Remember the classic children’s book by P.D. Eastman where the baby bird left the nest, searching for his mother? The hatchling wandered from dog to boat to car to power shovel asking, “Are you my mother?” This was an ineffective and frightening way to conduct his search. (Don’t worry — the book has a happy ending!)

As bloggers, we need to know who our target audience is, where they are, what they need, and how we can help them, but searching for them in the are-you-my-mother manner can become as ineffective and frightening as the little bird’s adventure.

Today’s Wednesday is Friends Day post will share tips on how to find your audience, create an audience profile, discover their needs, and determine what you can do to help them.

Steps to finding your target audience:

If you haven’t already done so, determine your blog’s topic:

• Make a list of everything you have the talent, experience, and desire to blog about. If you’re like most people, you will have a long list.
• Select the top three things on your list — the items you have the most experience, talent, and desire to blog about.
• If you’re hoping to blog for profit, ask yourself if people spend money to learn about these things.
• If you’re an author, ask yourself what it is you’re really “selling.” (Hint: It’s not just books.) For example, if you write romance novels, your target audience is likely looking for the fulfillment that comes from being in a close relationship. A good blog topic for you might be ways to keep your relationship fresh and exciting. Once you’ve positioned yourself as an authority in that topic — in other words, once you’ve helped your audience solve their problem through your blog — your books will sell naturally because your audience likes and trusts you.
• If one item of your top three stands out to you, great! That is your blog’s topic. If not, complete the remaining steps for all three items.

Find out who’s interested in your blog’s topic:

• Conduct a Google search. Instead of typing in one keyword, like “relationships,” try forming questions your audience might ask, such as, “How can I get the romance back in my marriage?”, etc. Who is asking these questions? Where are they asking them? (Hint: typing the question without quotes will get you more results to look through. Be creative in your Google searching. There are a variety of ways to use Google search.
• Search for your topic’s keywords and phrases on social sites. Try search.twitter.com or facebook.com/search. Search Facebook groups. If people are grouping together on a social site to discuss your proposed topic, there’s a good chance you’ll have a receptive audience. Once you’ve made your final topic choice, join groups associated with the topic. For example, if you’re blogging about dog health, join some dog lover groups. And participate.
• Find blogs and other sites about your topic. Alltop is a great resource for researching what people are saying/thinking/blogging about a specific topic. Google blog search is another great place to look (blogsearch.google.com). Once you’ve found some other blogs about your topic, check to see if they have forums. Lurk in the forums and see what questions your future audience is asking. (Take notes.)
• If you do these exercises for your top 1-3 blog topics, you should be able to determine which topic to focus your blog on, and therefore, discover who exactly you’re writing to.

Develop a profile of your typical target audience member:

• What age group is interested in your topic?
• Are they male or female?
• What occupation do they work at?
• Where do they live?
• What is their income level?
• Are they married? With children?
• What are their defining traits?
• What are their biggest desires? (Examples: Wanting to retire, wanting to infuse romance into a stale relationship, wanting to get accepted into an exclusive university, etc.)
• What obstacles do they face? (Examples: For the person who wants to retire — money, for the stale relationship member — perhaps she feels too busy or tired to work on her marriage, for the future college student — maybe he doesn’t qualify for enough scholarship money to fund the expensive school.
• What specific steps could be taken to get them from where they are now to where they want to be? List these steps, one at a time.

The most important question: How can you help them?

• What is the very first obstacle blocking your audience member from his or her goal? Perhaps for the harried housewife, it is a lack of time to focus on her marriage. If you’ve done thorough research, you may know exactly what she spends most of her time on, if not, you may need to go back through the previous steps to learn.
• What specific steps can be taken to overcome that obstacle? Can her kids pitch in more? Can she afford to outsource tasks, such as housecleaning and other chores? Could she delegate more at work? Can she plan a weekend getaway with her husband?
• You probably figured it out already, but those obstacle-overcomers are the makings of individual blog posts to help your target audience member reach her goal.

If you’re goal is to create a product to sell . . .

• Remember — desperation is a key factor in sales, especially instant downloadable information products, such as eBooks. If you can provide a specific solution to a pressing problem to an audience you’ve developed a relationship with, your sales conversion rate will be high. For example — an eBook on “How to Reconcile after a Big Fight,” could be helpful for the one who wants to help her marriage. It is an instantly accessible solution to an immediate problem.

The point isn’t to blog with the intent of making money, but with the intent of helping your audience solve their problems. If you blog with the sole purpose of making a profit, your audience, which is comprised of real people, will see through that quickly, and your blogging days will be short-lived. But if you blog with the hope of helping, then yes, you can reap some benefits for your efforts along the way.

Until next time,

Happy blogging!

In ancient Rome, the Forum was the place to connect with others in the community. It served as the center of commerce as well as the political hub. The Forum was where the town gathered.

The modern blogging community isn’t much different. Forums are one of the best places to connect with your target audience. Those who frequent forums tend to be more passionate about their interest in a blog’s topic than those who simply stop by and read a post from time to time.

Here are 10 ways forum participation can help bloggers:

1. Targeted Traffic – As I just mentioned, those who are active in the forum are actively seeking information about the niche they’re involved with.
2. Increase Backlinks – Include your blog’s URL in your profile signature to not only let forum members know your blog’s address, but to increase relevant backlinks to your blog. This helps with Search Engine Optimization.
3. Build Niche Relationships – The more you participate in the forum alongside your niche’s community members, the more they’ll get to know you and the more likely they’ll be to visit your blog.
4. Research – Forums are some of the best places to find “insider information” about your blog’s topic.
5. Get Answers – Forum participants are typically very knowledgeable and are generous with their information to those who are respectful and who abide by the forum’s policies and rules.
6. Promote Goodwill – You can give back to your niche’s community by helping newcomers who come to forums to find information.
7. Networking — As your relationship with other bloggers in your niche develops, you can find people to contribute as guests on your blog, request (or receive) guest post invites, and even find bloggers to partner with in joint ventures and affiliate marketing.
8. Display Expertise – Answering questions clearly and concisely will promote your expertise within your blog’s niche.
9. Strengthen Brand – Participation in niche-related forums will strengthen your professional brand because you’ll be learning, sharing, networking, and connecting with others in your niche’s community.
10. Cost Effective – You can quickly and easily add a forum to your blog for free by uploading the Simple:Press Forum plugin to your site.

What has your experience with forums as a site owner and/or a participant? Share your comments and questions in the comments area.

Until next time,

Happy Blogging!

I was blessed to be born into a family of book lovers. “Books are our friends,” I was taught. And libraries and schools across the country are celebrating the love of books this week through the Read Across America program, initiated in honor of one of the best-loved authors who ever put pen to paper, Dr. Seuss.

On this Wednesday is Friends Day, let’s look at six lessons we bloggers can learn from our friend, Dr. Seuss:

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

Theodore Seuss Geisel took on the pen name after he was fired as editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth College humor magazine, The Jack-O-Lantern, for violating national prohibition laws. He converted this “can’t” situation into a “can” by brainstorming a way to solve his dilemma.

When things don’t go as we planned or when a project we’ve worked hard on is suddenly jerked out from under us, how do we react? It’s hard to smile because it happened and let it go, but that’s a motto we can all apply to not just our writing, but our lives.

“Kid, you’ll move mountains!  Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!”

Another obstacle he turned to opportunity was the rejection of his manuscripts for children’s books. And To Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street was rejected over two dozen times. Dr. Seuss spread his never-give-up attitude through the many notable quotes sprinkled throughout his works.

What’s holding you back in your blogging? Push that mountain out of your way and get on your way!

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”

(Excerpt from Wikipedia): “In May 1954, Life magazine published a report on illiteracy among school children, which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. Accordingly, William Ellsworth Spaulding, a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin who later became its Chairman, compiled a list of 348 words he felt were important for first-graders to recognize and asked Geisel to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using only those words. Spaulding challenged Geisel to ‘bring back a book children can’t put down.’ Nine months later, Geisel, using 236 of the words given to him, completed The Cat in the Hat.”

Uh-oh. Readability is something most writers struggle with. No wonder The Cat in the Hat is the poster child for children’s literature. It was created specifically to entice young readers to enjoy reading. Use simple words and use them well. Wow — I have a lot to learn from Dr. Seuss!

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.”

Dr. Seuss wrote about many issues in his books, but he once stated he never began his children’s books with a moral. “Kids can see a moral coming a mile off,” he said. But those who read his writings can see him encouraging young readers to think for themselves and not get caught following the status quo. (Read The Sneetches and If I Ran the Zoo.)

“Today you are You, that is truer than true.  There is no one alive who is Youer than You”

It’s easy to recognize a Dr. Seuss book. He had a distinctive voice. Some writers spin their wheels attempting to mimic the voice and style of other writers, yet when a group of blog readers was polled, the number one reason they gave for returning to their favorite blogs was this: They liked the blogger’s personality.

There’s no one youer than you. Be yourself.

“And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed.

No matter what your personal goal in blogging is, the only thing that can prevent your success is quitting. That one and one-quarter percent risk margin of failure only comes if you quit. So, keep on blogging, and yes, you will succeed!

Until next time,

Happy blogging!