Over on dPS today we launched a brand new photography eBook about buying the right camera gear. As I was writing a blog post to announce the new eBook I was looking for an opening to the blog post that might capture our readers attention.
Then it struck me – we had recently done a survey of our readers that contained the golden information.
A couple of months ago we ran a survey with a segment of our readership to gather some information to help us put together a media kit to approach advertisers.
One of the questions in the survey asked our readers about what photography gear they were planning to purchase in the coming 12 months.
The results of that question were fascinating both for us to give advertisers but also as we thought about what content we could publish on the site.
Today I also realised that the stats gave me the perfect lead in for a blog post about the eBook.
Over 85% of our readers indicated that they were looking to purchase a camera or significant camera gear (a lens, bag, flash etc).
While we hadn’t decided to write the eBook on purchasing gear based upon these stats – we realised we were onto something!
The opening to the blog post became quite clear:
Understanding Your Readership is So Important
The more you know about your readers the better position you’ll be in to serve them with great content, to find new readers, to build community with them and to monetise your blog.
That is a great tip. I was thinking about doing a survey lately, I didn’t think about using it that way.
Great post, Darren! I agree that it is important to ‘know your readers’. I think doing surveys and what not is a good idea if you ever want to release products such as eBooks, courses and so on. If you don’t know what the people want, how can you expect to give them anything, right?
Great tip! example how known your readers using i think nice!
When you start working on a New Product Development (NPD) Market Study will give you a clear vision on the product reception. The same holds true for blogging too, each article should be treated as a NPD and should be written only for the readers.
But the question I have in my mind is, when you have huge subscribers for your blog this will work, what about others? And do you always get adequate feedback from your survey which enables you to decide the trend?
Excellent article. Keep writing such kind of information on your page.
Im rally impressed by it. You’ve done an excellent job. I will definitely digg it and personally suggest to my friends. I am sure they will be benefited from this website.
The initial reaction is, “But Darren, you did a survey and the customer insights were staring you in the face!” and I think that’s the point. Everyone has really interesting data about their customer somewhere. Whether it’s in a survey, testimonials, events, etc. It’s just a matter of realizing it.
Excellent blog post. Thanks for sharing.
Knowing we mean readers appreciate their visit.
Hmm. I might use this on my site. Thanks for the suggestion.
I think that knowing your audience is the KEY to any successful marketing strategy.
If you don’t know your audience, then how the heck are you going to provide information and products that fulfill their needs?
I’ve been thinking about conducting a survey on one of my sites. I just don’t know how to go about doing it because my readers aren’t all that engaged just yet.
I guess there are other ways to know what your readers are looking for, as well. You could take cues from different areas of the market. I guess one thing that you could do, would be to actually go to a camera shop and ask them what a majority of people are looking for these days. Would it be as accurate? Prolly not, because your survey reaches a broad spectrum of people. Whereas your local camera shop only caters to local customers.
But, I guess it would still be an important metric especially when you’re just starting out and you want to deliver the best content possible. Knowing what people want beforehand is always the best way to go.
Thanks, as always
Josh
It is absolutely right; without fully knowing blog readers one cannot achieve his blogging objectives because every objective he has to achieve through them.
Great Post Darren,
Reading mind of your audience is great. we always want to know what our audience want. This post is great and we are also planning to launch a servery for our audience to know what they want.
thank you for sharing your experience..
Nikhil :)
Nice topic to be shared Darren!
I believe that if you know your audience, the impact will be booming and it will rocket! And a review will be helpful too, good thing that you shared this with us. It is informative and timely.
By doing so, you can persuade them, but keep this in mind that you can persuade them if they are interested.
I found this post shared on Kingged.com, the Internet marketing social bookmarking site, and I “kingged” it and left this comment.
You are 100% right Darren.Recently on one of our websites where we sell home furniture accessories, we focused on Sofas and Bed cots which put us into loss.Later we took surveys and came to know that most of the traffic are looking for bed sheets and showcase items. We focused on those and got success. I also encouraged my buyers to share those reviews on our sites by giving an Apple I-PAD every week. Doing this way, I made my buyers more engaged.When I’m reading your article, I got connected with my past experience. Your way of explaining things is much better. I advise every one to do a thorough research before jumping into business.
Very nice article.
I think one of the hardest thing when you start blogging that you have to know your readers. It’s not only help you to increase your follows but also show your respect to them. Study your audiences is one of the strategy that you have to learn if you want to success on this field.
Thanks for your sharing.
Stephan
Nice topic and it is absolutely right. Thank you Darren Rowse, good job.
Interesting article, you have to know your readers and what they want.