This weeks readings gave me a better understanding of what it means to define your audience and market. Before, I thought “I’m sure there’s someone out there who will want to use my product.”However, the reality of that happening without me planning out my content to fit a certain type of viewer is very unlikely.

In the article by Inc. titled How To Define Your Target Market , I learned so much information about what goes into defining your target audience. Not only should I be focusing on the obvious-

age, location,

gender,

income,

but also the psychographics. I’m not going to lie, this was a term I’ve never heard before and once I knew its meaning, it wasn’t something I’d guess would go into consideration when determining an audience. Now I understand. I understand that the content or product that I put out into the world will reflect my values, interests, and personality and I want to attract similar people to my product.

Once i have my target audience determined, it’s much easier to identify how to market my product. In the second article titled The New Business Models for News Toolkit, I learned some of the strategies that go into a successful business. I assumed that with a blog I could update it whenever was convenient to me. The article says otherwise. There must be a content strategy: How often I’ll post, how  my readers will consume my content and more. I need a marketing and branding strategy that captures my audiences attention by playing on their interests. This includes everything down to the font type.

Perhaps the most helpful tip I learned was about social media marketing. There are so many ways to market my content for free! It’s just up to me to take advantage of it. One challenge for me is one of the points made in the section on social media marketing: How are you integrating all of the tools together so that you are having maximum impact with minimal effort? I still don’t have an answer for this question as it pertains to my startup however this article has initiated an interest in finding an answer!