Your audience is out there. Someone will always be willing to listen to you no matter what your opinions are or who you are, you just need to find them.
First let’s determine who your audience is.
Who is your ideal customer?
- What is their age, gender or location?
- What is their occupation?
- What needs or wants are you looking to fill?
- What value can you bring to them?
Where is your audience?
- Is your audience in the same town or city?
- Is your audience strictly online?
- Where online do they frequent? Facebook? Linkedin? Twitter?
What works?
- Research your competitors, find out what they’re doing to reach their audience
- How does your audience speak? Do they use slang words? Do they utilize hashtags and emoticons?
- Conduct surveys
- Frequent your audience’s common hangouts (online and offline)
Who are the industry leaders and influencers?
To help get you message across, network with key influencers and leaders of your industry. Some examples would be:
- Bloggers
- Public Speakers
- Media Outlets
- Publications
Join the Club and Interact
Join various social media outlets such as Linkedin, Facebook, Reddit, and various message boards that are frequently visited and have a lot of traffic and conversations. Join those conversations and start to establish yourself as a thought/industry leader. You don’t want to plug your business right away, but always have it accessible for others. Bring value to the conversations and help out your community and future audience. Once they see that you participate frequently and provide valuable and usable information, that’s when you start to mention your business. Make sure it’s in the right context and that you know that you can solve someone’s issue. People do not like to be spammed with sales pitches constantly.
I hope this list of tips on how to find your audience was helpful. Getting started in the business world can be overwhelming and I hope that you can find value in this and apply it to finding your audience.
