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Level 4 - It's all about the audience

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The best curators serve their audiences. That means they understand what they care about and what their problems are. This require some degree of empathy. So how can we get to know our audiences better?

These tips will help define your blog's target audience. Some bloggers might be a bit disillusioned when it comes to what sort of content they should be writing. When comparing themselves to some of the larger names out there who sometimes don’t appear to blog about anything in particular (thebloggess.com comes to mind), some bloggers believe it’s a simple case of mimicry that will lift them into the limelight. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. A big part of running a successful blog, especially for those who aren’t already table-names, is the strategy behind getting up to speed. It can go far beyond merely picking a topic and rolling with it, and the better prepared a blogger is, the more likely he or she is to get results. Apart from delivering fantastic content, a blogger must also understand who exactly it is that they are writing to. Assuming you are planning to run a successful blog and achieve sensational results, this thorough guide to defining your blog’s target audience is sure to send you in the right direction.

3 Audience Types That Are Essential to Successful Content Marketing. 10 tips for understanding your audiences and targeting new ones. Published Updated 10/10/13 2:11 pm News companies, especially newspapers, were historically organized to pursue mass audiences. The goal was to build up the biggest possible audience by covering the widest array of general interest topics. That’s no more. In a consumer-driven media age, in which charging for digital content is becoming a large part of the business model, publishers have to focus more on individual users’ needs and desires. The new goal, then, for news companies is to inspire active engagement with focused groups of loyal users.

Specialization is the only way to do this. Strategies to determine your target audiences and develop plans to to serve them desirable content were key areas of discussion at the most recent American Press Institute workshop, held at The Arizona Republic. From their presentations and interactions with participants we identified 10 key insights: 1. 2. Mersey said people may change the two to three things they follow depending on life circumstances. 3. Know your audience: How the digital native generation consume media. This is the second half of our look into the media habits of modern consumers, according to their age.

Last week we profiled the over-35s who grew up with print. Here we profile the "millienial" under-35 age range. Whereas most adults passed signifitcant milestones before the internet invaded all aspects of daily life, young people today can barely, if at all, remember a time when it didn't exist. Anyone aged over 35 today would have left school or university, got their first job and maybe bought some property long before Google or Facebook were household names. Children leaving school this summer weren't even born when Google launched. The media habits this internet-savvy "millenial" generation pick up now will stick with them as they become the big spending, high-worth consumers of the next few decades. Mobile futures The biggest trend of all and it effects everything else - so much so, it hardly bears repeating - is the switch to smartphones and tablets.

It's not all bad though. Know your audience: How the print generations consume media in the digital age. This is part one of a two-part series looking at the media habits of modern consumers, according to their age. Here we profile people aged 35 and over - you can also read part two, focusing on the younger generation of "Millenials". If you're 35 or over today, you were a fully grown human being at the turn of the century and remember a time before the internet had significant impact on the media world . Dial-up was still the dominant form of internet access in the UK in 2000 and only half the population owned a mobile phone. Ubiquitous broadband and a smartphone in every pocket and handbag were still a long way off and you'd have to wait another decade for the launch of the iPad. This is the last print-native generation - the people who grew up consuming media the way most big media companies still produce it.

But that doesn't mean the way they consume media isn't changing. Here's some of the key stats you need to know about them. Spending power Old school news Magazines.