All of your efforts come down to sending the right message to the right audience. If you don’t know what a target audience is and how to find it then this post is for you. 

If you want your blog posts to be read and shared then you have to write them for a specific group of people. 

This group of people has similar interests and they like reading your blog posts. 

But if you write for everybody then no one would engage with your content.

For bloggers, finding the right target audience is a bit of a struggle. And I made a beginner blogger mistake of believing that my target audience is people like me. 

But we learn from our mistakes. So did I. 

After a lot of research and analysis, I prepared a target audience persona and called it my ideal reader. 

You will also get the same target audience template to create your reader profile. Keep reading.

By the time you are done reading this post, you would know what the target audience means and how to find it online. 

If you are super new to blogging make sure you read the fourth section. 

SAVE THIS PIN PLEASE. 

This post may contain some affiliate links that is I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you that I would use to maintain this blog. Thanks for understanding.

What Is A Target Audience? 

According to the balance smb the target audience is defined as,

“A target audience is a group of people identified as being likely customers of a business.”

Meaning, the target audience is an ideal prospect who would be interested in your products. 

There are categories of target audiences based on the type of marketing you do. 

For example, if you sell products then you have to find your target customers. 

If you are a blogger then you need a target reader. 

In general, every website owner has to produce content to reach his target audience. 

Why Is Target Audience Important? 

Google prioritized the websites that publish content for their readers and not for search engines. Your job, as a blogger, is to publish content that will solve your readers’ problems. 

For that, you need to know who your reader is. 

That’s one reason. 

Defining a target audience for digital marketing is very important. It is more so because your blog is online and you may or may not know the people who interact with your content. 

But when you know your target audience demographics you would know exactly who are you writing for by including their personality traits. 

So they feel connected and engage with your blog posts. 

That’s two.

But there are many awesome benefits of defining a target audience. 

Benefits Of Having A Target Audience

• When you write targeted content you will get more shares and hence more blog traffic. 
• You would understand what ways of monetization are working on your audience. 
• An ideal reader profile will also help implement affiliate marketing effectively. You would know what products they want. 
• You can use the same persona to write targeted emails. This will help you have an engaging email list 

There are many benefits of having a target audience so where do you find your target audience? 

Well, there are two ways. The first is to understand who your target audience is using the various ways. 

The second is to build a target audience by getting people to your blog. 

Let’s discuss each one of them.

How Do You Identify Your Target Audience? 

These methods are used to know your target audience that is already reading your content. 

1- Create Target Audience Profiles

You will have to use this sheet twice. The first is now. 

Download this free target audience persona worksheet and fill out the details. 

Remember why you started this blog and for whom. Fill in whatever you think your target audience is. 

For example, when I started finding my target audience I came up with a persona of beginner bloggers who are looking to learn ways to improve their blogs. 

Then I filled out the details. 

You should do it the same way. 

The second time you will use this sheet is when you have gone through the next steps. 

Keep a copy for that. 

2- Use Google Analytics

If you don’t know it yet, your Google Analytics account is a great source to find out exactly who is reading your blog. 

So how to find out who your target audience is using Google Analytics? 

You can find this data on your Google Analytics dashboard. Choose the Audience option on the sidebar.

You can further explore the options to find out the demographics of the people who are coming to your site. 

Such as age, gender, interests, and more. 

For example, I learned from my analytics report that the majority of people who visit my blog are aged between 18 to 29. 

These important metrics will help you create content that is relatable to their problems. 

For example, when you know that your audience is young so they must go to their offices or schools and they don’t have a lot of free time. 

For this target audience, productivity hacks, time-saving tricks, and more are perfect examples of blog post ideas. 

3- Analyse Your Email Subscribers

Do you have an email list? If not then make sure you start one.

It is time to check your email subscribers. For this, you can send a survey or a poll to them and ask what they like more. 

This will give you an idea of what your target audience is interested in. 

You can also get an idea from the freebie they took when they joined your list. 

For example, if a subscriber joined your list after taking a free breakfast recipes ebook then you know for sure that he is interested in breakfast recipes. 

So your target audience is someone interested in breakfast recipes. 

Related – 13 Free Ways To Grow Your Email List

When the email list is done the next place is your social media. But how to find a target audience on social media?

4- Twitter Analytics

Twitter is an awesome platform where you can find your target audience. 

Twitter is also the first platform that I’ve been able to grow. So if you are considering using Twitter for your blog promotion then you should. 

You can add me as your friend here. But how to find the target audience on Twitter? 

There are many ways. 

Having a Twitter account gives you access to the Twitter analytics dashboard. 

It is where you can access crucial information. When you install the Twitter tag on your website it will give you a report on who is interacting with your content. 

But other than that, when you add a specific Twitter bio then the people who follow you will be those who are interested in your content. 

Then you can analyze your followers’ profiles to get an idea.

I also get a good amount of traffic from Twitter. It is one of the easiest platforms. 

5- Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest is such a great platform to be on. 

Many bloggers have grown their blog traffic using Pinterest marketing only.

If you want to learn how to get more traffic from Pinterest then check out Carly’s signature course Pinteresting Strategies.

But how do you find your target audience on Pinterest? By using Pinterest Analytics. 

After you have created a Pinterest business account you get access to Pinterest Analytics. 

From there you can go to the Audience insights option and get the full report. 

Some important things you can find on Pinterest are

• Country – which country has maximum visitors. 
• What content do they like? 
• Device type – what device they are using? 
• Age group – what is the common age of maximum visitors? 
• Gender – whether women or men are interacting with your content?

You can then note it down to get a general analysis of people who are interacting with your content on Pinterest. 

6- Facebook Groups 

Do you know there are more than 2 billion people monthly using Facebook? Isn’t Facebook a great place to find a target audience? 

But how to find your target audience on Facebook? 

By joining relevant boards that are in your niche. The members of these groups are already interested in the type of content you write. 

All you have to do is to participate in conversations and ask them what they would be interested in learning about. 

7- LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn is another great place to find your target audience. 

Joining LinkedIn groups is a great way to engage with people there. 

However, LinkedIn is a platform where professionals interact so if your niche is not that professionally oriented then you might not get a lot of success there. 

I had joined a few LinkedIn groups but they didn’t help me much. Or I should say I was new at that time?

But you can give it a try. There are lots of quality groups on LinkedIn. 

8- Research Your Competition

One of the easiest ways to find a target audience is on your competitor’s blog where he has already been marketing for a while. 

Make a list of bloggers in your niche (blogs that produce content like yours) and analyze those blogs. 

Check out their about page. They must have mentioned who this blog is for. 

Use these pages for inspiration. You cannot copy them.

Also, you can use tools like Ubersuggest and Semrush to find their top-performing content and create a similar post. 

But don’t copy their content. Use it for inspiration. Only.

9- Conduct Surveys

You can directly ask your readers about their likes and dislikes by conducting surveys. 

I have also covered a part of it in the email list section. 

You can create targeted surveys using a tool like SurveyMonkey and send them to your followers. 

Some of the places where you can promote your survey are

• Your email list
• Twitter
• Facebook groups
• Pinterest pin. 
• And more. 

Then analyze the results you get.  

TIP – This works awesome when you are confused between two topics. Just ask them! 

Another thing I did was create a poll on Twitter. I asked my followers on Twitter to tell me what they would be interested in reading next. 

A majority of them voted for affiliate programs for bloggers and I wrote it instantly. 

I got 40+ comments on that blog post. 

10- Publish Niche Specific Content

If you want to build a tribe of raving fans who return to read your content then you have to find a niche and focus on publishing content on that topic only. 

Finding a profitable blog niche is one of the building blocks of a successful blog. 

If you are not sure how to find a blog niche here are some articles where you should start. 

• 5 Steps To Finding A Blog Niche
• 221+ Profitable Blog Niche Ideas

Once you have figured out a blog niche all you have to do is to make sure your posts revolve around the topics that your niche covers. 

11- Grow Blog Traffic

The best way to find your readers is to get more traffic to your blog. 

Because the more people you get to your blog the more you understand about them. 

If you are struggling with growing traffic here are three resources I recommend you start with. 

• 21 Ways To Grow Your Blog Traffic
• 13 Free Ways To Promote Your Blog Posts
• Angela’s Blog Traffic Guide

Once you have enough people coming on your blog and they start engaging with your content then it is simple. 

PRO TIP – Encouraging your readers to comment on your blog posts can also give you an idea of what they might be interested in. 

After you have done your research it is time to fill the second sheet and create the final target reader profile.

How To Build A Target Audience? – For A Beginner Blogger

For a completely new blogger, most of the above-mentioned ways don’t work. 

For example, it takes time on Google Analytics to show some demographics. 

And you don’t have lots of social media followers. So how do you find out who your target audience is? 

I did these two things when I had no people coming to my blog. 

• I joined Facebook groups and participated actively in weekly threads. This way other bloggers shared my blog posts and I got new visitors. 
• At first, I was sure I want to keep my blog extremely niche specific. So, I checked other established blogs in my niche and found their top performing content ideas, and created blog posts on those topics. 

That’s how I started getting some traffic. Some other things I did to grow my blog traffic (after I started getting traffic) are

• Focused on Twitter and Pinterest to grow my presence there only. I created other profiles too. 
• Tried various ways to promote my blog posts. 
• Focused on growing blog traffic.

I know most guides don’t teach how to find out the target audience when you are not getting any traffic. The answer is to focus on growing blog traffic. 

I did it using the methods above and you can too. 

Conclusion

So this is how to figure out who your target audience is. 

After you have an audience profile in hand you can keep it next to your notebook to write articles for your readers. 

I know my ideal reader is a beginner blogger so I keep his demographics in mind while writing my blog posts. 

It requires a little practice but once you have your target audience profile sorted out and have written a few blog posts keeping it by your side you will remember it too. 

Then you can easily write blog posts for your ideal readers.

If you are new to blogging then you might not have many details on Google Analytics. That’s when you should focus on building a following through social media. 

Because your target audience is currently hanging out on various social media platforms. 

I hope this post helps you get started. If you have any questions you can send them to me using the comment section below. 

I hope you found this post helpful. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Or why not subscribe to my newsletter and get blogging and writing tips straight to your inbox every week?

Once you have your target audience figured out the next step is to write awesome blog posts.