How to Create a Reader Avatar for your Blog and Build an Audience

When writing content for your blog, it’s essential to focus every post on helping your perfect reader. Otherwise, your audience becomes fragmented and unengaged when you attract the wrong readers.

You want everyone reading content to be your target audience. That way, they sign up to your email list for more content, buy one of your products. Before we share how to create a reader avatar for your blog, let’s go through what one is.

What is a reader avatar?

It starts off with why you are creating content in the first place. Do you want to help people and build an email list so you can sell them products in the future? Do you want to generate revenue through AdSense and affiliate marketing?

At this point, you should know what niche you’re focusing on and why you are creating content. The next step is figuring out who your target audience is, and this is where the reader avatar comes into play.

The reader avatar is a description of your perfect reader.

When creating content, it’s handy to have your avatar in mind and ensure that you’re writing for them. You need to ask yourself questions to start building out the avatar; we will cover those in this article.

Write down your responses to these crucial questions.

Who is your perfect reader?

To answer this question, you will need to initially focus on demographics, but we recommend giving your perfect reader a name.

• What is their name?
• Is your perfect reader male or female?
• What age are they?
• Which city and country do they live in?
• What type of job do they have?
• Are they married?
• Do they have children?

Next, we need to start to dig a little deeper.

Does your perfect reader like to read long-form content, i.e. 2,000+ words, or is short form more preferred due to time. Would they like to read your content on a tablet, phone or laptop? At what time of the day would they consume your content: is it on the train to work or, in the evening, relaxing with a glass of wine?

Giving your perfect reader a name makes the writing process more personal, especially when you take them on a journey.

Where is your perfect reader active online?

Now that you have started to learn a little more about your perfect reader, the next step is to understand their online activities. Knowing where they hang out online will help distribute your content.

• Where are they active online?
• What websites, social networks, and platforms do they frequently visit?
• What books, magazines, and newspapers do they read?
• What are their hobbies and interests?
• Where do they socialise with friends?

At this point, you are starting to build an avatar of your perfect reader. You know who they are and where they are active online. In the following steps, we look at the goals and why they will want to read your content.

What problem does your content solve?

To complete this section of the reader avatar, you need to know the end goal for your reader. As a content creator, you need to focus; otherwise, you end up with a fragmented and unengaged audience. This is why we write about focusing on a niche and taking your audience on a journey.

• Are you teaching them a particular skill you have?
• Are you helping them overcome a challenge they have?
• Are you sharing your experiences to help your reader?
• Do you want to influence your reader to purchase a product?

Our friends at the Remote Hive are helping people secure remote jobs to escape the office. They send their perfect reader through the journey they will take by sharing experiences and helping them overcome the challenges. How about you? What problem does your content solve?

What motivates your perfect reader?

For the problem that you are helping people solve through your content, what is motivating them? Do they want to escape the office and work from home? Do they want to learn how to knit a jumper for a newborn niece or nephew? Are they desperate to live a healthier life and learn how to make green smoothies?

• What is the driving force to consume your content?
• Are they driven by a life goal or making changes to their life?
• Are they motivated to help others?
• Are they lacking in confidence and need help?

Figuring out how your content helps your readers and motivates them will help you understand the challenges, pain points and the journey you want to send them on to achieve the end goal.

Creating a reader avatar for your blog

At this point, you should have written down the answers to the questions highlighted in this article, and it’s now time to write your reader avatar.

Let’s look at the reader avatar for Creator Trail to give you an idea of the format. The graphic below shows how we have written our perfect reader avatar based on the questions featured in this article.

You’re welcome to use the same template to create your own avatar. We used Canva to design ours and then exported it as a PDF. Whenever we make a new piece of content, the first few minutes are spent reading through the avatar before we jump into the content creation.

Hopefully, this helps you understand how to create a reader avatar for your blog and drive the right people to your content.