Finding your Ideal Reader ---DON'T SKIP THIS!
Oh, my goodness, I cannot even stress this enough... this is a subject I wish I had learned early in my blog and would’ve saved me so much trouble and so many years of wasted time and energy! If I had taken the time to do this stuff properly my blog would have had a far more successful few years!
What do I wish I had known?
Who my ideal reader was.
You need to know who you’re talking to with your blog... who your reader is. Some people call this an avatar which is simply a fancy word for a very specific person that you think of whenever you’re creating content and recipes and even talking on social media. We’re talking super specific! Many, many times people are going to have a friend or an acquaintance that they have in mind that they are creating their material for.
You don’t want to be broad with your blog audience, you don’t want to be like "a 25 to the 30-year-old mom of two kids from the Midwest". That’s way too broad!
You need to know things about your ideal reader like:
- where they are shopping,
- when are they shopping,
- how old are their kids,
- are they married,
- what do they do in their free time,
- do they eat healthy,
- where do they shop for groceries,
- how often are they sick,
- do they have best friends,
- how many best friends,
- what do they do when they have free time,
- are they online shoppers
All of these specific questions are very, very important and will help you to understand the needs and the wants of your reader. Then you will be able to better serve them and, as a result, have a more successful blog with a more monetized blog. <-- which is ultimately the goal!
An elevator pitch is as much for you as your reader!
Another must-do is the elevator pitch for helping develop your audience and your relationship with them. An elevator pitch is kind of a weird phrase and it sounds kind of corny and strange. But it’s simply a description for you to very quickly and easily explain what it is that you do.
Sometimes I think an elevator pitch is better for us as the creators of the blog versus the people we’re talking to because often we don’t even know how to hone in on what we want to do. We, as creatives, want to do everything! We often lack focus and direction and have difficulty getting specific. You need to!
When we have to work through creating a few simple sentences to describe what we do to another person, it really can help us hone in on what our purpose is going to be and who it's going to be for.
The ideal elevator pitch: You really want to be able to describe in a couple sentences who your blog is for, what you’re giving them, and what problem you’re solving for them. When you can do that and you can do it in only a couple of sentences, you’re going to know that you’re on the right track for developing your blog into a business with focus and direction. You are going to be able to use that elevator pitch to help you filter the decisions that you make moving forward.
An example:
"This blog is for stay at home moms that feel overwhelmed by the morning rush. We are giving them resources to help them get out of the door faster because we know that happier mornings makes for a happier family".
NellieBellie: "Resources and recipes to bring the family together for home-cooked meals. Because we believe nothing beats a home-cooked meal for connecting families together."
Guys, take the time to figure out your audience and elevator pitch. This will help give you focus with your content and business decisions, as well as create "super fan" readers that will yell about you and your blog from the mountaintops.
