A hurdle that I see a lot of people having is understanding what their target audience is thinking and looking for. It’s an easy fix, you just need to know where to look so you can eaves drop on their conversations, create content that they’ll be interested in, then join in the conversations to build your awareness and authority in the space.
First thing you need to do is to make a list of the problems you solve, the ways that you solve them, the type of product or service you offer. Those become your key words and phrases for researching.
Now that you have what you are searching for, hit the search boxes across the Internet:
- Search Facebook to find Pages, Posts, and Groups
- For active Groups, join them. Read what people post. Comment insightfully and have conversations. Post your own questions to start conversations with other group members.
- Go to Facebook pages that are relevant to read all the comments on their posts, chime in where appropriate
- Read your industry thought leaders’ blogs/youtube videos/podcasts, and see what people are saying about them in the comments and on social media
- Read the Amazon reviews of books in your category
- Read the Amazon reviews of products in your category
- Search Quora.com and see what people are asking
- Put your key words into AnswerThePublic
- Use Ubersuggest to get a long tail list of related search terms for the topics you talk about
- Search Reddit for your topic and find threads there, read what people are asking and answering
- Search YouTube and watch videos and read comments of popular videos on your topic
- Search Twitter and Instagram for words related to your topics and see what people are posting. Comment on their posts with insights and/questions to begin a conversation
- Go into online communities and begin talking with your audience
- Search BuzzSumo to find out the most shared content for your key words