Knowing Your Audience...
Everyone has heard this saying a million times "Know Your Audience", but it is probably one of the most important sayings in business. As a business owner, blog writer, employee, marketer, or any other job where you interact with customers you need to know who they are.
I don't mean you need to find out what type of food they like to eat, or what color is there favorite color. When they say "know your audience", they mean know what level and what style you are writing or speaking to them in. You never want to assume that whatever you write or say is coming across as clear as you may think it is.
Take for example a small mom and pop shop on main street USA. If they have a website for their childrens toy store and they write a weekly blog you would expect that the language would be simple, fun, and easy to read. You certainly would not want to read about the technical specifications of how each toy is put together (or at least most people wouldn't!). On the reverse side if you are a major manufacturer and your clients are engineers you would want to be sure to have technical information on how your product/service works.
Knowing your audience also helps with the search engines. The search engines pick up text from your website to display in their results page. If you are that mom and pop shop you would want to give searchers a good feeling from the moment they find out about your website (the search engine results). You only have one chance to make that first impression and every little bit counts.
Choosing your style is just that, your choice. With this blog, we have chosen to keep the style more casual and informative. Being a blog about marketing, business and internet related businesses we could certainly get into technical specifications of a website, or the statistical data about each and every market, but that is not the style we chose. You cannot please each and every visitor that will come to your blog, but you can please the type of visitor that you would like to get as a client. Sending people away isn't always a bad thing, especially if that visitor was not your ideal customer.
A good approach to take before ever writing your first word is to do some field research and see what else is out there. Take a look at the blogs and sites you like and don't like and see why it is you feel that way. Once you've done this, you should have a good idea of the style that will work for you and your business. Most importantly, have fun with it and the people reading will most likely come back to read more.
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Ignite Media LLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization
I don't mean you need to find out what type of food they like to eat, or what color is there favorite color. When they say "know your audience", they mean know what level and what style you are writing or speaking to them in. You never want to assume that whatever you write or say is coming across as clear as you may think it is.
Take for example a small mom and pop shop on main street USA. If they have a website for their childrens toy store and they write a weekly blog you would expect that the language would be simple, fun, and easy to read. You certainly would not want to read about the technical specifications of how each toy is put together (or at least most people wouldn't!). On the reverse side if you are a major manufacturer and your clients are engineers you would want to be sure to have technical information on how your product/service works.
Knowing your audience also helps with the search engines. The search engines pick up text from your website to display in their results page. If you are that mom and pop shop you would want to give searchers a good feeling from the moment they find out about your website (the search engine results). You only have one chance to make that first impression and every little bit counts.
Choosing your style is just that, your choice. With this blog, we have chosen to keep the style more casual and informative. Being a blog about marketing, business and internet related businesses we could certainly get into technical specifications of a website, or the statistical data about each and every market, but that is not the style we chose. You cannot please each and every visitor that will come to your blog, but you can please the type of visitor that you would like to get as a client. Sending people away isn't always a bad thing, especially if that visitor was not your ideal customer.
A good approach to take before ever writing your first word is to do some field research and see what else is out there. Take a look at the blogs and sites you like and don't like and see why it is you feel that way. Once you've done this, you should have a good idea of the style that will work for you and your business. Most importantly, have fun with it and the people reading will most likely come back to read more.
--------------
Ignite Media LLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization
Labels: copy writing, marketing, writing
posted by Ignite Media LLC at
Monday, March 03, 2008
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