Why you need to speak to your ONE ideal reader + WORKBOOK

Focusing on your ‘Why’

 

In terms of careers and hobbies Blogging is quite new. It’s only been around for the last 15 years or so and there are lots of people who still don’t ‘get’ blogging or understand what it is that us bloggers actually do. My mother included!

 

Although this can be frustrating at times, the fact that blogging isn’t really established means to some degree we can use it to create what we want in our lives. It gives us more flexibility and scope. However, in order to use it to its full potential we need to really understand our ‘why’. We need to ask ourselves why we blog and have real clarity in our answer. Otherwise we will never be truly focused enough to reach our full potential.

 

What’s your motivation and what are your objectives for blogging? Why did you start in the first place? What keeps you going when things get rough? What are your underlying passions and aims of your blog?

 

To Read: Blogging gave me something I never had 

 

Then when you have brainstormed this and have clarity, you need to work out who your ideal customer is. Why? Because you’re going to want to write to them specifically.

 

WHAT’S YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER AVATAR?

 

Have you ever read something and felt as if the author was talking directly to you? As if they’re taking the thoughts and feelings right from your head. You felt so connected to what they were saying. This level of connection is achieved by the author/writer knowing exactly who their ideal customer was.

 

Your ideal reader persona/customer avatar is simply a fictitious person who you’ve created to represent your ideal customer/reader. This person is a combination of all of the factors you know about your ideal reader. As bloggers we can try to appeal to everyone, but in reality no message is a good fit for every single reader.

 

Your message might resonate with women more than men, with the older generation’s more than the younger generation and it’s such a mistake to think we can serve all of the people in the same way. It’s simply not possible. The more detailed and specific you can get when creating your ideal customer avatar the more chance you have of creating a message that is truly resonates with the people you’re trying to reach.

 

If you want to join my mailing list and get access to my epic Blogger’s Resource vault of cheatsheets and downloads (INCLUDING MY IDEAL READER WORKBOOK!) as a welcome gift, you can do that here.

What should your ideal customer avatar include?

 

The key to being able to create a really strong message is to have a really detailed customer avatar. This avatar/persona should include every detail you can think of about your ideal reader/customer. It will include demographic and psychographic information.

 

After you’ve created your avatar you will know exactly who you’re trying to attract. What motivates them? What’s important them? How you can best reach them? You might find your ideal avatar sounds a lot like you, potentially at an earlier stage of their lives and that’s fine. Often we gravitate too people that are similar to ourselves.

 

Shall I show you mine?

 

Meet Daisy. Daisy is in her early 30s she lives in Cornwall with her husband Mike and her two young kids Lily who is four and Evie who is two. Daisy has had jobs before in her life that she has enjoyed, even loved, but she has always wanted more. Her family are the most important thing to her and she started her blog by chance just as a creative outlet whilst at home with her young children. Daisy feels she has potential which she’s not sure how to fully utilise and this frustrates her. She wants to make her blog a success, but she worries about finding the balance with her family life, not wanting to miss out on anything involving her girls.

 

Her husband earns good money and the family are financially secure, but Daisy still wants to turn her blog into a business and make it a success. She has a degree in Art Therapy and would love to continue to develop her skills, using them in the her blog and future business. As an organised person and get frustrated that she often doesn’t know where to start or which direction to go in with her blog. She does have the faith though, that her blog will giver her and her family a better life. 

 

She loves getting outdoors (listening to marketing/business podcasts while walking her dogs) and also loves her home comforts. A bath, magazine and an hours peace is her idea of perfection. 

 

 

So, this is a snapshot (not the full avatar) for Daisy, my ideal customer. Can you see how this makes it easy for me to write my messages and content directly to Daisy.  Which means my message will resonate with those people who are like Daisy to greater or lesser extent. My message may not resonate as much with Bob a 55 year old ‘type A’ man who wants to use his online platform to sell in a much harder way than Daisy, but you know what? That’s o.k. too. Not every blogger should/can appeal to every possible reader. Just like not every brand’s message will appeal to every consumer.

 

You can take a deeper dive into this fictious character. What magazine’s do they read? Where do they hang out online? What tv shows do they enjoy? What car do they drive? and so on. The reason? You can never have too much detail in your avatar.

 

We are bombarded with content and sales messages every single day. In order for yours to stand out they must hit home, they will only hit home if they are specific. Part of a general message may appeal to more people but they will never feel as if you are talking to them directly.

 

So when you have brainstormed your ideal reader you will know everything about them and you will therefore know what language to use, how to market to them, that their pain points are, their struggles, which products they will love. You will also know where to focus your paid advertising.

Understand their pain points

 

Pain points can sound a bit odd. However, now you know EXACTLY who you’re talking to, you need to get a full understanding of what your ideal reader is struggling with. What do they need to understand right now? What is their pain point?

 

Most businesses sell products (and even writers write content) to solve a problem their customers/readers have. So part of creating your ideal reader avatar is digging deep enough to understand their emotions, their frustrations and their pain points.

 

When investigating pain points and desire it’s always useful to ask ‘so that’ at the end of each point you come up with. Sometimes the answer people might give is the surface answer and not the real core desire. Asking the question ‘so that’ helps you dig deeper into each aspect and really establish the specific pain point your content should be addressing. For example, if someone said their desire was to lose weight, you would ask ‘so that’? So that they could be more confident – ‘so that’? They can enjoy their family time more. So the core desire of the weight loss is better, more enjoyable family time. So the message might be constructed differently to that for someone who , for example, wanted to lose weight ‘so that’ they looked better in clothes.

 

Defining your customer avatar will make sure you avoid marketing mis-communications, which could lead to no-one feeling compelled to read your post or buy your products.

 

If you can stay focused on your ideal avatar, you will be able to share your content with them in a way which appeals to them and represents the values of your brand.

 

You will have all of this insight because you did the research and you know who you are talking to, what they want, what they NEED and you will know how you can help them.

 

If you want to join my mailing list and get access to my epic Blogger’s Resource vault of cheatsheets and downloads (INCLUDING MY IDEAL READER WORKBOOK!) as a welcome gift, you can do that here.

 

 

How to research ‘pain points’

 

If you already have an audience, maybe an email list, Facebook page or group you could simply ask them what their biggest struggle is at the time. Polls always work well. If not, then you can use the google search bar to delve deeper. Putting in the keyword you are interested in, then looking for the long-tailed versions, which show the questions people want answers to. These are current pain points, which you can then answer in your content (making sure you use the exact keyword phrases in your post for SEO).

 

So I now want you to grab your workbook and create your ideal reader avatar. Go as detailed as you can and create a fully rounded character. It will really help you shape your content and messaging going forward.

 

I’d love to read yours if you create one, please comment and let me see it.

 

If you want to join my mailing list and get access to my epic Blogger’s Resource vault of cheatsheets and downloads (INCLUDING MY IDEAL READER WORKBOOK!) as a welcome gift, you can do that here.

 

Speaking to your ideal reader is one of the most important things you can do to grow your blog. Grab this free workbook to help you figure out who your idea reader is!

 

Comments 10

  1. I love reading your happy list, and now I find out I love your writings actually, either list or ideas sharing. I’m interested in cooking, gardening, and fishing. I’m busy looking for my Siam cat as she is my only pet, Queen of my house. I will try to create my idea reader avatar, hope we can be connected to what we are saying. Have a nice day with your hubby and beautiful daughter:)

  2. Really helpful post to see how much detail you go into. I’ve had a broad idea of mine, but really trying to focus it in (largely for my FB page).

    Do you think you can have 2 different avatars? My main blog is straightforward (it’s basically a bit like me!) but my dance one, my current audience is a mix – the easiest to target is current dancers because I share via FB groups and I know exactly who they are, but to get new readers I would need to also target newbies to dance and try and build up their passion. I guess my avatar is those passionate about modern jive, whatever level, age 28-45, who wants to improve and feel part of the dance community, but who may also want to learn how to move into other dance styles. But to target newbies and those who’ve been dancing a while can be quite different – unless I did posts with a split – stating the key take out for those who’re new to dance take out to ease them in vs the rest of the post for more advanced?

  3. This is so interesting! I sound a lot like your ideal customer which might be why it is so engaging … thank you for sharing this much value! #TheListLinky

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  4. Great post, this is something I’m actually trying to work on at the minute so perfect timing for me. I have a target audience but have been struggling with where to start when it comes to pinning it down to one ideal reader, your snapshot of Daisy has really helped x
    #TheListLinky

  5. As always Aby, a fab post with great tips. This is something I use in my day job, clarifying who it’s for, what problem you are trying to help with really helps make things clearer. #thelistlinky

  6. Fab post Aby, Daisy is very much the position I am in – minus the dogs and living in Cornwall 🙂 I need to look at doing this, this has really helped to see what your snapshot is x #TheListLinky

  7. I’ve completely changed my blogging genre (after a break) from one with a very clearly defined ideal reader (vintage with a certain decade and budget as a focus) to a local parenting focus which is much wider. This will be a really useful exercise to help with this!

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