Although blogging has grown tremendously, not all bloggers can confidently say they know their target audience. Most bloggers have a fickle understanding of their audience; their perceptions, interests, needs, and online activity. The saddest thing is that most bloggers focus on making money online instead of discovering the needs and interests of their target audiences. I am going to highlight a few nifty tools that can give you great insight on your target audience before you start your blog.
Facebook Insights
When Facebook came into being, it was purely a social networking hub. Today, it has evolved and now features nifty tools for marketers and small businesses. One tool that stands out is Facebook Insights. This awesome tool can help you track your target audience in real time if you have more than 30 likes in your fan page. Facebook Insight provides graphical data about every person who interacts with your Facebook fan page. You can clear see the number of total page likes, daily active users, demographic, page views, media consumption, and even external referrers. With such detailed information about your fans and visitors, you actually have no reason for not finding your target audience via Facebook.
Google Keyword Tool & Google Adwords Tool
Though many people use the Google Keyword Research Tool to discover and analyze keywords, few of them use it for targeting their blog audience. The truth is; Google Keyword Tool is just more than a keyword research tool. You can use it to discover long-tail keywords that a target audience searches and then use them to focus your blog and content marketing efforts towards your audience.
Google Adwords Tool is another awesome tool for online lead generation. This tool reveals a great deal about what people are looking for online. The AdWords tool is also very important in coming up with a bunch of keywords for target marketing campaign. With the help of Google keyword and AdWords Tool, you can discover the needs of your audience search volume, competition, and even get indications on topics/themes to blog about.
Real Time Insights Finder
Real Time is a nifty research tool for bloggers. It features tools and widgets that help bloggers and marketers to discover all search terms entered into a Google search box. This suite reveals all videos that are watched across the internet, total number of searches conducted, and a tally of blog posts accessed via the internet. You can use this tool to track how people search online, and also find useful information that will help come up with social media marketing and online video marketing ideas for your target audience. Real Time Insights Finder is integrated with Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool.
Online Market Surveys
When people think surveys, they conclude that they’re only relevant for marketing purposes. The truth is online marketing surveys are also very useful in finding your target audience. Internet marketing surveys can help you find and target the right audience quickly. The responses that you will get from your respondents will most likely reveal their needs and interests. These responses will then act like a funnel through which you can target and engage your audience.
You don’t have to rely entirely on your own online marketing survey; you can also look out for surveys that have been conducted by competitors or partners. Don’t overlook surveys. You’ll be amazed at how much useful information you can gather from your own surveys and those conducted by other people.
Google Trends
Without a doubt, Google Trends is another awesome tool that you should use to target your audience. This tool will reveal the interest that visitors and customers have toward particular items. It functions pretty much the same way like the keyword research tool, the only difference is that Google Trends reveals all the latest trends in your target niche or market. It shows every trending topic, news, or item that you want to promote. With Google trends, you can see what your target audiences have been searching online and all keywords with the highest hits.
Google Analytics
If you want to gain an in-depth knowledge of your blog visitors and, by extension your target audience, it’s indispensable for you to use Google Analytics. This is a nifty tool that allows you to see the location of visitors, the pages they view, the duration they spend on your blog, and how they got your blog ( through referral sites or keyword search).
Google Analytics features a robust set of tools that allows you to locate the source of traffic and people who access your blog through social media. Through Google Analytics, you can see referrals and how each social media network contributes visitors to your blog. It’s such a versatile and insightful tool that reveals a great deal about blog visitors.
Great blogging, just like attraction marketing, starts with a better understanding of your target audience and their behaviors. You can only engage your audience if you know their needs. Fortunately, there are quite a number of useful free tools that can help you find your audience. Online marketing tools such as Google Keyword Research Tool, Real Time Insights Finder, Facebook Insights, and Google Analytics will reveal a great deal about your target audience so that you can engage them effectively. With the help of these interactive tools, you can explore consumer behavior and trace the journey of online buyers from product research to the final purchase.
Hi Annetta,
1. I use Google Keyword Tool. Unfortunately, it will disappear soon. Google says they will replace it with Keyword planner. Did you use Keyword planner? How easy is to use? Last time I checked I wasn’t able to find the type of search: broad, phrase or exact. Maybe it’s a new philosophy?
2. I tried Google Trends once. It gave me only data for last year. It is good to find out what people searched and what were the hot trends. Apart from this I wasn’t able to use it for any other purpose. Kind of … disappointing tool.
Have a nice day
Hi Annetta,
Thanks for sharing. For me, Google Keyword Tool is godsent. Too bad, it’s going off soon and I miss it’s features. I uses Planner too but felt it still need some time to ‘grow’ 😀
Think Insight is something I recently used but will definitely look into it (more seriously) soon.
Just my 2 cents 🙂
@ Silviu:
Hi Silviu, just like you, I am still learning the ropes of Google keyword planner. With persistence, we’ll be able to find out how well it works for our business 😀
@ Reginald:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts buddy 🙂 These tools are really of huge benefit to us, especially if we’ll take these seriously. It’s great to know you’re up for the changes 😀
Hello there! This blog post could not be written much better!
Going through this post reminds me of my previous roommate!
He continually kept talking about this.
I most certainly will send this article to
him. Pretty sure he will have a great read. I appreciate you for sharing!