Using Tone & Style to Help Narrow Your Target Audience

The tone and writing style of your blog will help determine the type of readers you attract.

It’s often mentioned that when starting a new blog you need to define your topic and your target audience. This is generally achieved by the process of elimination. Once you decide the topic of your blog you need to narrow the focus to a well-defined niche’ or sub-topic.

I recently covered Enlarging Your Audience. In this post we’re going to cover narrowing your audience by choosing a targeted topic and a targeted audience. Not all bloggers wish to write for the masses, some are still interested in a small group of readers that are passionate about specific topics.

For an example, let’s say you’ve decided your topic area will be about dogs. Dogs, in general, is a very broad topic, so to target a specific audience you’d want to break that down, possibly by a certain breed, care and grooming, canine nutrition, canine obedience and training, etc. For our example we’re going with the topic of breed and choosing Boston Terriers.

Choosing a certain breed like Boston Terriers does narrow the field but there are still many sub-topics you can cover on Boston Terriers; diet, special needs, special training, etc.

Once you’ve decided that your blog will be about Boston Terriers, it’s time to start defining who your target audience will be. Do you want to attract the general Boston Terrier owner or specific Boston Terrier owners? This is where the tone and style of your writing will help you determine which owners or type of readers you want to cater to.

You can write for the general Boston Terrier owner and use a style and tone that is less formal; like you would speak to a friend. Or you can use a style and tone that is more formal and attracts the more sophisticated dog owner; those who frequent dog shows and classy dog events and possibly a bit more upscale than the general dog owner.

By determining which group of dog owners you want to write for, this will help tighten and hone your blog for a specific target audience. The tighter your target audience is and the more you cater to that specific audience, the more successful your blog will be.

It does not matter which topic you choose for your blog, tone and style play an important role in gaining readers. If your topic was about high-tech gadgets, you would still need to decide if you wanted to target a general audience of everyday users or those who understand the more technical aspects of the subject matter.

If you chose the general audience you would write in a style that general readers/users would understand and use less technical jargon. If you targeted the more advanced user, your writing style would reflect that by using technical words that advanced users would understand.

Pay close attention to your tone and writing style if you really want to narrow the scope of your target audience. This will help ensure the success of your blog, keep your readers happy and you’ll be more satisfied with your results than if you chose a broad topic without targeting a specific type of reader.

Written by Patti Stafford from Patti Stafford
Posted on September 2nd, 2009 and filed under Writing
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