This post is a part of “Helping Me, Helping You”, a blogging series created to help new bloggers to be the best that they can be on their blogging space. You can find helpful tips, tools, real examples & experience plus downloadable worksheets that can help you achieve your blogging career.
Hello there love!
I promised to you in my first blogging series post “Where to find blog post ideas”, that I would go deeper into details on an Ideal Reader Profiles (aka Ideal persona), how to find them and why they are so important.
Before we get started today, you can grab the ideal reader profile worksheet from my Online Library if you haven’t done so yet, so we can all be on the same page. If you want to get right into the details, please skip the next two paragraphs. ?
Last week I took a few hours off from my Mommy job and went to a movie with my husband. These pictures I took in front of the movie theater and that made us late for the beginning. Lol! I’m really trying my best to make the best out of my time. So I had mentioned on my Instagram yesterday that I would let you know how the movie went. I have to be honest with you, I felt disappointed with the movie. Surprisingly, it’s one of the best rated and money-making movie right now on the box office chart, Blade Runner 2049. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was expecting. Too much of a fantasy land that if teenagers (or any ages, really!) watch without parenting it could link them to a serious problem in their later lifestyle.
The movie showed too many nudity scenes with unnecessary reasons. (Duhh! It’s rated R, that’s what it’s supposed to be!) but I didn’t know before. So I don’t blame the movie but myself for not researching enough. I had read a few reviews out there thought and a lot of them said that this movie is very artsy and such beautifully created imagery. Most people are recommending to watch it. But still, it wasn’t what I prepared myself for. There was a lot of violence involved which I didn’t really enjoy much. The sound effects were too much at one point and I was thinking about getting up and leaving the theater. Overall I do not recommend this movie for teenagers and new moms. I found this “WHAT PARENTS NEED TO KNOW” guide very helpful and straight to the point if you want to know what you should expect from the movie.
Already my love, now let’s get into our topic today “THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CREATE ACCURATE IDEAL READER (CUSTOMER) PROFILES FOR YOUR BLOG AND BUSINESS“.
When I started my ALL ABOUT GOOD VIBES blog it wasn’t right away that I really put my thoughts into who my readers were. The first few things that came up into my mind back then were, what should I name my blog and would the domain name sill available. Then I was worried about what platforms I should have my blog on, free vs paid. Not yet to get into who would I write to but instead, I was worried about no one would read my posts.
You can tell me the truth now, those were your biggest problems once you start thinking about becoming a blogger as well, am I right?
Frankly, I totally ignored this topic “ideal reader profile” and to build my confidence, I bought a few online courses. A lot of money had spent and I was happy with what I had to offer on my blog back then. I got a few free products offered as collaboration every now and then and I thought I was handling my blog just right.
As months went by, I completed some of the courses, but I still had the feeling of quitting. Why? The reason was my blog traffic. It was super low. Most of my readers were my friends and family and I think my mother in law visited my blog the most! Lol!? Thank you, Nadia! ❤️
What those courses did to me was to help me with my confidence issues plus I had a chance to connect with other new bloggers who started at the same time. Some of them I still have good relationships with until now. But what the courses didn’t do was teach me what are the most important keys that I should think about when it comes to creating my content. What are the keys to success? What is the content that makes my readers read, enjoy and stay? Something that makes them can’t wait for any longer for my new blog to be LIVE. I was struggling to be honest with you.
I did turn to Google and Google had helped me a lot. But as far as my blog stats went almost a year into my blogging, my monthly view was only a little bit below or over 1K. At one point I blogged 30 days in a row and my traffic went over 1K for a little bit and then went back down again.
Now it’s been 1 year and 4 months of my blogging journey and just two months ago my traffic started to spike up to over 800% higher compared to the same period last year. It was crazy at the rates I’m going, by the end of this year, I think it will raise up to 2000% better than last year. Next year will be 100x better and I can’t wait to hit that number. I will talk more about how exactly I did it, and what steps to take to get there on our next blogging series post in details. But don’t worry I’m going to tell you right now, what I did differently to attract more traffic. If you could guess it’s about creating your ideal reader profile.
You might have heard a lot about “Know your readers”. This phrase has been haunting me for a while because knowing your readers is as important as writing a good blog post. Why is it so important? Here are my answers:
- Because you will know exactly who you’re talking to, you will be able to create your blog post with ease.
- Be able to talk the same language as your readers.
- You will make your post more connecting to your readers.
- Your post will give value and it will benefit your readers the most.
- If you’re looking to grow your blog, you know exactly where you should start.
But how can you know your readers when you can only look at your computer screen! That’s a great question! Should you guess it? Nope, that’s not the right way but it’s how a lot of people are doing. I put together some helpful questions that can help you craft your ideal reader profile on my worksheet (if you don’t have it yet, you can download the printable file from my online library) and we can go over each section together now.
Part one: Basic Information
In this part, you can make up the name, last name and how he/she looks. You can fill the gender and a specific age out of your original thoughts of the average age group of your readers. But to fill out the rest of your basic information I recommend using Facebook Audience Insights to answer your questions.
Start by creating your Facebook Ads account. After that go to Facebook Audience Insights and choose “Everyone on Facebook” when the “Choose an Audience to Start”, pops up on your screen.
From here you can find everything from creating your audience by adjusting the Location, Age and Gender, and Interest. This Audience Insights tool is a very powerful source to help you verify who your real readers are.
After you fill out the first section, we can move on to the next part of this worksheet, which is the “Short Introduction”.
Part two: Short Introduction
In this section, you will want to make a short introductory script of your ideal reader based on the Basis-Information you just filled out. Imagine introducing yourself to new classmates, co-workers or to some new people you’ve just met. A few sentences that will briefly describe who he/she is.
Part three: Personality
This is a challenging but fun part. Go back to your first part and look at the occupation of your ideal reader. Now use this infographic I found from www.truity.com to help guide you to the best answer.
Source: www.truity.com
You can also complete this section using the Astrological Zodiac Traits. You just have to pick the date of birth of your Ideal Reader randomly, use this chart below with the mix of the personality type infographic above to create the right personality.
Source: http://nuclear.ucdavis.edu/~rpicha/personal/astrology/
Part four: Favorites
Moving on to the fourth section. In this part, you can use this Free Social Media Statistics from www.socialbakers.com to help answer all of your questions. For example, if I want to know what my ideal reader’s favorite TV show is, I would use the “Facebook statistics directory” then I would choose the entertainment section. After that, I would select the country. The website will show the highest fans of the “T.V. SHOW” I ‘m trying to find out.
If you want to make sure you got the right information or not, you can use Facebook Audience Insights again and type the name of the Facebook page you got the results from www.socialbakers.com in the interest section. This way you will see all of the page statistics.
Part five: Dislike
In this section, you can guess it by yourself but I found this post from ranker.com helpful and fun to take a look at. You can adjust the listed order by gender, age, and region.
Part six: Interests
Similarweb is a good place to find your ideal reader interests. Based on your answers in part four, you can copy and place brands’ URLs. You can get insight statistics for free from Similarweb.
If you’re using Pinterest, make sure you switch from personal account to business account. This way you will be able to access statistic. You can see what areas people are interested in the most from your PINS. Pinterest will help with blog traffic as well. If you don’t have a blog yet but are planning to have one soon, create your PINTEREST account ASAP. This is the best time to start PINNING. You will be half way to your blogging goal before you even have a blog setup yet. I use TailwindApp to schedule my PINs, it is free to use for limited number of PINs. You can take a look at TailwindApp if you’re interested.
Part seven: Aspirations
In this section I recommend using ranker.com to find your answers. This post “The Most Important Life Goals” is one of the good ones to take a look at.
Part eight: Ideal Reader Brief
Now that you have all of the information you needed to put together an accurate ideal reader profile, it’s time to connect them together. I know it took a little bit of your time just to find all of the answers. Trust me, you will feel more connected and your blog posts will be even more helpful to a specific group of people. Not only that, you will have a more accurate Ideal Reader Profile that you’re just guessing who he/she is.
One last tip I would like to mention is to create your Ideal Reader Profiles on Pinterest. Create a few of them because you don’t want to have only one person in mind when it comes to a whole picture of your blog audience. You can keep your Pinterest boards “secret” that only you can see them. Mood boards will help you connect with your readers in a deeper level. It will be better than only writing down on a piece of paper. You can easily update your Ideal Reader Profiles on Pinterest when the trends change, season change or whenever you feel like it.
Here are a few Internet Stats Sources you might want to check out:
Key Internet Statistics in 2020 | Key Internet Statistics to know in 2020 (Including Mobile)
I hope today’s post gave you a lot of tools and insight tips to create your perfect Ideal Reader Profiles. Like I mentioned before that when you know your readers, your content will get better which means more website traffic and the best potential to gain your income from blogging.
Thank you for stopping by my blog today. I can’t wait to share with you how exactly I increased my blog traffic. See you soon, my love! Have a wonderful weekend. 🙂
“I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.” – Estée Lauder
xoxo,
*Last updated in April 2020.
* This post contains affiliate links.
