How To Get Unstuck & Blog Effectively (Know Your Audience)

Do you sometimes find yourself staring at an empty screen with the cursor tapping it’s impatient foot while you’re trying to figure out what to write for your blog post that week?

Writer’s block happens to all of us and coming up with fresh content on regular basis takes work, but what makes it all worth it is circling back to why your write in the first place: Your audience, your dream customers, your brand cheerleaders. The people that like, comment and share your work or verbally tell you how much they enjoyed reading your posts and how much it helps them and improves their work.

The Key To Unlocking Your Content Block

Picturing those people in your head and thinking about what their needs are and how you can help them can be the key to unlocking your content block. A way to do this is to think about some conversations you have had with existing or potential customers in the last couple of weeks. Look through your meeting notes and highlight the key talking points that came up as potential blog and social post topics:

To help get the ball rolling here are some examples of questions and specific challenges clients and potential clients have asked us over the last week:

Marketing Questions We Got This Week:

• “How do I start creating a more focused online presence that can also be used as a way to visually explain how I work with clients?”
• “How do we explain what we stand for as a company and what makes us special through storytelling?”
• “How do we lay the marketing groundwork now so we have the essential things we need for expansion in the near future?”
• “How do I integrate and compliment my offline business with my online presence?”
• “How do I share my project’s mission and people’s specific experiences through social media?”

marketing challenges we were asked this week:

• “We need to be clearer in our pitch for funding about who we are, who we are for and how we will market it effectively.”
• “I’m unsure about the strategic approach I need to take when choosing from two potential company names.”
• “I am having difficulty with prioritizing my to-do list and knowing where to start.”

These are just some potential ideas for topics we can address on our Prim’d blog, newsletter and social media in the coming weeks by putting into our editorial calendar which are mostly in line with the expertise and products what we offer and therefore in line for our sales goals.

Focus On What Really Matters To Your Customers

Next step is to boil down the questions you have been asked and any pain points to what really matters for your target customers in line with their type of lifestyle (for business to consumer brands) or industry (for business to business brands), bearing in mind how they prefer to digest information.

To do this well, it helps to have one or two defined customer profiles or avatars established which are important tools to refer to when crafting content for your business. You can create and evolve customer profiles throughout different stages of your business. These stages might include the formation stage to clarify who your business is for, through to later stages when you're re-evaluating who your business is for and how to marketing to them effectively.

At Prim’d we have recently redefined our two customer profiles in-line with streamlining our offerings and move our business to the next level. These customer profiles don’t have to be set in stone but are a good place to start and constantly refer to when writing the copy for your website, collateral or planning your content to make your blog, newsletter and social posts. It helps ensure the approach, messaging, language are more meaningful and relevant to your customer and online audience.

Do You Know Who Your Target Customers Are?

If you are unsure, it can be helpful to work backwards from who is NOT the right customer or a near miss - this can inform who your target customer actually is.

I mentioned in my recent Why Brand Values Are Crucial To Your Marketing post that there can be some gray areas in any existing perceptions of who your customer is. If that's the case then we have a great exercise using this worksheet for you to download:  

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KNOW EXACTLY WHO YOU'RE MARKETING TO WITH OUR TARGET CUSTOMER WORKSHEET

Unsure about who your target customer is?

Do you need clarity on who you are for and why?

This worksheet will help you get clear on who you are for by defining your target customer, and just as important it will ask you to consider who is your near miss and not the right fit customer is too. This can be an enjoyable activity to do by drawing on past experiences and brainstorming with team members or like-minded friends to help you defining or redefining who your customer really is.

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We help our clients create their customer profiles so they can have more meaningful connections and conversations with them online and offline. We include this in The Brand Plan by Prim'd (our branding guidelines & marketing strategy in one) and custom Blog & Social Content Plans for our clients. Both are implemented through ongoing support to target those customer profiles consistently through effective content creation and social media marketing. 

Once you are clear about who your target customers are, what they need and how you can help them, then writing part will become easier. You will be able to plan ahead more because you will have a clearer idea of who you are writing for rather than getting distracted by what other people are writing about. You will be more focused on creating more relevant content that will serve your customer rather than putting out something for the sake of getting a blog posts into the world. There is plenty of noise online what makes you cut through the noise is being authentic and relevant to the people you work with and want to work with.  

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