There are many ways you can create high-quality content for your audience.
Having a deep understanding of your audience is the key to be able to create content that appeals to their audiences and meets their needs is the key to building trust with your readers.
In this article, I’ll outline some of the best ways to learn about your audience and write content that they want.
But first,
What is audience research?
Audience research is the activity of gathering information about your audience members to help you understand what they’re looking for, how to reach them, and how to deliver your message best. It includes researching:
– your target market
– what questions they’re asking that are not being answered elsewhere
– what content gaps exist in the market that has not yet been filled
– and any other data that will inform your content approach.
Audience research is the foundation for creating content. The added value of this research is that it will give you a window into your audience’s needs and what you can and should be doing to address them. It will also define the direction, tone, and style of your content.
Why researching your audience?
You may be wondering, why research your audience first? Well, because to produce compelling and valuable content for others, you need a deep understanding of
– who are they?
– what do they think?
– what do they care about?
– how can you help them?
Without knowing what your audience is searching online, you’re flying blind, and your content is not going to be on the first page.
What is your audience searching online? (i.e., how?)
Search engine optimization or SEO is a big deal for businesses and content creators, and knowing what your audience is searching online is paramount to success.
In order to find your audience, you need to know:
What are the phrases and terms your audience searching online?
Understanding the phrases and terms your audience is searching online is vital to know what they want.
What websites are they visiting?
What do you see on the Google search results? Websites! Or, in particular, pages or links to blog posts and articles that rank on the first page of Google.
They are visiting websites where a lot of people share information about particular topics or industries. This is how you find out what websites they’re seeing.
Is there competition?
How can you differentiate your content from your competitors? How can your content help your audience in a meaningful way and helps them?
How can you target your content to them? It is crucial that your content is not just being similar to others. Establish your own identity and how your audience will be most interested in you.
Your niche?
It’s crucial to figure out what group you’re catering to. For example, if your service or product is geared towards a startup’s group, then you’ll want to focus on that audience.
Sites to research your audience
Answering the questions above will help you define what to talk about when creating content. Luckily, there are several ways that you can use to find this information.
Search on search engines
When you type in a keyword, the autocompleted words are usually related to what your audience is potentially searching for.
For example, if you type in “how to make bread,” Google will probably autocomplete it to “how to make bread on a budget” or “how to make bread with flour.”
Prominent search engines on the web include Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex.
Quora
If you haven’t used Quora yet, you may not have realized how useful it is for researching others’ opinions about a topic. If you are new to Quora, take a minute to explore the questions and answers posted there.
For instance, if you are writing an article about the steps involved in creating content, you might do some quick research on Quora to see what other people have asked and written about the topic.
You can also use Reddit to see what people are asking, and it’s typically done through relevant subreddits.
There are subreddits for almost everything, and it is pretty easy to search and find a subreddit to answer questions on a topic. You can tag your post with a flair (if the particular subreddit makes it available) to help better people find it, and it’s pretty easy to reply to the questions.
Pinterest is an excellent tool for finding ideas that you can use for your content. Not only can you look through the attractive visual pins, but you can also see what keywords people are searching on Pinterest.
Another great tip: If you find an interesting pin, you can quickly add it to your board so that you can use the pin ideas as inspirations for your subsequent content write-up.
Google Trends
You may want to check if your topic is trending on Google. To do so, go to trends.google.com and type the phrase or word you would like to check. Google Trends will show you a trend graph that shows the highest and lowest peaks of searches for that keyword over time. Plus, you can see if your topic is in the upward trend or vice versa.
It will also show the list of trending topics and search That can help point in the right direction when it comes to your posts.
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All in all, it’s important to find out who your audience is and understand what they want. Try to understand your audience better and create content to address their pain points from there.
