Last Updated on January 13, 2024
What is an Example of a Target Audience?
Understanding Your Target Audience
What are the 5 Different Types of Content?
How Do You Create Content for a Target Audience?
Why are Search Engines and Social Media Platforms Also a Target Audience?
People say “Content is King” all the time. What do they mean? Content rules, probably. Without content, there is only emptiness. “Good Content is King” is probably a better motto. Anyone can fill a blog post or a video with twaddle. High-quality content is a bigger investment, but it also leads to a higher ROI.
Because it:
- + Answers “why” and provides contextual information.
- + Explains how to solve problems and achieve goals
- + Includes examples that bring ideas to life
- + Has Unique insights that make a difference
However, even the best content in the world is useless if no one sees or hears it. If we are to generate good content so that we can get seen and heard, we need an audience.
What is an Example of a Target Audience?
We’re all a target audience for something. We’re all a “Buyer Persona” in someone’s marketing plan.
A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional individual that helps us structure our customer communications. Personas represent our ideal customers and prospects. Ideally, buyer personas are based on data about our existing customers which makes them ideal First-Party Data for Lead Generation campaigns.
These personas should be treated by us like real people.
- + Who are they?
- + What do they want?
- + Why do they want it?
- + How do we reach them?
Understanding Your Target Audience
To win over potential customers, you need to figure out how to make the most of the moments they make.
- + What are the touchpoints with your customers?
- + How can you capture common online buying processes?
- + How do you identify which touchpoints contribute to the realization of business goals?
What are the 5 Different Types of Content?
Here people will have different opinions. Are there five types, or 105? Even Google isn’t too sure. It doesn’t matter.
What sort of content do you and your customers prefer? Blog posts? Videos? Print? Infographics? Podcasts? Is the content going to be in a language other than English?
Before you create content you need to ask yourself who it is for, and importantly:
- + what purpose does it have?
- + how is it structured?
- + what will its acceptance be?
A TikTok video is very different from a magazine. Digital versus Print. Both are content, however, the similarities probably end there.
Go from a Boring Phone Call to an Amazing eBook in 5 Easy Steps
You can often create new content simply by repurposing your existing content.
How Do You Create Content for a Target Audience?
Before you create any content, take a step back and ask yourself:
- + What is your goal?
- + Who do you want to reach? Why?
- + How will you measure your success? (KPIs)
To help you decide if your content is the right one for your audience, answer the following questions:
- + Is my target audience here – able to access my content?
- + If so-how do they use this medium – how will they use my content?
- + Can I use this medium or content to achieve my goals?
Why are Search Engines and Social Media Platforms Also a Target Audience?
During my latest SEO class, we discussed Content Marketing and content creation. Websites are all about words. So is Search Engine Optimisation. You need words to be found, and you need words to keep people on your website and sharing your content on social media.
Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, Ecosia, Yahoo and co are an Audience
We spend a huge amount of time creating content for people. In these days of Digital Transformation, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence, we shouldn’t forget the needs of the platforms as content consumers.
It is old news that Google enjoys a large share of our attention in the form of content marketing tools, and time spent on the Google search engine. 65% of our searches go no further than Google. (searchengineland.com)
SEO gold is when our snippet appears in “People Also Asked” or the Featured Snippet in position 0. We may not get the click, but we are happy as clams.
Put this into context, and compare SERPs with social media posts.
The CTR rate of social media posts is about 3%. The CTR rate of SERPs is 35%.
Social Media is an Audience
We know that Instagram posts tagged #LinkinBio or #LinkinProfile get fewer views because they are shown less in the algorithm. The same goes for posts with links away from Twitter and Facebook.
Why is that? Well, these platforms have learned from Google. They want us to spend more time there, and not click away. So they reward our posts with more impressions if we keep our content platform focused.
Put this into context again, and compare SERPs with social media.
The CTR rate of social media posts is about 3%. The CTR rate of SERPs is 35%.
Tweet without a link (left 74 views) versus with a link (right 45 views).
Tweet without a link (top 136 views) and with a link – even with Brian Dean! (bottom 86 views)
I repeated this experiment in January 2023. The results were even clearer. Using the same image, and posting within a few minutes of each other. Within 48 hours, the tweet with no external link (right) was viewed eight times more often than the tweet with an external link (left).
The result is the same in German too. Probably in any language. Here in January 2024 I made the same test and found the same result. Posts with external links get shown less often.
At the time of posting, the tweet with no external link had been shown 48 times over a period of only 4 hours.
At the time of posting, the tweet with an external link had only been shown 36 times over a period of 28 hours.
Everyone Loves Content
Even machines. Our new reality: Machines are learning to read.
We should create content for people, and content for machines. The platforms that feature our content – and for free no less – are probably one of our most important audiences.
More impressions mean that we have the benefit of more eyes, which is good for our SEO and our Content Marketing – and as they say “The Internet is free, but it’s not for nothing”.
Heads Up!
A few days after writing this post, I saw a tweet from my good friend Rob Cairns about a book on exactly this topic by Maddy Osman! So I’m not imagining crazy SEO advice.
Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content Style can be found on Amazon and on Maddy’s website.
With many thanks for the image to https://unsplash.com/@rocknrollmonkey