• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

  • Home
  • About
  • Advertising Services
  • Podcast
  • What I’m Doing Now
  • Writing Portfolio

influencer marketing

5 Hacks For Connecting With Influencers

October 3, 2017 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

influencersRelationships with influencers are critical to your content brand’s success: they help you expand your knowledge as well as open doors to new opportunities.

Some of my biggest successes are directly tied to the relationships I’ve built and fostered along my journey. However, reaching out to influencers and building relationships with new contacts can feel overwhelming.

You may feel uncertain about how to go about it, and even question whether you’ll get a response to your initial efforts.

I’ve been there, believe me.

That’s why I want to share five powerful hacks that helped me build relationships with some of the most influential content marketers and productivity experts on the planet.

#1: Interview Influencers On  Your Podcast

Both my Breakthrough Success Podcast and virtual summits have allowed me to interact with some of my niche’s top influencers. Interviews are a brilliant excuse for asking for an influencer’s time 🙂

Not only do you get to ask questions and interact with top influencers, you also get to provide your audience with valuable content.

Combine that with the fact that podcasting is a growing and less-tapped-into industry than blogging, and you’ll begin to wonder why more people aren’t doing it.

I currently publish an interview every week, but I am formulating a plan for daily episodes. And my knowledge stores will only grow as I interview more and more influencers –  it’s amazing what you can learn from a single interview with a top influencer.

#2: Collaborate With Influencers

As I plan my blog content, I consider which influencers can provide relevant advice, resources or opinions, and contact them well before the publication dates.

I often work on the copy first, and then copy and paste submissions into the post to craft a more engaging article. Once the post is published, many of the influencers I mentioned will end up sharing the blog post to their own audiences, expanding my reach.

If you’re pressed for time, you can simply mention the influencers by name while you’re writing the post, and then let them know you’ve included them in the post once you publish it (and be sure to provide a link).

Some will share it and others won’t, but having at least some influencers share your content is a thousand times better than having no influencers share your content.

#3: Do The Influencer A Favor

The more you give someone, the more willing he or she will be to return the favor. But keep in mind these small favors will change according the influencer.

Some influencers (like me) would love a positive review for their podcasts (here’s mine). Other influencers would prefer you leave a 5-star review for their latest book. Writing a guest posts for the influencer’s site is also a viable option.

Determine which favor holds the most value for a particular influencer, then offer it without expecting anything in return.

If you approach relationships in this manner, it won’t be long before an influencer voluntarily provides you with something in return (if you have to ask, start with something small).

#4: Ask Meaningful Questions

Top influencers love shepherding other people through the path they once traveled.

Gary Vaynerchuk has an entire podcast dedicated to helping others. Want to get on Gary’s radar? Ask him a really good question.

Nearly all influencers recall a time in which they spent countless hours trying to figure things out. When they see other people in a similar situation, they naturally want to lend a helping hand.

Influencers enjoy steering people in the right direction and providing that little nudge to keep them moving forward. And they like it even more when people act their advice.

This is the starting point for repeat interviews and a much greater relationship.

#5: Be Everywhere To Them

You can’t be everywhere for everyone, but you can be everywhere for someone. What’s everywhere for someone mean?

Simply focus on the places where your special someone spends the majority of his/her time. This is why television ads used to work (and why now they are less effective).

Today, people spend more time on Facebook than they do watching tv, which is why social media ad spend has greatly increased over the years.

But that doesn’t mean you should try reaching an influencer with an ad. Rather, you should seek out the places they’re engaging with their readers.

Do they reply to tweets? Do they respond to blog comments? Are they posting a lot on LinkedIn?

These are the places where you need to be. Like, share, and comment on everything they post. Mention their social media handle when you share their content and eventually they’ll notice you.

For example, I notice the people who repeatedly share my content on Twitter more than anyone else in my audience. While I write with my entire audience in mind, I can match names and faces with the people who consistently share my content on Twitter.

Find the platforms most frequented by top influencers who share your mindset.

In Conclusion

Connecting with influencers is as easy or as difficult as you make it. The beginning stage may feel difficult, but as you continue, you’ll have a much easier time connecting with influencers and building relationships.

The ultimate hack not mentioned above is that once you build all of these relationships, you can ask for referrals.

Once I have over 30 speakers for my virtual summits, I ask them if they know anyone else who would also be a great speaker for the summit. They usually make intros and that alone makes relationship building much easier.

What are your thoughts about these hacks for building relationships? Have any tips for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Blogging, Breakthrough Success, Connections, content marketing, Influencer marketing, Mindset, Motivation, podcasts, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: blogging tips and tricks, content marketing, influencer marketing, podcasts, virtual summits

7 Jackpot Principles For Improving Your Email Outreach

August 22, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

email outreach

This is a guest post by Lesley Vos. 

Let’s start with the bad news:

Overwhelmed with email, people don’t always open, read, or respond to them. And with only 4% of all business related emails clicked, 22% opened, and 78% ignored, “overwhelmed” sounds like an understatement.

But the good news is:

Email remains the most effective digital communication channel with an average of $38 in returns for every $1 spent. Plus, email is 40 times more authoritative than Facebook and Twitter combined.

So the problem is not email, but how you use it, especially for your outreach efforts. With an average of $6.85 for every $1 spent, influencer marketing has become an integral part of most campaigns.

In fact, email outreach as the #1 tactic to hit a target. But with 84% of marketers running this strategy, how are you going to stand out and succeed?

Consider these core principles of email outreach when planning your marketing campaign:

1) Personalization

What makes email so efficient?

As ProOpinion states, email is “inherently personal – each person receives a message straight to his or her inbox.”

So forget about writing cold templates, paraphrasing and plagiarizing emails from other bloggers, and try to better personalize every outreach you send.

How?

  • Use first names
  • Offer a compliment
  • Show them you know them
  • Use a conversational tone 
  • Be honest and sincere
  • Concentrate on what’s in it for them 

1

Source: Tim Soulo for Ahrefs

Sounds obvious, but so many productive bloggers ignore these principles. They write “Dear Sir” or “Hello, Webmaster,” forgetting about psychology and the natural desire of every person to be treated as a friend and individual.

“Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Studies show that when we hear our names, a reaction in the brain makes us sympathize an interlocutor, allowing the latter to benefit from it.

Just like that!

Lyrical digression: try to guess if senders who email me with “Dear Sir” get a response. Yes, I get such letters. Yes, even in 2017 (and despite dozens of articles from influencers on writing badass outreach emails).

Personalization is about flattering one’s ego. You might want to double the effect, repeating a receiver’s name throughout the email, but be careful not to go too far and risk sounding insincere.

2) Power Subject Lines

The first thing people read is the email subject line, which helps them decide whether or not to open it.

So make this line appealing enough to spark recipients’ interest and encourage them to check your offer.

How?

  • Personalize it (personalized subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened)

2

Source: Lesley Vos for SEMrush

  • Create intrigue (make the subject just clear enough to pique interest)
  • Consider length (subject lines of 51-60 characters or 6-10 words have the highest read rate)

3) Power Words

Words are a weapon in email outreach because they can make people feel a certain way and influence them to take action. Use power words to sound trustworthy.

How?

  • Make your message readable: use short sentences and paragraphs, don’t ignore bolded words and bullet lists.
  • Give your email a power information scent: what is the “meat” of your message?
  • Add surplus value: what makes you different from others? Why should readers choose and trust you?
  • Use power words: active verbs, no cliches, no jargon or plague words.

Visual and informational clues help recipients see the value of your outreach just by scanning it. Also, when writing for business, language patterns appeal to basic human instincts.

In his article for Mention, Mike Hanski recommends five power words to use in your emails:

  1. You – appeals to selfishness
  2. Easy – appeals to laziness
  3. Save – appeals to greed
  4. Results – appeals to pragmatism
  5. Guarantee – appeals to skepticism

4) Credibility

Be honest. How many of you continue getting emails from lucio123@hotmail.com or lisa1991@gmail.com?

To enhance the chances your emails will be opened, tend to your credibility:

  • Use a professional email address or, at least, your real name for Gmail
  • Take advantage of the email signature

An appropriately named email address will help keep it out of the spam box and lets readers form an opinion of you as a reliable and competent person. Your signature tells influencers who you are and helps them remember you.

3

Source: Lesley’s outreach letter (not a template to use all over the place!)

When outreaching influencers, give them a reason to care. They don’t want mediocre work, so you might want to introduce yourself with a brief mention of your past publications, if you have any.

You can share publications on top blogs, shareable content, or simply well-researched articles that demonstrate your professionalism and ability to do awesome things.

Also, make it easier for recipients to research whether you are a good fit by including your name, website URL, and social media links in your email signature.

5) Objectiveness

Never contact influencers with vague sentences or ambiguous statements. Keep your message simple and to the point with the one-ask-per-email formula.

Write clearly and objectively, but don’t sound demanding. That’s a core principle of not conflating clarity with pushiness. Decide on a single offer or request:

  • Do you want them to read an article?
  • Are you asking for an expert opinion?
  • Would you like them to review a product?
  • Want them to share a link with their followers?
  • Are you pitching a guest post idea?

Keep it short and be sure they’ll never have to ask, “What do you want from me?”

Also, be humble.

6) Brevity

Consider the 3-5-7 rule of email copywriting when writing your outreach emails:

  • 3 seconds to get their attention
  • 5 seconds to draw them in
  • 7 seconds to compel them to act

The perfect length is 150 words or up to 5 sentences/short paragraphs. Use lots of line breaks and white space so your email easy to scan.

As much as 56% of emails are opened on mobile devices now, so your outreach risks deletion if not displayed correctly.

4

Source: Dave Schneider for HubSpot

7) Time

Time matters for sending emails. Succesful marketing campaigns prove it:

  • The best days are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
  • The optimal times are 6 a.m., 10 a.m, and 2 p.m.

But since there is conflicting data on the topic, it’s best to A/B test your email list and learn the exact time to outreach them. As we all know, what works for one marketer won’t necessarily work for another.

Follow up on your pitch.

This is a bit controversial because no one likes a pain in the neck. After all, if you pitch a valuable proposition you should get a positive response without any follow-ups, right?

Wrong.

Out of all of my outreach emails, 60% get a response only after I follow-up. And that’s not because influencers don’t want to work with me, but because they’re busy.

Follow-ups act as reminders. But that doesn’t mean you should write them every other day and ask recipients if they’ve read your email. Give them at least 72 hours minimum to reply.

For example, I followed up with Marc a week after sending him the outline of the post you are reading right now:

5

Yes, I wanted to be persistent but understood that following up too frequently would look like a nuisance.

How many follow-ups are enough?

Well, my experience says two, though some experts recommend three or even four. But I remember those epic screenshots from Tim Soulo’s post with his reaction to bothersome follow-ups. There’s a limit to everything, after all.

Wrapping Up

Core principles for improving your email outreach are as follow:

  • Make it personal.
  • Use power words and create compelling subject lines.
  • Keep it short and to the point.
  • Consider your credibility.
  • Send it in right time.
  • Be yourself.
  • Show what’s in there for influencers.
  • Always follow up.

Getting influencers to respond and compel them to action is not that difficult, provided you are competent and persistent. Start giving a value, and you’ll succeed.

About the author:

ezwRKs-b_400x400
Lesley Vos is a professional web writer and guest blogger contributing to publications on content marketing, social media, and self-development. Feel free to ask Lesley to write for you (an attentive reader, you might see her email address in the above article) or drop her a line on Twitter.

Filed Under: Emailing, Influencer marketing, Uncategorized Tagged With: email, email outreach, influencer marketing, outreach

How To Turn Content Creation Into Content Marketing

July 29, 2017 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

 

content creationNo one questions the importance of content for a content brand. Without content, content brands wouldn’t exist. The critical question surrounding content revolves around how much time we should spend on content creation versus content marketing.

As the theory goes, every minute you spend creating content you’ll lose on content marketing. But what if I told you that theory was completely wrong?

You can engage in content creation and content marketing all within the same minute. No, that doesn’t mean allocating 30 seconds for each task. Certain tasks fulfill both the creation and marketing components of successful content brands.

This is what Andy Crestodina referred to as the ‘gray area’ during my Content Marketing Success Summit. Andy explained that certain tasks fit both the creation and marketing parameters, tasks that we tend to separate as if they were oil and vinegar.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the gray area so your can create and market your content at a much faster pace.

Content Creation Gives You Marketing Ammo

You can’t market content unless you create it. But you can take the same piece of content and republish it on multiple platforms. It’s commonplace to see top content creators republishing their blog posts on LinkedIn, Medium, and elsewhere.

Each time someone in your preexisting audience shares your content – regardless of where they share it – it will lead to more people viewing that content.

If your blog posts, LinkedIn posts, and Medium posts each get 500 daily visitors, then you have a total of 1,500 visitors. And it only takes 5-10 minutes to republish already written blog posts on those platforms to see a big traffic increase.

As an added bonus, republishing your content on LinkedIn and Medium creates viral potential as more people engage with your content. This will put you content in front of a larger audience that you wouldn’t have reached on your own.

And when you publish on LinkedIn and Medium, you should include calls-to-action to drive people back to your blog.

At the start of one of these posts, use the anchor text, “This post was first published on [name of your blog].”

And at the end of your post, lead people to a relevant landing page (based on the topic of the content the visitor just read) that asks for the visitor’s email address.

You can also link to older blog posts throughout these posts to lead people back to your existing blog content. Just make sure these older blog posts are relevant to the topic your visitors are currently reading.

This model supports the idea of creating as much content as possible, assuming you have at least a decent sized audience on LinkedIn and Medium.

Influencer Outreach

Andy went into great detail about influencer outreach during our interview.

Basically, you contact several influencers and ask them for their opinions, recommendations, or a quote. This is content creation and marketing at its finest because you get thousands of words of content and influencers who will be happy to promote the post since they’re featured in it.

I leveraged this tactic for my blogging tools post. I asked dozens of influencers for their recommendations and 22 influencers came through. The post itself surpassed 4,000 words (and I added around 400 words at most).

Talk about an unfair advantage!

Other people basically wrote my content for me, and then more people marketed my content for me.

Granted, I did have to reach out to many people and copy and paste their content into the blog post. But many connections, combined with the power of HARO, made the mission easy to accomplish.

You don’t have to turn your entire post into other people’s opinions, quotes, and recommendations. But you can incorporate information from at least three influencers into your content.

Contact each influencer and see if they can provide 100-500 words. I typically ask for 100-250 words (unless it’s just a quote) because I want to make it as easy as possible for an influencer to provide me with free content (and share it with his or her audience).

If you can’t get the influencers to participate, you can hunt for quotes by reading their blog posts, watching their videos, listening to their podcasts, or reading interviews. You can then tell the influencer you mentioned him/her in your latest blog post and you may get a share, or at the very least some appreciation.

This strategy also allows you to build relationships with influencers so that in the future they might agree to be guests on your podcast, speakers at a virtual summit, etc.

For these relationships to work, you must get off the WIIFM Station (what’s in it for me). Only connect with influencers if you want to create a win-win atmosphere. My two favorite ways to build healthy relationships with influencers involve blog content and podcasts.

Incorporate Internal And External Links

Both internal and external links are important for SEO. Internal links lead people to your older blog posts. These links help keep people on your site longer as well as decrease your bounce rates, two metrics that are critical to your blog’s search ranking.

Internal links also drive LinkedIn and Medium readers directly to your blog, which allows you to keep these readers’ attention longer.

You can also connect certain blog posts together into a series. This requires readers to read all the posts in the series to get a complete overview of what you’re trying to achieve with your content.

External links to authority sites within your niche will allow you to piggyback on these sites’ search engine rankings. Search engines will recognize that you link to authority content. And the algorithms will assign more authority to your own site.

External linking is a long-term game. But you can immediately see the impact of internal links. And, if continued, they result in even sweeter results over the long-term.

In Conclusion

Content creation and marketing are both critical to the success of a content brand. While both involve a significant time investment, you can tap into the gray area of creation and marketing and feed two birds with one scone.

This time-effective route, combined with delegation, will make it much easier for you to grow and sustain your content brand.

What are your thoughts about the gray area? Do took have any other content creation and marketing hacks for us? Want to ask a question? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Blogging, content, content marketing, growth hacking, Influencer marketing, Marketing, Self Publishing, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: content, content creation, content marketing, growth hacking, influencer marketing, influencers, self publishing

7 Secrets To Find Your Target Audience

March 25, 2017 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

target audience

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

Filed Under: content marketing, growth hacking, Marketing, Self Publishing, Subscribers, Targeted Audience, Tips and Tricks, Traffic, Uncategorized Tagged With: customer personas, growth hacking, influencer marketing, target audience

Primary Sidebar

I am a business freelance writer who writes for individuals, small businesses, and corporations. My content will help drive engagement and sales to your business. I have produced content for several companies, including…

  • Upwork
  • MoneyLion
  • Freight Waves
  • Westchester Business Journal
  • Property Onion

Listen to the Podcast

Click here to grab your FREE copy of "27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter"

Copyright © 2025 · Genesis Sample on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in