Writing FOR Your Audience

Meet Ken and Marisa, Barbie’s friends. Ken and Marisa represent my target demographic. (OK, I know they’re a little young…use your imagination!) When not posing for photo shoots, they stand next to my computer monitor, so I see them with virtually every word that I type.

Sound a bit strange? I got this idea when I was speaking with Jennie Poppenger  when I interviewed her on my program on Mile Hi Radio. We talked about the fact that people often forget that they should be writing FOR their intended audience, rather than AT them.

We all know what we want our customers and clients to do: buy from us, refer people to us, and so on. So, we write our posts to try to convince them to do this!

When we write this way, we’re breaking the cardinal rule of successful social media: building relationships with our followers. Just as we don’t like our “real life” friends to only talk about themselves, we don’t want to read posts from someone who only posts about themselves…and their businesses.

In her book, Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest, Beth Hayden says it best:

“Here’s an important news flash: No one actually cares about your products and services in and of themselves. People want to solve their problems, and that’s what they need or want your products and services for. Pinterest gives you the incredible opportunity to become a valued source of information to the folks you’re trying to reach. And if you view yourself as a source of information and ideas, rather than someone hawking your wares, you will be far more successful on Pinterest than if you focus only on promoting and pinning your own products and services.”

Whether you’re using Pinterest for business—or Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, etc.—Beth is 100% correct. The same goes for your website, your blog, all of your marketing materials. In order to be truly successful, you need to write FOR your audience, not AT them.

The problem is that for those of us who home office (and even those in a “real” office), writing is a solitary thing. We write and write and write and quite often, we forget that we’re supposed to be writing for someone else, rather than writing for ourselves. So, Jennie and I talked about having some type of “visual representation” to remind ourselves about our target audience.

I decided to enlist Ken and Marisa, but that’s not for everyone. You may not want to borrow from your kids or visit a toy store. What may work best for you is to simply have a photo of your target audience (maybe even a photo of your real audience!), in a frame on your desk or taped to your monitor. Then, when you write, you’ll be writing for them, giving them information that serves their needs, not yours.

So, what do you think? Strange…or inspirational? Post your comments below!