Talking Points: Do you always consider your target audience for your writing jobs at DP (or elsewhere)? What are some techniques or tips for writing for a specific audience? Continuing my observations of writing and content at DP, this is a phrase you don't hear too often here. I began to wonder tonight why that was. I brought it up to a client the other day and was able to craft the piece better by knowing who would most likely be reading the piece. Identifying and writing toward a specific audience is probably used more when dealing with landing pages and sales letters. Or perhaps it's a question that only the writers who charge more ask. Granted, if someone is buying bulk $3/500 articles here at DP, their top concern might not be target audience and conversions. That said, I think it can be used (even at the level here at DP - the world marketplace), to distinguish yourself as a different class of writer. Maybe if the content has to be targeted toward a certain audience, you charge a little more? And perhaps I'm wrong in thinking it's not brought up here very often. Truth be told, I've only been here in Copywriting and Content Creation threads for a relatively short time. (Although I've been around DP for a slightly longer time off and on...) Writing for a Target Audience If you do decide to start writing content (at whatever price!) toward a target audience, you want to make sure your client is as specific as possible. They may be targeting all women, but if you probe a little bit (and know about their product or service), you should be able to find out if there's a more specific type of person you should be catering to. Beyond that, it comes to the creativity of the writer (another reason to charge more, imho). If the writer is creative they will be able to put themselves into the shoes of whoever the target audience might be and craft their words toward those people specifically - probably to better effect. Content Writing and Target Audience Heh. As I write this, I keep getting more and more ideas of things to write about. Anyway, when I've written most of my articles here at DP that haven't specified an audience, I've tried to keep my writing at a 4th to 8th grade level. Make it easy to read. Small and simple sentences. The fact that I even bring target audience up should hopefully show that I should be charging more for my content creation services, but I don't want to get too sidetracked. Samples in Motion For this piece, I've kinda targeted the audience at DP specifically. There are some terms in here that only DP members would understand (and only if they frequent this neighborhood of the site for that matter.) It's also written in a more informal tone. Like a buddy talking to you maybe over a nice pint of beer (or a non-alcoholic beverage of your choice.) Smile. I hope you've enjoyed this next segment in my ongoing series capturing the "in the trenches" life of a content writer at DP (and beyond...)
I didn't enjoy this segment of your ongoing series as much as the first. Your explanation that you have been writing at 4th to 8th grade level shows in this thread, and I don't say that to cause offense, you may have intended to write in that style. Regarding the visual appeal of your post, less white space and writing in longer paragraphs would be more appealing. Remember that the people who contribute the most to the copywriting section on DP tend to be people with better reading and comprehension than you might expect to find in the BST section. Addressing the actual question you raise; I couldn't imagine writing a piece without knowing something of the target audience. At the $3/500 word level I imagine (although I could be wrong) keyword stuffing is important. I'd also imagine that many of these pieces are used as giveaways for article submission sites to increase backlinks, and many are probably thrown into sites that earn their income from AdSense. Buyers willing to pay more are probably more interested in giving their readership some real information or entertainment. I'm guessing that they would want the reader to stay on their site because the site owner makes their income from offering something on their site rather than offsite.
People are intellectually lazy, even smart ones. It's a good idea to use down-to-earth language in copy so even smart, lazy readers can comprehend the topic.
@kpaul, I see you've edited your post to remove the white space amongst other things. Now the post looks a lot more presentable.
Absolutely the first and most important step to selling to a market is understanding who they are and what is important to them. Only then can you position the product/service in a way that means something to THEM.
Unless you plan on taking your writings and throwing them away, there's always an intended audience. Even the content written for Adsense ultimately has an audience - the Google spiders.
Writing for a target audience isn't easy because the client doesn't always plan ahead. Do they even know who their target market is? I often find myself asking more questions than should be necessary. Not because some clients don't articulate it well (not their fault, and after all that's why they're hiring a writer!), but because they never stopped to think about exactly who their market is. Those are the times I feel I should add the title "Marketing Guru" to my business card and raise my rates ten-fold, since that's what they need more than just a content writer!