Writer's Guide To Finding Your Audience: Is Anybody Here?

John Steinbeck once told: “Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person − a real person you know, or an imagined person − and write to that one.” He was a great author, and he managed to describe the process of finding your audience just in one sentence. Now the question arises: is his wisdom applicable for a modern writing world?

Modern authors are frequently confused with choosing their audience. Even if an author has an image of his perfect reader, he does not understand where exactly to find him. Perhaps, his ideal reader prefers Internet and online blogs? Or TV-scenarios? Or newspapers? In this article, we are going to analyze the process of finding your audience, starting with a determination of your readers and the best places to find them.

Who are your readers?

If you have decided to write for other people, you need to clarify certain points. The first and the most crucial one is that you do not write for everyone. You write for a bunch of people who share your attitude to life, who appreciate your writing style, and who are interested in the ideas appeared in your head. If you think that you write for everyone, you write for no one.

Determine people for whom you write. If you write a historical book full of dramatic events, young readers would hardly become your admirers. If you are a fantasy writer, teenagers and kids will love you more than 40-ty somethings. If you are a business columnist, your target audience is businessmen and everyone who is intending to start a business. Remember the following thing: there are people who never read Game of Thrones and who have no idea what that is.

Define the ways of communication

You do not need to know where your readers live. But you need to understand what methods they use to read you. We will call it the way of communication. For example, if you are a fiction writer, your main way of communication with your readers is books. Internet bloggers use the Internet. Journalists – magazines, newspapers, and their online editions.

The mistake with choosing the proper way of communication can lead to a disaster. For example, your target audience is teenagers, you want to write about how difficult it is to be a teenager and your recommendations how to overcome problems. You choose printed media to be your way of communication. This is the point where your writing is over. To communicate with a young audience, you need to follow trends. It is better to use your Facebook profile to write some notes or create a blog with an Instagram account and other ways your readers can use to follow you online.

Use marketing tips

The quality of your writing, your ideas, and your own way of feeling the world and the word are priceless. But they will never bring you money or fame or at least some satisfaction until someone will see your work. Today you have various methods to find more readers and to introduce your writing to a wider circle of people. Internet marketing can turn 1,000 subscribers you have into 100,000. To get better results with your marketing campaign, it is better to hire a marketing manager who will build up a strategy for your growth.

Be dedicated to your readers if you want them to be dedicated to you. Try to make everything possible to understand what they want and what they expect. And of course, put efforts to justify their trust. If you follow these tips, you will eventually find out that you are no longer writing for yourself. Readers will come and stay with you forever!