Developing Your Blog – Do You Know Your Readers?

Indra // October 19, 2010 // Social Media // No Comments

Every now and then you need some inspiration, right? I found some at this year’s BlogWorld Expo during Darren Rowse’s presentation – Finding Readers For Your Blog. Rowse is the founder of ProBlogger, and a prolific sharer of how to create an awesome blog.

In an interesting example of the circularity of good ideas, Rowse talked about a technique he had learned from an ad agency that he then applied to his blog. The process is something we have done at Bailey Gardiner for both new business presentations and client brand development, but I don’t think we’ve ever fully done it for the readers of our own blog.

The process is profile development and his approach was an interesting one. Rowse created three different reader profiles for one of the blogs he owns. He wrote each profile in a magazine style that showed as much insight into who this person is as possible. He even found a photo for each profile to help bring it to life.

Some of the things he recommended you think about when developing a profile include:

• Demographics
• Financial Situation
• Age
• Motivations
• Dreams
• How They Use the Web
• Experience Level
• Needs

Once you go through this exercise, it becomes a lot easier to figure out what your content should be. One of the things Rowse highlighted was the different experience levels of his readers. It’s OK to have different posts for people with more or less experience in the topic – writing to the middle isn’t going to lead to a very useful blog for anyone.

I’m looking forward to doing this exercise for Don’t Drink the Koolaid and if you have any insight you’d like to share, please do. After all, it’s you we write for everyday.