To Define Your Audience, First Define Your Purpose

I got this question from Lela as a comment to another post:

On Accounting Solver I’m not quite sure who the target audience was before, but I’m thinking of targeting different audiences that would be interested in accounting: business owners, students, accountants, and professors. Do you think that will be too broad? Should I just focus on the business owners? I’d love to get your input.

This is a great question, and one that every blogger ought to consider carefully. But before you do, you should answer this question first: what is the purpose of your blog?

In preparing to take on this blog, I came up with the following idea that would be essentially the overarching philosophy behind this blog:

“People aren’t settling for making decisions in a vacuum anymore…and they don’t have to. 15 minutes with their favorite search engine will give them all the information they need to come to a conclusion, one way or the other. Our goal with this blog is to help businesses face this reality head on, and succeed.” 

From there I condensed the point to a short statement of purpose:

“How to thrive in a marketplace where you no longer control the conversation”

Now that I have defined my purpose, this blog’s audience can be determined. It is anyone interested in figuring out how to make the transition from a mass-media driven marketing model to one which embraces the increasingly social nature of the media landscape. It is made up of small-to-midsize businesses, not-for-profits, departments within larger companies and several other groups with this shared goal.

So…if you have a clear, focused purpose behind your blog that accountants, business owners, students and professors will all care about, then yes, I don’t see a problem with going after all of them. But if you’re going to have to shift your focus and your tone to hits each of these groups, then it would be best to focus on those groups you can talk to with consistency, and give the others a separate blog that is going to be worth their time.

I hope this helps, and thanks for the great comment/question!