Knowing your audience
Involve senior managers
- Obtain some existing market data; it's likely that the local audience segments have already been identified. If not, it's not difficult to work them out.
- Focus on three or four of your target audience segments and aim to meet most if not all of their information needs.
- Try to imagine one character that best represents each group.
- Download pictures from the internet of people who fit the character profiles you have identified.
- Give these people a name, imagine them as real people; these characters will help you define your content strategy.
Ask the following questions:
- What are their interests and what stories would they read?
- What are their concerns? You need to find the answers they require.
- What stories would they probably not be interested in.
- What is their lifestyle, are they married, in a relationship, single, have they got children?
- Are you catering for their personal and lifestyle interests?
- What are they likely to buy and what are they unlikely to buy? Make sure you have the right adverts in your output.
- How do they consume news? Do they watch TV, listen to radio, access news online, or use smartphones and tablets? Are you publishing on all of these devices?
- Do they use social media to engage with content? If so, what platforms are they using?
- Are you stimulating those conversations and engaging with your audience? If not, why not?
Audience profiles
Focus groups
Copyright: The text and graphics for this training modules is from Media Helping Media and the image at the top of the page is by Bizmac. All content released under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0.
The author of this piece, David Brewer, is a journalist and media strategy consultant who founded Media Helping Media, handing the site over to Fojo in early 2018. David has worked as a journalist and manager in print, broadcast and online. He has spent many years delivering journalism training and media consultancy services worldwide.