Creating content is great, but, as more than one person has pointed out, it’s all about writing for the correct audience. Since plenty of pieces have focused on identifying your audience (hell I’ve written one or two), today we’re going to focus on why you should identify an audience and not try to write for “everybody”.
So You Can Provide Value
The point of all content, be it on-site, a blog post, a press release, or social media post, is to provide value to your Users. That’s really hard when you don’t know who your audience is.
Mind you, different channels may have different audiences, but only by identifying them can you properly provide the value that you should be and that they so desperately want.
So You Know What to Write
Knowing your audience can greatly influence what you write. Take, for instance, my blog. No, not my agency’s blog, but the one I’ve been writing for about six years as a “hobby” – my wine blog.
Now there are a lot of wine bloggers out there, and we all have our own styles. Some focus on both wine and food, others write heavily about one particular region, and others write about the industry itself – interviews with winemakers, the state of harvests, and trends in the industry; more investigative journalist than critic.
All of these are valid types of blogging, but I’ve stuck to the critic side of things. Not that I haven’t dabbled in other styles, but I’ve pretty much stuck to reviewing wines for the last several years. Why?
Because, thanks to regular reviews of my Analytics, I’ve learned that my readers, my Users, prefer it when I stick to critiquing wine instead of rambling on about the state of the wine industry or posting interviews with winemakers.
So You Can Keep it Concise
When you’re writing for a specific person the words are easy. You can quickly get to the point because you know what they want and, typically, you’re speaking the same language.
When, however, you’re writing for everyone, you have to take time to speak and explain at a level that everybody understands. That takes time (see: lines of text), and suddenly your concise 500 word article has ballooned to 2500 words.
Wrapping Up
There are plenty of ways to identify your audience, and whatever way works best for you is the path you should take. But, under no circumstances should you not find out who your audience is – there’s simply no value to your writers and your company in not identifying your audience, especially since there’s so much value in knowing who exactly it is you’re producing this content for, and whether it’s what they want.