How to find your audience?
I've been working a few months on https://www.diabeticme.org. This website tells the stories about the lives of people with diabetes. It also shares diabetic friendly places.
I am struggling with finding my audience on the web. There are many diabetic people but I find it difficult to reach out to (all) of them.
I am active on Twitter as this give me the best return rate.
I tried posting on Reddit and this actually gave me the first results to start on my project.
I ask diabetic if they want to share their story via an online interview.
I am trying to reach out to more but not really sure where to go next.
Thank you.
My naive guesses would be (a) pre-existing communities for diabetics, (b) searching Google for various things, and (c) at doctors' offices. But I'd recommend having lots of conversations with your intended audience members and looking for similarities.
Thank you for your great feedback. I'll these ideas in consideration an try to focus on them.
Hi Ely, I really like what you've created and I think it's really helpful. My dad is a type 2 diabetic and I sometimes look for foods that are good for him to add to his diet. I would assume a lot of others with diabetes are usually on the hunt for medical, food and fitness advice on the net so I think having content related to those topics could help you bring your audience to you.
You already have a friendly places section so I think sections for those other topics would be helpful as well. This would be probably be more of a long-term strategy as SEO is a long game but ultimately I think you will start getting them coming to you. At that point you could present some call to actions about the interview and how they could be helping others by sharing.
I hope that helps, just the first thing I thought of when I took a look at your site.
Keep up the great work!
Good insights. I tried to start with something different but indeed I must try to add more content that is relevant for most users.
Why don't you start with Google - the biggest search engine in the world.
In order to find audiences, first identify what questions, queries or problems they have. Once that is done, keyword research is performed to see which queries are worth targeting. Step 3 - create the content or landing page that meets the criteria and search intent for that particular query.
This way you will build up an engine that will generate relevant audience to your site on a monthly basis. Instead of going to your audience, let them come to you.
In my opinion, this will have the best ROI in the long-run, as many other solutions need active participation, so as soon as you stop tweeting, your traffic plummets which is the opposite on Google.
As some people already mentioned, consider making a list of influencers or people with an already established following (that have your target audience) and reach out to them.
They may not all reply but if even if you get one; it could potentially put you in front of hundreds of thousands of your target audience.
You're doing great work. Good luck
I think the last point that @csallen mentions here is super important: It sounds like you already have a few customers/members, now it's time to talk to them.
This isn't about surveys or something like that, but actual, cold outreach by typing up emails to dozens of your customers. Schedule as many calls as you can.
Things you should look for:
What are you doing to maximize the network and relationships of the people you have interviewed so far? It seems like people whom you’ve interviewed would be wanting to share their story with their network.
If you can find people who have an audience, who also have diabetes, and can land interviews with them, you will get access to their network if they share.
Hi Ely,
First and foremost, I love the space!
I love people who do well by doing good, now you just have to solve the doing well part ;-)
I'd really dig into a world of personas!
Try to find 2-3 personas and really dig deep - Who they are, what they like, where they get their info, how do they communicate with each other.
Once you've created a really good persona (and it's not easy), you'll see the plan start writing itself.
So here is my advice. I have a friend with diabetes and she shares her life and advices on Instagram. In fact hashtag #diabetes will give you 4.4M posts.
Try to reach those people on Instagram. Pay them if needed. At the end of interview ask them to recommend other people to talk too. After interview ask them to make a post with link to your website. Think on creating an Instagram account and your own hashtag. Post previews there.
Just don’t give up. You are doing a good thing. It is always difficult at start.
Thanks for your input. This kinda worked. I have about 10 new story submissions and up to 30 new subscribers. Also looking onto accessing those that have higher followers.