In blogging, like any other aspect of life, trying to please everyone usually results in pleasing no one. Not only will keeping your ideal reader in mind help you avoid straying too far from your goals, it also makes the actual process of writing easier.

Consider how much more quickly words flow when you’re writing an email to a friend versus creating a formal business presentation. When you have a specific recipient in mind, you have a much easier time communicating your ideas.

Picking just one “ideal reader” is easier said than done, though!

Ask any business who their target customer is and you’re likely to get a general category in response: small-to-medium-sized businesses; people who want to improve their health; growing companies who need accounting support but can’t afford an accounting employee. You’ll often encounter that truly optimistic soul who says, “Everyone needs my product!”

Along the same lines, if you ask most bloggers who their ideal reader is, you’ll hear more broad terms: people who want to lose weight; progressive liberals; frugal moms.

These categories are a start, but I prefer something I’ve found much more practical in the day-to-day work of blogging: think of one person—your ideal reader, not readers.

A local radio station does this. Their “ideal listener” is a made-up, but extremely detailed, woman named Jane. If you ask any of the station’s employees, they can tell you how old Jane is, how many kids she has, what her hobbies are, and just about anything else that matters to her.

This might seem a little overkill, but imagine how much easier it makes music or programming decisions. Instead of trying to decide if the nebulous “listeners” would like a change, the question is just about one person (a person who is intentionally representative of “the listeners”). It becomes much easier to have a core focus and escape distractions.

When you use this concept as a blogger, your benefits are similar. When you’re evaluating a potential blog post topic, you can ask yourself, “Why would Sam (or Jane, or Harriett) care about this?”

It’s way too easy to justify off-topic posts by reasoning that they’ll be useful to someone. If you have to feel confident that they will be valuable to Sam, the result will be a blog that is a much better resource for the actual people you want as readers.

Having a specific ideal reader in mind also will help you in the writing process. As you get to know your ideal reader, you will start to write directly to that person and anticipate his (or her) questions. You’ll be able to frame your suggestions and observations in a way that resonates, and everyone who reads your blog will benefit from the specificity.

You might think that focusing on one person would exclude others and cut your readership down. I’ve found, though, that people are pretty good at abstracting specific concepts to fit their situations; they also just ignore what doesn’t fit for them.

How many times have you seen a specific resource, like a book written “for dummies”, described as “not just for beginners”? Good information, presented well, will be useful for a broad range of readers, and they can usually tell pretty quickly.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you of the value of having a specific ideal reader. In my next post, I’ll tell you how to create one.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 12:49 pm by Sarah Lewis and is filed under basics, connecting with readers. It's also tagged blogging, core focus, goals, hobbies, ideal reader, listeners, target audience, target customer, Writing. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.