How to Find Your Audience

Your friends share your content.

Your audience are your potential customers.

When your business is a brick and mortar; you hope they notice you. With the name of your business on the front of your building and a “Grand Opening” sign they won’t miss you. If you add a website and social media accounts, this will help with your visibility. Word of mouth, great customer service, and competitive prices you are on your way to success.

Now if your store front is only a website, how do you get them to find you? What brings them flocking to your site?

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The secret is good content.

Sure you can pay for costly advertising, but starting out with a small budget it is not feasible.

Content that answers questions, help people solve problems, or guides them with useful information to help them decide on a purchase.

To have a following of eager folks that will promote your website is valuable. Don’t underestimate those people that never buy from you. They can be your friends who will share your praises on their websites or through social media. Love your followers, they are your best advocates.

Still the burning question, how do they find you?

They find you most often through the searches when looking for a solution, answer to a question, or desire for more knowledge. Keyword search is most times a phrase that someone types into the search bar of Google or Bing. “How to cure a cold fast” or “What is the best power drill”, they want answers to whatever is a problem for them at the moment. Can you answer questions people ask?

Give them well thought out answers. Research to cover more detailed information than what they expected. Can you do better than your competitors? The more informed your visitor is on their search, the more likely they will sign up for your newsletter, etc. and bookmark your page for future reference. They become your cheerleader and will send others to you.

People buy from those they trust. For people to trust, they need to know you and consider you as a friend.

How to get noticed on search engines

When you write your great content, you need to add those key phrases to your keyword bar in SEO on the dashboard of your website. I use the “All in One SEO Pack” plugin, it provides places to add snippets of your article.

It takes time to get recognized by search engines, the ultimate goal is to rank a place on page one. With over 1 billion websites in the world it can be a huge accomplishment for that to happen. Social media will help to draw people to visit your site. Ask friends to look at your content and share on their social media platforms. Most everyone knows about Facebook. But don’t overlook Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest they are a good source to get publicity and connect with others.

Go to other websites similar to your own and make comments, especially if you find the web owner manages their comment section. (Lots of good comments and responses to the comments.) A web owner that leaves other peoples links on the comments, is someone who values their visitors. This gesture allows you to visit commenters and add to their site. In a short time you will have many of those people become your cheerleaders.

In 2010 I ran a website for 4 years but closed it down as circumstances limited my time to keep up with posting. For the first year and a half visitors were as rare as bikinis in a snow storm. One day I saw a comment on another website and was intrigued. Visiting the lady’s site I saw she had lots of visitors and interacted with all of them. I made a comment and she responded. Soon she came over to my site and made a comment. I visited other commenters on her website and soon they were commenting on mine. These people are still my friends even though we will never meet. Don’t underestimate the power of commenting on other websites, these are your cheerleaders. They share your posts, care how you are when things are not good, they become your friends even when they are half way around the globe.