How to Find Your Target Audience

Hey you!

Yes, you there.

Are you a new writer too?

Well, here are some writing hacks which can help you find your target audience!

Yes, yes, they work for fiction and content.

What are they?

Allons-y!

Create a Persona

Usually when we start writing, especially if it’s fiction, we have an idea of who we are writing for. Is this for the Divergent girlies? Perhaps, it is a Pacific Rim meets Iron Widow style fantasy? Is it a Dwalin and Nori aka The Hobbit fanon culture inspired original work that takes into account desi!culture and has a murder mystery going like my best friend’s upcoming novel Hear Ye? Or are you trying to go the route most fantasy-romance authors do and try to insert a love story in medieval Europe with dwarves and elves? Maybe there’s an assassin. Naturally, he’s fae. And tall and dark and handsome with a smolder. Of course, he’s morally grey and would burn the world for her.

Oops, wrong blog. I have been watching too much of the romance genres.

Back to the point, dearie.

When writing fiction, by using genre and referencing popular media that we are drawing inspiration from or wish to pay homage to, we can create what our ideal reader looks like. Aka the person you are writing for.

Well, the same can apply to content.

I mean, depending on the form, you know whether it is a blog reader you are writing for or someone who lives quippy short content. Then you can further look at who reads the content in your niche the most or say, you are like me and want to make sustainability popular. In such a case, you can look at what is popular and what people are into it, and add a sustainability element to it.

Analytic tools, such as YouTube studio, also help, as they give you demographics of where your current audience is from and then you can compare them with your “persona” to see if you are reaching the folks you want to reach.

And if you are marketing a product, then you can see who it will help, who the packaging might appeal to, what age group and geographic regions is it viable for, and the price point, to know whose problems you will be solving. That?

That is your character/reader persona.

But you can also take another route- which is often what I do.

Decide On a Friend/Loved One You are Creating For

While you can also create for your fans or for yourself, aka making the kind of content or fictional worlds that appeal to you, you can always pick one person and decide you wish to cater to them and those who are like them.

For me, this approach, not only gives me a sounding board, it also acts as a well of questions, which I can answer. I know who I am helping and how.

And it doesn’t need to be limited to one person, you can always pick a group of people to help or entertain as well.

These were my two hacks on how to decide your ideal reader. You can always create your content or story first and then figure out based on language and subject matter who it is suited for. After all, we are very unlikely to give something with extremely dark themes to a pre-teen or a story where most characters are in their 40s. Again, it can be done, I read Lord of the Rings when I was sixteen, despite most characters being waaay older and Percy Jackson eventually strayed into some dark themes of trauma and more, but there is a reason certain subject matters are outlawed for younger audiences.

Last, you can always pick creators and writers who write like you or whose work you wish to study and see who is their audience, as I have already mentioned.

This is by no means an exhaustive list on character personas, but more like the processes I use when writing or shooting to decide what I am going to do. Sometimes, honestly, I simply go off a vibe or song or idea, I wish to create on and that’s it. Other times, it’s what has been working best. And yet other times, it is what I feel is important to be said.

But if you wish to cater to an “ideal audience”, these were my hacks for you.

See you later, trooper! Let me know in the comments what you think of my methods, will ya?

Author’s Note: Tried a new style because I am too overwhelmed and hyper to sit for long- there’s something really important coming up but I also can’t not write and I am seriously digging this style. As always, my thanks for being here, and if you wish to support, a like, a comment, a share, or paying what you will, goes a long way!