How to Find an Authentic Reader Persona to Target an Audience

Your audience does not think the way you think as a business owner.   The things that motivate you and make you curious are not the same with your audience’s interests.  They go to your website and read your content with different motives.

How do you, therefore, target your audience?  You have to find an authentic reader persona.

You will notice that I used the word ‘authentic’.  The intention is to describe what your reader persona should represent.   Each business must start finding this reader persona first.

Think about visitors who will likely land on your website.  Does everybody represent an audience?  Of course not.  They will linger a few seconds and will definitely leave if they do not find anything valuable on your website.  And vice versa.

Define the Needs of Your Reader Persona

What do you expect as reasons why visitors will stay on your website?  What are they trying to get from your website?

Try to learn what others think of your website.  Explain to them what it is all about.  Ask friends, colleagues, and acquaintances about it.  Ask current clients or users of your product or service for feedback.

You may also use surveys to gather information, or you may consider Google Analytics.

A simple survey can help find your reader persona.  Try asking the following:

• Why are you here?
• What are your aims or goals?
• Did you find what you are looking for?

You may have another set of questions that may help define your reader persona’s needs.  Go for it. Innovate.  The goal is to specifically find information to use them.

Know Where They Are

It is also important to understand the context of use.  This means you have to realize the facts surrounding the situation during visits.

Metrics are important to know where these visitors are, and when they visit pages of your website.  It will be very helpful to know what information they read at certain times of the day.  Plus that they use particular devices to reach your website.

Understand Your Business Objective

As said, you do not assume that your readers think the way you think.  You have to understand though that your business has needs.  Understanding them will help in defining your reader persona.  For example, in establishing a goal to understand how the website and its contents will affect the business, you draw a reader persona who has knowledge and understanding of what he/she specifically wants.

Target Your Audience

After creating your reader persona from these specific pieces of information, you can already target your specific audience.

For example, you created a male reader persona for your content writing services who is about 40-50 years old, an owner or a CEO of a small online business, not necessarily a college graduate but reached college, who has interest in technology development and the like, is now challenged about providing exceptional service to his clients, and is very organized and focused.

From this, you can eventually focus on moving forward to target your specific audience.  You may join discussion boards or forums in specific industries that relate to your business.  You may enroll in technology courses, or those relating to e-commerce.  You may able to write naturally about specific topics that small business owners will take part of or be interested in.  You may even consider learning more about soft skills.

There are a lot of things that makes an effective content but creating your reader persona first is always the first step.  Take heed before focusing on how to pen a heading right.