it will get more difficult as my content brand grows even more.

But it’s important.

Replying to your comments makes your audience realize that you pay attention to them. It’s one thing to continuously produce content. Taking the time to reply to someone who consumed your content and left a comment is a whole new level.

And let’s remember that few people leave comments. If you enjoy this blog post, are you going to leave a comment? I get hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, but I don’t have hundreds of thousands of comments to show for it.

In this blog’s history, only 0.7% of visitors have left a comment. That percentage also includes my replies, so the actual number is much smaller.

Am I just a terrible marketer then? Not quite. These are results you can see on almost any blog, even the really good ones.

To leave a comment, you have to read the blog post, have takeaways, and want to spend the 10-15 seconds it takes to leave a comment. In our fast world, people don’t have that kind of time. In that same period of time, you should find another great piece of content to read and get started on it.

I mention this because a comment indicates this person cared about your content. Even for a controversial topic, this person cared enough about your content and its message to share his/her thoughts.

These are comments you need to respond to. Let your audience know that you care, and they’ll care about you even more.

Create Polls

You can use polls to gather people’s opinions to form conclusions that theoretically apply to the whole.

Polls get your audience more involved in your content and lets you know how your audience thinks. Before I even started this blog, I did a Poll of the Day on one of my other blogs. I may bring that back in the future.

Polls get your audience involved in what you’re doing. Even if it’s a silly question that has no value for your brand (i.e. chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream), you condition your audience to engage with your content on a deeper level.

Answering a poll takes less than five seconds, and those are seconds most people are willing to give you. Part of it is to share their opinion, and part of it is to see what everyone else said.

For instance, aren’t you now a little curious about whether I prefer chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream? Wouldn’t you want to know what my entire audience thinks?

It’s not something you would passionately Google. It’s more of those “Why not…as long as the data is in front of me and easy to interpret” scenarios.

But what if I asked my audience whether they prefer writing blog posts or creating podcast episodes. That’s something more interesting and related to my niche.

And it gets my audience more involved in my content brand.

In Conclusion

As content creators, we need to show more appreciation to our audiences. That doesn’t just mean creating content that they love. It also means taking the time to acknowledge individuals who acknowledge us on a deeper level.

The future winners will be the ones who can connect with more people in their audiences on a 1-to-1 level.

What are your thoughts on these tactics for getting your audience more engaged? Do you have any tactics you’d like to share? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

7 Simple As Pie Email List Building Tips For Beginners

May 27, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Email list building is the most important activity you can do for your business. Your email list is truly your most valuable asset because people engage with emails far more often than social media posts.

In fact, if you have the same number of followers and email subscribers, you can count on anywhere from 3-10 times as many people seeing your email broadcasts than your social media posts.

The difference in click-through rates is even more dramatic. The average click-through rate for email is 3.57%, whereas Facebook and Twitter average click-through rates of 0.07% and 0.03%, respectively.

That’s right. Email gets 51-119 times more clicks depending on whether you use Twitter or Facebook. This isn’t to say social media is bad, in fact, you should be using social media to help you build your lists.

Remember, you own the traffic on your email lists. As for the traffic you don’t own, you’ll want as much of it as possible to join your email lists.

To help you, I’m providing seven simple-as-pie tips that you can implement to bring you email list building to the next level:

#1: Set Up An Email Server

Before you can even think of email list building, you’ll need to have an email server. And not one of those built-in WordPress servers that delivers your latest blog post to people’s inboxes.

Why? Because these services don’t allow you to communicate effectively with your audience.

Instead, consider servers like ConvertKit, iContact, and Aweber. Personally, I prefer ConvertKit because of its detailed auto responders, and its ability to seamlessly move people from one auto responder to another based on which actions they take (or don’t take). I wrote a more detailed post on ConvertKit here.

When you start using your server to send emails, focus on these two things:

Open rates
Click-through rates

Email marketers focus on other things too, but these two metrics matter most because, in the end, you want more people to open your emails, and more of the people who do open your emails to click on the links.

Besides, what’s the point of email list building if you don’t have an engaged list? By focusing on optimizing your open and click-through rates, you’ll end up with a more engaged email list.

#2: Create An Irresistible Free Offer

The irresistible free offer is the reason most people end up on your email list. Most people don’t subscribe to your email list to get more emails in their inbox. People get enough emails already!

The real reason they subscribe is to consume free content. My most successful free offer to date is an eBook containing 27 different tactics you can use to get more retweets.

You’ll want to be sure your free offer meets the needs of your niche and what you’re selling. When people subscribe and receive my free eBook, for example, they’re automatically sent an auto responder that provides additional value (as well as promotes my Twitter and social media-related products).

My irresistible offer leads qualified subscribers through a sales funnel that introduces my products based on a set of pre-qualifications — the products for which they’ve already expressed an interest — which keeps my messages relevant and on point.

Once you’ve decided on your irresistible free offer (video series, report, white paper, eBook, etc.), you need make sure it looks great. Design matters more than you think. We all judge a book by its cover (don’t deny it), and we also judge the value of a free offer by the way it’s presented.

For example, if all else is equal (including content), which book would you rather read?

A friend of mine was nice enough to create a new version of this eBook cover. And as a result, more people sign up simply because it looks better. You can even pay someone just $5 on Fiverr to come up with a good design. Just take a look at the logo for my upcoming summit:

I’ve made it my screensaver and I think it looks great! Just remember, the way your free offer looks is often more important than the free offer itself.

The title of your free offer is also important for building your email list. Choose a catchy yet simple title that communicates clearly what your free offer provides. If you have to choose between being catchy and being clear, always choose clarity.

As my friend Tom Corson-Knowles says, “Even a worthless book with a good title will sell more copies than a book full of useful information with a bad title.”

I write 10 possible titles for my free offer and then choose the one I like most.

#3: Create A Landing Page

Once you have the free offer in place, it’s time to create a landing page. A landing page is a page on your blog with a one or more CTAs (calls to action) and a form that asks users to enter an email address and possibly some other information (when you ask for less information, more people will actually fill out your form).

I personally use Optimize Press to create my landing pages. Optimize Press is a tool for WordPress.org users that lets you create landing pages, sales pages, membership sites, training courses, and just about anything else you can imagine.

If you don’t use this version of WordPress, you can still create a landing page. In fact, you don’t even need to have your own blog or website to create a landing page. You can simply create a self-hosted landing page on LeadPages or UpViral (they’ll host it for you so you don’t need to buy a domain name).

While it’s better to connect your landing page to a blog where you provide free, high-value content, you can technically go the self-hosted route that LeadPages, UpViral and others offer. The one problem with self-hosted landing pages is that people may not trust it as much since the URL doesn’t tell them who’s providing the free information.

When people don’t know who is getting their email address, for example, they are more hesitant about providing it. It’s often a good idea to say that you won’t share it with anyone!

Now that you know the basics, you’re probably wondering how to get people to subscribe via your landing page. There are two basic ways to do this. And understanding these two basic ideas will help you know what to look for to ensure effective email list building.

Increase the amount of traffic to the landing page
Optimize your landing page’s conversion rate

If two landing pages each have a 10% conversion rate, the landing page with 100 daily visitors will get more conversions than the landing page with 50 daily visitors.

But if the landing page with 50 daily visitors bumps up to a 30% conversion rate, that landing page now converts 15 visitors per day, whereas the other landing page with 100 daily visitors and a 10% conversion rate will convert 10 visitors per day. So even though one landing page gets half as many visitors, it’s still getting more conversions.

Ideally, you will increase traffic as well as your conversion rates. However, if you want to double your results, my advice is to focus on your conversion rates. Psychologically, it feels more doable to go from a 10% conversion rate to a 20% conversion rate than going from 100 daily visitors to 200 daily visitors. Are you still with me?

By focussing on conversions, you’ll only need a 10% increase. With a traffic-based goal, on the other hand, you’ll need an increase of 100 visitors.

#4: Share Your Landing Page On Social Media

Ah yes, here’s where social media joins the email list building mix. You can’t just create a landing page and expect people to visit it. You get those visitors by promoting your landing page, and social media is a powerful tool that lets you do just that.

The easiest way to promote your landing page is to use your bio. While most people link to their blog or website in their bios, why not link to the one page you want your visitors to see more than any other piece of content? I always link to my landing page in my bio.

Once you make this simple change, your email list building efforts will pick up momentum. You can then build on that momentum by promoting your landing page several times a day. But keep in mind that frequency will vary according to the social network.

On Twitter, for example, I promote one of my landing pages every hour. But on Facebook and Pinterest, I promote my landing page only once per day. And on Instagram, I let my bio do most of the talking.

Most social networks also give you the option to pin a post to the top of your profile. I use this feature with Twitter to keep one of my tweets immortal. While most tweets have a lifespan of 20 minutes, this one tweet continues to work wonders.

But I also noticed that as I shared my landing pages on more social networks, I fell into a time crunch. Sure, I was working on my email list building, but I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted from the rest of my business.

Why? Because I didn’t have as much time to communicate with my email list or create new products for them.

Once I realized the problem, I knew I needed to find a way out. So I began outsourcing more and more of my tasks. I delegated social media growth activities, image creation, and editing of my blog posts and podcasts, just to name a few. This decision opened up countless hours of my time and allowed me to pursue new opportunities.

#5: Profit From Your Autoresponder

What’s the point of email list building if you’re not making revenue? Your email costs go up but you won’t be able to pay for them.

To avoid this problem, you need to rely on your auto responders. An auto responder is made up of a series of emails people get after subscribing to your blog. You can set up your auto responders to email your list every few days, weeks, or even months.

Within each of these auto responders, you should be promoting a product. And if people buy one product, you’ll need to direct them to another auto responder that promotes a more expensive product. I refer to these as connective auto responders, since one auto responder leads right to the next.

This transition from one to the next only takes place when subscribers perform a desired action (i.e. buy a product). The more connective auto responders you have, the more revenue you can make.

Within each of your auto responders, tell stories! In my very first auto responder I share a picture of myself and explain the context behind it, which makes me more relatable, and my customers more attainable.

Plus, virtually every email service lets you check your auto responder stats. You’ll want to check the engagement from your overall auto responders as well as individual messages. That way, you can see what is and isn’t working. Then, based on the analysis, you can make changes.

Not bad, but can it be better? No matter how great my engagement, I always try to improve it.

#6: Get In The Growth Cycle

The growth cycle is the never-ending period of time in which you continue growing without boundaries. The basic set-up is that you pay for your traffic and make more money per conversion than you spend on each conversion.

For instance, if you’re spending $1 per conversion, but earning $2 per conversion, you should continue on that path until the end of time (or until/if these rates fall out of your favor).

But this also means you need to continuously monitor your ads. If an ad performs well, for example, use it as a model for future ads. But if your ad struggles to convert, change the copy, picture, or something else… but only change one thing at a time (A/B test) so you can better determine which variable is working or not working.

If you change more than one thing at a time, the image and the copy, for instance, and your ad continues to get the same results, you won’t have the full picture. As far as you know, the new picture could have doubled your results while the new copy could have halved your results. Thus, the final result is that nothing has changed.

#7: Give Yourself A Public Challenge

A public challenge for a big goal is intimidating because you can’t back out. But you don’t win by staying comfortable. You win by burning your boats so success or public failure (ugh!) are your only options.

Give yourself a public challenge for your email list. By the end of the year, for example, I want to see 100,000 email subscribers. That’s what I told my audience anyway, and I’m telling you (and everyone else) again in order to keep myself accountable.

Share these public goals in a YouTube video or blog post. So EVERYONE will see it, not just a few friends.

In Conclusion

EVERY marketer’s biggest regret is not having built an email list sooner. That fact alone should encourage you to jumpstart your email list building efforts (if you haven’t done so already).

Do at least one thing today that will help you to get at least one additional subscriber tomorrow. If you start with a one-subscriber goal per day, and follow this method for 100 days (1 subscriber on Day 1, 2 subscribers on Day 2, etc.), you’ll end up with 5,050 subscribers in 100 days with small, incremental gains.

That’s an average of 50.5 subscribers per day!

Power question: What can you do today to get more subscribers tomorrow?

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What are your thoughts on finding a target audience? Which insight in this blog post did you find especially useful? Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Leave a comment now. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who needs this burst of insight, please be sure you pass it on.

[Tweet “7 Simple As Pie Email List Building Tips For Beginners http://wp.me/p2UPop-29Q”]

If you’re new here, join the mailing list using the form below. You’ll get a ton of free content just like this.

Until next time,

Marc

*image credit: Pixabay.com

7 Secrets To Find Your Target Audience

March 25, 2017 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Every marketer’s mission is to find, and understand, their target audience. Once you find your audience, you’ll come in contact with people who warmly receive your message.

My target audience doesn’t consist of music lovers. You may love music, but you’re probably here to learn about digital marketing and productivity. If you want to learn how to play the guitar, this blog isn’t for you.

We all know the importance of a target audience, but how do you find YOUR target audience? That’s what this blog post is all about!

#1: Identify Your Target Audience

If you don’t know who you’re trying to reach, you’ll struggle to find your target audience. Before you do any research or write any new content, you first need to understand exactly who you are trying to reach.

Instead of thinking of your target audience as a large group of faceless people, think about one person who would be interested in hearing your message. Is this person a guy, a gal, or does it matter? My brand is for guys and gals alike, but other brands like WBENC cater more to women.

When I began to identify my target audience, I asked myself the following questions:

What are their goals?
What problems do they have?
Where do they work?
What is their age and occupation?
Where do they hang out on- and offline?
Who are their friends?
What do they do for fun?
How do they think and feel?
What leg of the journey are they in right now (beginner, intermediate, or advanced)?

Try to answer these questions as specifically as you can, you should create customer personas for each use case, or user type, relevant to your product or service.

At the most basic level, personas allow you to personalize your marketing for different segments of your audience. For example, instead of sending the same lead nurturing emails to everyone in your database, segment according to your buyer personas to tailor your messaging according to what you know about each.

Here are some practical methods for gathering that information:

Interview customers either in person or over the phone to discover what they like about your product or service.
Look through your contacts database to uncover trends about how certain leads or customers find and consume your content.
Take into consideration your sales team’s feedback on the leads they are interacting with most. What types of sales cycles does your sales team work with? What generalizations can they make about the different types of customers you serve best?

You can also use the forms on your website to capture important persona information. For example, if your personas vary based on company size, ask each lead for information about company size on your forms. You could also gather information on what forms of social media your leads use by asking a question about social media accounts.

In sum, for each persona you should identify background, demographics, identifiers such as demeanor and communication methods, goals, challenges (and how you meet them), plus real quotes and common objections.

Once you identify your buyer personas, you should try to provide free value that matches the needs and preferences of each. For example, one individual within my audience suggested that I write a blog post about finding your target audience.

This individual certainly isn’t the only person who wants to find and grow a target audience, but he or she likely represents others in my audience who have similar questions. I wrote this blog post for that individual, but by so doing so, I will reach other members of my audience at the same time.

In the beginning, you’ll do an intense amount of investigative work to understand your target audience. But once they start embracing your content, your audience will begin to grow by default.

#2: Grow A Targeted Social Media Audience

Social media is a free tool that helps content creators grow a target audience. Most social networks follow the same path to growth.

Find an influencer in your niche
Follow that person’s newest followers
Watch your own follower counts grow

If you use this tactic, day after day, you could end up with results like this:

target audience

Growing my Twitter account in this way has resulted in 100,000+ people visiting my blog every year from Twitter alone. The additional social media traffic also has a significant impact on my SEO traffic.

However, simply following others doesn’t guarantee people will follow you back. To earn a follow, you must be worthy of that follow. More importantly, you’ll never be worthy of everyone’s follow. Rather, you want to position yourself in such a way that you attract followers who are part of your target audience.

You can do this by posting valuable content to your social networks. Valuable content is defined as content that helps specific people. With this definition, each person has a different view of what value means. Fashion articles don’t provide much value to me, because I’m not very interested in fashion.

On the other hand, a productivity book would grab my attention and provide me with an immense amount of value (as long as it’s a great book). Not everyone will like your content, and that’s okay. Stay focused on your target audience and the rewards will come.

This is how you find your target audience on social media: find people of interest and make it as easy as possible for them to find you, follow you, and consume your content.

Once you start growing your target audience, you’ll want them to perform certain actions. You may want your social media followers to join your email list, for example.

Some people try to push their social media followers through their sales funnel, directly from the networks themselves, but this tactic almost always results in failure.

You shouldn’t promote your products directly on social media, at least not very often. However, social media is a brilliant indirect sales machine.

Promote your call-to-actions daily to increase sign-ups. For my Twitter strategy, I tweet one of my landing pages every hour. I even have a pinned tweet of my landing page that generates powerful social proof for my offer.

target audience

If you want your audience to perform a certain action, put that call-to-action in front of your target audience as much as possible without being annoying. You may be surprised to hear that tweeting your landing page every hour isn’t annoying if you’re generally tweeting about other things every 10 minutes.

But on Facebook, and most other social networks, you shouldn’t promote your landing page at that frequency. The best way to determine the ideal frequency for any social network is to experiment. I experimented with my tweeting frequency 10 different times before I decided on my current plan of action.

As you grow your social media audience, it will take additional time to engage in consistent interaction and to provide even more high-value content. At this stage, you may want to outsource certain tasks to lighten your social media, and overall, workload.

Outsourcing helps keep these various tasks from taking over your work day. You’ll have more time to explore new opportunities and build upon the opportunities you’re currently pursuing.

When outsourcing, just make sure you don’t over reach. The ideal approach is to grow your freelancer army gradually.

#3: Answer Questions On Quora

Quora is perhaps one of the most underrated sources of blog traffic. Not only will you increase your blog traffic, you’ll also find your target audience in a powerful way — through their questions.

Quora is a social networking site that has 160,000 monthly users who ask questions and submit answers. Back in 2015, Quora’s CEO, Adam D’Angelo had this to say about Quora’s traffic.

quora ceo post

Wouldn’t you want a slice of that pie… especially if it helps you find your target audience?

I make it a goal to answer at least three questions on Quora every day. That way, my content gets seen by more people. The case study I mentioned earlier does a good job at depicting how Quora can lead people in your target audience to your blog.

While I currently don’t get enough results worthy of a case study, it’s great to know that a good number of people are viewing my answers.

target audience

I posted most of these answers several weeks ago. Here are the initial spikes I got when the answers were recently published:

target audience

As you can see, answering questions won’t lead to immediate gratification from your stats. But if you continue answering questions, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people will eventually view your answers on a daily basis.

Plus, they make for great starting points for future blog posts.

Getting this many views on Quora requires that you consistently answer questions from your target audience. I personally prefer to answer as many questions as possible, regardless of popularity.

Most questions on Quora have the potential to spread like wildfire. A good rule of thumb is to answer questions that have under 10 responses and little more than 10 followers. These questions have more potential to spread, and if you answer first, you’re in a position to reap most of the traffic.

On Quora, the first few answers tend get more views and traction than those that follow. But sometimes you can piggyback off a popular question with hundreds of answers and still get a lot of views.

In the beginning, I advise that you answer at least three questions each day and don’t focus on getting more views. Once you get comfortable with answering questions, then get serious about increasing your views.

If you answer a lot of questions related to a particular topic, you can set up notifications. With a preset notification, you’ll receive emails with new questions related to the topic. This way, you are often one of the first people to answer the question.

Answering questions first puts you in a position to get more views and earn more respect from the person who asked the question, and everyone else who reads your answer.

#4: Comment On Blogs In Your Niche

Some people believe that commenting on blogs in your niche to increase traffic is a futile approach. If you’re one of those people, then marketing guru Neil Patel disagrees with you. Commenting on blogs in your niche (and your guest posts) still matters. The reason is simple:

That’s where you find your target audience.

Your target audience doesn’t only read your blog. They read other people’s blogs, too. If my visitors read a post on Jeff Bullas’ Blog, and see my comment at the bottom, they are instantly reminded of another blog they can visit.

At the same time, if I get the original blogger’s attention, I am scoring points for my influencer marketing efforts. It’s easy to get an influencer’s attention simply by leaving a comment on his or her blog. For instance, if you leave a comment on this post, I will certainly respond.

When you leave a comment on someone else’s blog, make sure it provides value. To provide value in a comment, you can either add some relevant insights or ask a great follow-up question, which indicates that you took the time to read the entire post.

Your comment will attract attention from incoming visitors and possibly garner a response from the person who wrote the blog post. However, don’t use comments to promote your own content.

Linking to your blog or landing page within the comment itself is a big no-no. But you often get the chance to include a link to your website and/or landing page before you even begin typing your comment.

My advice for commenting on other blogs is to avoid commenting simply for the sake of leaving a comment. When you reach the end of a blog post, leave a comment only if you can add value to the conversation. It only takes 30-45 seconds and, more often than not, will result in more exposure.

#5: Engage In Twitter Chats Related To Your Niche

A great way to find your target audience is by engaging in Twitter chats related to your niche. Twitter chats usually take Twitter by storm and sometimes end up as trending topics… as long as there’s not a football game at the same time.

While Twitter chats are rare finds, you’ll often come across recurring Twitter chats that take place every week or month. Every time these Twitter chats occur, engage with the people who use the dedicated hashtag, and follow them. You’re bound to get many follow backs from people interested in your niche.

Right now, Tweet Reports is the best tool for finding Twitter chats. Simply subscribe to various bloggers and brands within your niche and pay attention to when they’re conducting Twitter chats.

#6: Pay Attention To Where You Spend Your Time

When you begin the journey to find your target audience, always remember that you are also part of the audience you seek. My target audience consists of people conscious of their productivity and eager to get better digital marketing results.

I’m also a part of that audience. I read blog posts related to digital marketing and have bought more productivity books than I can count. I’m not the only person in my target audience reading those blog posts and buying those books. I can reach people in my target audience simply by leaving a trail of where I go and what I do.

That’s why I encourage you leave a comment on blog posts that you read from start to finish. People who read the entire post are more attentive. They often scroll and read comments. If you don’t spend enough time consuming the content within your niche, you are stunting your growth. Expand upon your knowledge so you can provide more valuable content and give your target audience more reasons to pay attention to your brand.

#7: Partner With Influencers In Your Niche

You’ll spend countless hours in the pursuit of identifying and finding your target audience. But there’s one method to turbocharge your results. This method is to partner with influencers in your niche. Here’s how it works:

Contact an influencer in your niche with a similar audience size as your own
Agree to promote one another’s content or landing page
As your email lists grow, new subscribers benefit both sides

You can make this process easier with an affiliate program that rewards people for getting people to subscribe to your email lists. And you can take this method to an entirely new level by hosting a virtual summit. Virtual summits can do wonders for email list growth and income.

In Conclusion

You must be willing to commit countless hours of your time to spread your message in order to reach the right people. The best way to find your target audience is to understand where they hang out online and build a presence there.

That’s why I have a big presence on several social media platforms. It’s the reason why I take the time to answer questions on Quora, and leave comments at the end of every blog post I read.

This series of actions, carried out over a long period of time, will most certainly result in a goldmine of traffic that helps you prosper.

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What are your thoughts on finding a target audience? Did you find any of the insights in this post especially useful?

Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who may benefit from this post, please be sure to pass it on.

[Tweet “7 Secrets To Find Your Target Audience.”]

And if you’re new here, join our mailing list! The form is below. You’ll get a ton of free content just like this.

-Marc

*image credit: Pixabay.com

4 Ways To Use Social Media To Understand Your Customers

February 7, 2017 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Have you ever bought something simply because someone you know recommended it? I’m sure you have. But while this behavior might seem trivial on the surface, underneath lies one of the greatest truths about social media marketing, and marketing in general.

We often rely on our friends to get product recommendations. After all, we know and trust our friends. More importantly, they know us. If you’re an avid reader, for example, your friends won’t likely recommend a good baseball glove. Rather, they’ll recommend a good book.

Having said that, one way to describe marketing is product recommendation. Even when we are trying to sell a product, we are, in essence, recommending it. Some messages are crafted better than others but, in the end, we don’t actually sell products. We recommend them. It’s the customer who takes action.

Part of making a great recommendation is to know your customers as well as you know your friends. It’s easy to recommend something to a lifelong friend. Imagine if it was just as easy to make recommendations for your potential customers. Now imagine if your potential customers responded the same way as your friends.

That’s possible, but only when you learn as much as you can about your customer. And social media can help you extract the information you need. Once you learn more about your customers through social media, you’ll get more sales and generate more revenue.

Let’s get started!

#1: See What Your Customers Share

You can learn A LOT about a person just by what they share on social media. For instance, I share blog posts about productivity, digital marketing, and blogging. Whether you believe I’m an expert on those subjects or not, you know right away that I care about those topics.

I’m interested in getting more traffic from my digital marketing efforts. I want to boost my productivity. And I want to write killer blog posts. And no matter how much I improve my skills, I’ll always want to do better.

Take a look at what your customers are sharing on social media. They share the products they like using, the articles and information they find interesting, and they often share how they feel about certain people and issues.

If a majority of my Twitter followers started sharing Pinterest-related articles, my next training course would be about Pinterest. See what I mean? When you know people already want something, offer them relevant solutions and your product recommendations will carry more weight.

#2: Read Their Bios

A bio can say a lot about a person. For instance, here’s my 160 character bio on Twitter:

Based on my tweets, you know that I care about social media marketing, blogging, and digital marketing (note: I don’t say that I’m passionate about them because people don’t always share what they’re passionate about, but they always share what they care about).

Looking at my bio, you also know I’m a runner, dog lover, and Red Sox fan. Do you offer a DVD workout routine that helps me cut 10 seconds off my mile within 30 days? If so, I’m all ears. And if you recommend something that will make my dog love me even more, you have my attention.

If you have some epic Red Sox memorabilia, I’m listening to you. I will not listen to anyone who offers Yankees memorabilia (unless it has something to do with Derek Jeter or Mariano Rivera). Likewise, if you’re selling a cat bowl, you will lose my attention immediately.

Doing this type of homework lets you discover what to recommend, and what not to recommend, to your customers. Depending on what you offer, and the information you provide in your bio, you can offer something that appeals to multiple interests.

If you recommend a Red Sox dog costume, you’ve won my heart. Envisioning my dog in a Red Sox outfit satisfies my love for dogs and my desire to watch the Red Sox win another World Series (and then another one. That cycle of desire will continue forever).

#3: Look At Who Your Customers Follow

Almost every social network lets you to discover who your customers are following. From a marketing perspective, we aren’t concerned about every individual a customer follows. We are more concerned with patterns.

Are your customers following accounts that post inspirational quotes? Are they following social media influencers? Understanding these common patterns will allow you to identify which recommendations will resonate strongest with your customers.

Now I’m going to share a trick to ensure your audience will become more receptive to your recommendations. Let’s say I want an audience consisting of people who follow other social media influencers.

These people were interested in social media marketing before I discovered them. Following them, and getting them to follow me back, will result in more individuals who will see my recommendations and potentially take action.

#4: See How Your Audience Engage With Your Content

If you follow an influencer’s followers, you are more likely to grow an audience. Combine that with the above-mentioned tips and you’ll grow a targeted audience.

But even when you have a targeted audience, you won’t FULLY understand what they want. If your audience is interested in social media, for instance, you may not know which social network they use most. But there are two ways to figure this out:

Conduct a survey and ask your audience to fill it out (keep in mind this method works better with an email list).
Examine how your audience engages with your social media content.

A few years ago, I noticed that my Twitter and blogging-related content received the most retweets. That’s why my first training courses were about Twitter and blogging.

Then I saw increased engagement for my productivity and social media-related blog posts (social media in general, not specific networks).

Therefore, I created more training courses about productivity and social media. The more often you share content on social media, the more data you’ll have to play with. Having more data to play with always allows you to make more accurate conclusions.

In Conclusion

Speaking of conclusions, you’ve reached the near-end of this blog post. Understanding your customers allows you to provide products and services that your customers will buy before you even say a word.

So far, social media is the most revolutionary marketing tool of the 21st century. While we’ve learned many methods of social media marketing, we still have much to learn. The evolving trends in social media marketing will be very exciting.

Regardless of how marketing evolves, the emphasis will always revolve around knowing your customer. By knowing your customer like you know a friend, you can make recommendations that result in happy customers and more revenue that you can use to expand your business.

What are your thoughts on using social media to learn more about your customers? Have any tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

6 Powerful Two-Sentence Tips To Grow Your Pinterest Audience

September 21, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

There are over 70 million people on Pinterest, and the number keeps on growing as the days go by. Pinterest continues to grow, and the bigger you are able to make your audience at this stage of the game, the more popular you will be when Pinterest exceeds the big milestones such as 100 million, 200 million, or even 500 million users. Pinterest has been growing at a rapid rate, and it shows no signs of slowing down. That is why now is exactly the right time to grow your audience on Pinterest. That is why I am going to provide you with six ways for you to do that:

Pin every day. The more times you pin, the more chances you have of getting more repins and spreading farther on Pinterest.
Follow other people. Chances are some of these people will follow you back.
Create a variety of boards. This allows you to have multiple target audiences who get attracted to specific content that you pin.
Use Pinterest messaging. Pinterest messaging is a great feature to take advantage of to spread and interact with your followers, and I went more into detail on how to do that in this article.
Repin other people’s pins. Not only does this give you more variety, but some people will decide to follow you back for repinning their pins.
Use ViralWoot. ViralWoot, the Twiends for Pinterest, is a great way to build your Pinterest audience.

Those are the six ways to grow a big audience on Pinterest. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have a seventh tip? Please share your thoughts and advice below.