Targeting your audience

Over the past couple of years I’ve been quietly developing a series of small and unambitious news sites.

Even before I’d heard of the internet I’ve toyed with running an independent press, and while my current endeavours at targeted in commercial marketplaces for potential future leverage, I’ve never really sat down and focused on who these news sites are actually catering for.

They’ve been focused on the key requirement of content, and regular content at that. Which is fine to start with.

But in order for these sites to mature as independent news publications, I need to more pay more serious attention towards shaping them towards specific audiences. Because sometimes I just get it plain wrong.

Platinax News is a great example - on a business site for entrepreneurs, it covers a lot of tech news. The maturation of IPTV and development of Wi-fi are key subject areas I’ve focused on.

Which is great - anyone serious about long-term planning on the internet really needs to look at these subjects.

But it’s covering a frontier that is too distant for most companies who could find Platinax useful. And by the time the stories actually become discussion points, Platinax News has already gone by with it and left the discussion behind. Which is seriously bad.

So as I love the tech news, I now need to look at developing one of my other sites to present this news, and focus Platinax more on the webmastering and small business news - because that’s what the site’s practical audience is.

Anyway, now I realise the problem, it’s time to develop solutions and apply them.

However, an interesting aspect I’ve come across recently is Mind Mapping via Bill Slawski, and he gives a range of interesting ways in which you can apply mind mapping in order to focus a site on a target audience in keyword terms.

Something other entrepreneurs may want to take a look at, while they focus on stripping down their audience targeting to best effect. :)