Optimizing Your Content for Your Target Audience
As you get more and more immersed in writing and publishing content for business, you need to take your target audience into consideration is a big way. It isn’t enough to just write. You need to target your audience.
Your marketing plan
When you write your marketing plan at the very beginning of your social media marketing strategy implementation, your target audience will probably be mentioned. However, when you are working with social media, your target audience is not always a static entity. In other words, you may have identified a target audience initially but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will end up targeting the same audience over time. So, how do you identify the appropriate target audience for your business and how do you customize your content for those audiences?
- For your niche: One of the main focuses of your content is to gear it to your niche or industry. You can no longer rely on print media to share valuable and informative information in the broad and comprehensive way that it was once communicated but this has opened the door to a tremendous opportunity online. You can now position yourself online as a subject matter expert (SME) so that you can build credibility and the relationships that you form will prove to be valuable over time.
- For your clients and prospects: As is always the case, when you provide content for your customers and prospective customers to read, your content is offering them a solution to their problems and it is answering their questions easily and in a precise manner. That content is generally in the form of a blog post, which has effective and appropriate keywords and key phrases, can be found easily by your audience and is intuitive when it comes to giving them what they need and want.
- For your clients to make use of: Another excellent approach when it comes to your content is to offer content that is easy for your clients to use. You should think about the content as a type of sales tool. Your ultimate goal is to sell your products and/or services and in this case, you are not selling directly. Instead, you are getting your clients to sell for you. If your clients are loyal to you and your business, they won’t have any problem telling other people about your offerings. You will never run the risk that your clients are not being genuine when they speak about your offerings because they truly believe in what you are selling. Sincerity is an extremely powerful magnet when it comes to buying.
- For your consumers: As one business to another, you can gear your content to your consumers. Sharing content is an excellent way to reach them like you have never been able to reach them before. The messages in your content need to be very precise and it is of vital importance that you as the business owner build a strong relationship with them directly. No middle people are required. Even if your consumers are already loyal to your brand, you should make the effort to take the deeper dive into having a human relationship with them. It will enhance the entire business experience.
Conclusion
There are many different ways to target your content to your target audience. As is and will always be the case, you main objective is to fulfill the needs of others. It is of little importance how wonderful you and your offerings are if you are not able to solve the problems of your clients and prospects. Always remember to keep WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) at the forefront of your mind. If you do that, they will want to be involved with you and your business and they will eventually buy what you are selling. If, on the other hand, you let the needs of your clients and prospects go by the wayside, you will be holding yourself and your business back tremendously. If, on the other hand, you provide the right audience with the right content, they will want to continue to interact with you and will gladly accept what you are offering.
We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.
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Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Biotech & Pharma Professionals Network
Discussion: Optimizing Your Content for Your Target Audience
I couldn't agree more, with BI and Document Management Systems combined to give total control of message and company policy, a business entity can protect its Brand and go forward with agreed agendas.
You have to target your audience to get the best results from your marketing, but it is crucial to control the message and have management oversight.
Posted by Jonathan Goodman
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Publishing and editing professionals
Discussion: Optimizing Your Content for Your Target Audience
I have an example of audience analysis to share from a venue you don't normally get to write for or even see.
When I was in Texas last month for SxSW, I got a chance to go on a sidetrip to Houston. I got to listen to the Discovery shuttle astronauts talking, meet them, and even get autographs and photos, after which, my friend and I were given a private 3-hour tour of the Johnson Space Center. We got to see the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and sit in the Space Shuttle Training Simulator and see the real mission control centers (there are three different ones).
One of the things that I got photos of is pictures of some of the procedure books for the shuttle. If you go here on my Flickr account, you'll see the first of about a dozen photos showing the procedure books and how they're used.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnhedtke/5518240238/in/set-72157626245194568/
As you scroll through these pix, what I'd like you to notice in particular is the formatting and layout of these. The books are in a large, san-serif font on card stock. The binding is open rings, so they'll lay flat without any argument. Remember that 95% of the time, these are going to be in zero-G, so any slight tendency of a book to snap shut (from a perfectbinding that would normally be fighting against gravity) would cause the book to close. The page layout is very loose and open, and could be written on with a pencil easily. The blue tape is velcro (NASA just lives for velcro!). As you can see in some of the later pix of us inside the shuttle simulator, the books are velcroed in place everywhere so they can be seen easily.
You probably won't ever have to write for a zero-G environment, but this is an excellent example of "form follows function" and tailoring the delivery medium to your audience's requirements.
Posted by John Hedtke
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Web Developer & Graphic Designer
Discussion: Optimizing Your Content for Your Target Audience
Your idea sounds great, I like your compukol connections and I learned something from that alredy.
Posted by Paul Brinas
Carolyn,
This is true. However, from my experience, the importance of targeted exposition (academic or business advertising copy) isn't emphasized in some college or career/technical schools. Often, adults don't learn the importance of focused, audience-centered writing until after they enter the working world. In high school and freshmen composition classes, students are often asked for personal reflections or narratives, and objective research from time to time, and rarely reminded that they should be cognizant of making their work relevant to their readers. As adults in the business world, particularly as freelancers, they learn this the hard way when their efforts are unsuccessful.
Keep writing ! Even we professional writers can benefit from reminders to keep our clients' needs at the forefront, and our egos secondary.
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Creative Designers and Writers
Discussion: Optimizing Your Content for Your Target Audience
Mam, Suppose my audience is the college going student. What do i do to attract his attention towards something that is related to literary writing when he is not too much intersted in it but would not mind participating. i am creating such a website. How do i involve maximum number of students in this. please suggest if you have some idea.
Posted by Ujjawal Kumar
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Creative Designers and Writers
Discussion: Optimizing Your Content for Your Target Audience
Ujjawal,
I suggest you lead a discussion or create a survey for your college students to find out what they ARE interested in. There are free online survey creation sources (such as surveymonkey.com) that you can use to post surveys on your website. Or depending on your institutional delivery system (such as BlackBoard), you can ceate surveys easily and often.
Then use student feedback to seek out literature that would prove relevant to them. If they're interested, they'll be happy to read the materials you select and write about them, especially if you offer assignments wherein they offer personal opinions before the heavier, academic writing. To appease those who aren't interested in your first or second literature choice, post Announcements to the entire class that you appreciate everyone's feedback, and you've selected several works that will appeal to everyone eventually, and ask everyone to be patient — sooner or later they'll enjoy the literary selection you assign. In this way, everyone feels better about the process and the fact that you care enough to go through so much trouble to help them learn. It's a win-win situation. This technique has proved fruitful for my students and myself; the extra work on my part is worth it since students learn and meet more course objectives than if I had been less flexible with assignments.
Posted by Catherine Scudder Wolf
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Facebook & Twitter For Business
Discussion: Optimizing Your Content for Your Target Audience
I would agree. I have written a book on it called Developing A Cash Cow Marketing Plan.
Your marketing strategies behave like the dairy herds. They need to be fed, and cared for. When they are well fed and cared for, they produce results. The performance results vary based on the cow, its age, and its breeding. Older cows produce lower results utilizing the same resources, and the longer they are left consuming those resources, the more difficult it becomes to maximize the overall results of the herd. Poorly performing cows increase overall expense and reduce your return on investment, often creating unnoticed increased liabilities. Maximum results come from investing in and maximizing only the most productive members of the herd, and cutting potential losses early. As the potential for long-term productivity decreases, liability increases the longer you invest and the higher the overall opportunity cost of having it around. The following text will help you learn to inspect the herd, to identify the cash cows, and to cull the herd, thus allowing the Cash Cows to maximize the profit potential of that herd.
Posted by George Lambert
Awesome! Its actually remarkable article, I have got much clear
idea about from this piece of writing.