RedPen Mentoring
Challenge 3
Challenge 1 was spent looking at your current situation and thinking about the future.
Challenge 2 was all about you, and your products / services, and thinking about how you’d use text and images to establish a brand for yourself.
© Nasir1164 | Dreamstime.com – 3d man speaker and listener
Now, Challenge 3 takes the attention away from you and focuses instead on your prospective audience.
Task 1: Who are they?
If your product is a book of fiction, you will have an established genre and a pretty good idea of who might like to read it. What else would they be reading? Why would they read your book?
If you are writing non-fiction – a book or articles – who are you aiming at? What information do you have that the prospective audience don’t have? What gap in their lives are you filling?
If you are writing a blog, maybe in order to build yourself a platform, who are you hoping will come to your blog and read about it. Why would they do that? What will they gain from reading your blog?
Write a CV for your ideal audience member. Be precise about age, gender, interests, lifestyle and any other relevant data.
Task 2: Where are they?
If you are to become known to your prospective audience, you need them to come to your website and/or your blog and/or your Facebook page. But first they need to know where you are. So, you need to go to them and let them know where you are!
Social media offers opportunities to meet people who might turn out to be ideal for your audience. Hunt down places where your audience might be – and be there too.
Join their social media world. Don’t try to sell to them! Instead, hang out with them, mingle, become a part of their world – part of the furniture.
You are looking for awareness – awareness of your existence – and engagement with their world.
Task 3: Crossing the first bridge
© Sacchi Daniela | Dreamstime.com – The Bridge
When people discover you, it’s unlikely they will rush to buy your product/service. They will want to get to know you, and to decide whether they trust you, and whether what you have to offer suits them.
This process – know, like, trust – can be expanded upon:
- knowing enough about you to want to know more
- liking your product / service enough – and you, enough – to be willing to engage with you
- trusting you enough to consider buying whatever it is you are selling
Notice the reptition of the word ‘enough’. There is a threshold … and you need to do enough to encourage your prospective audience to continue coming in your direction.
For challenge 3, I want you to think about how you can gain their interest. What are the pieces of the jigsaw that will help you to cross that first bridge: providing enough information so that individuals in your prospective audience know enough about you that they want to know more about you.
Make a list of 3 things you might do to cross that first bridge.
If you have any questions about this challenge, raise them in the RedPen Mentoring Facebook group and/or in the thread for the next Facebook event for our monthly MMM. I’ll then aim to include that topic in that session!
And/or we could discuss this challenge during your next catch-up session.