Know ‘This First’ Before You Write Anything

You don’t need to be a great writer to create great content.

Neither you don’t need to be an expert or technical person to deliver your message.

All you need is to your know your audience well.

And this starts with creating your reader persona.

What is a reader persona?

A reader persona is a fictional character that represents your target audience.

This is the person you are creating the article for.

In marketing, this is similar with customer avatar or audience profile.

Why is it important to know your reader persona?

Whether you are creating a blog post, a copy or any content, it is important to know who your audience are.

When you know who your reader persona is, the easier for you to tailor fit content that are relatable to your audience.

I like to explain this in the analogy of buying a gift.

When you know someone, like a friend or family member, it is easier for you to choose what gift to buy.

Unlike when you don’t know the person well, like a stranger, it is hard to decide what gift to buy.

Another reason why creating reader persona is important is you can create analogy based on their background just like what I did earlier.

Often times there are technical terms or jargons that can alienate and confuse the reader.

And the only way to explain them is in through analogy. For example,

When you explain the difference between domain name and website hosting to people who heard it for the first time, as,

Domain name is the address of your website that people type in browser’s URL bar to visit to your website.

While web hosting is a place where all your files of your website live. (Source)

I am pretty sure their reaction would be,

Huh?

But if you explain to them that,

Domain Name is like the address of your house but instead of street name and area code, you use set of word or/and numbers for your website name.

And your Web Hosting is similar to your house where you store all your stuffs, but instead of storing clothes and furniture, you store computer files in a webhost.(Source)

See the difference?

How to create your reader persona?

To create your reader persona, you must at least know their demographics and psychographics.

Demographics is the knowing your audience based on age, sex, education level, income level, marital status etc.

There is a big difference when talking about retirement to people at 50’s and those who are passed 60’s.

Psychographics is knowing audience based on their interest, passion, skills, beliefs and values.

You cannot talk about dogs to cat lovers. Sure they maybe animal lovers but since it is not relevant to them, chances are, they won’t read your article.

Conclusion

In business, having your buyer persona are important to know when creating product or service to sell for your target market.

In writing, the same goes as well. This time you are selling an idea.

The better you know your reader are, the better the outcome your article will be.

When you who your readers are or will be, you can determine what topic that are relevant to them.

The more specific your audience, the more helpful your content is.

Besides, what’s the purpose of writing if no one going to read it, right?

================

Share your thoughts below.