How To Define Your Avatar: Tips for Bloggers and Podcasters

Are you a content creator?

Do you have a podcast or website and perhaps are looking to gain a larger audience or readership?

I have a question for you … Do you know who is reading your content?

This is, of course, one of the most important questions that you can be asking yourself before you hit the publish button on your next piece of content.  In fact, this is probably an even more important question that you should be asking yourself before you even sit down to write your content.

Why all the questions about content creation?

Before we begin, I wanted to take a moment and share with you a little bit about why you are reading this email.

About a year ago, I began to take a look at what was being produced by educators on their blogs and podcasts. Many were writing about tech tools such as Google and Microsoft, and others were discussing topics surrounding educational leadership. The more I sifted through the Twitter hashtags, I noticed that there was a large hole that needed to be filled. Somewhere between the “how to” posts and the “look at me” type of posts was a big divide with missing content.

It was at this point, where I began to come up with a plan to not only find but attract educators who wanted to move beyond the “how to” type of posts and move into the world of educational business when I decided that I needed to come up with an appropriate Avatar for this new content.

What Is An Avatar?

The word Avatar is one that gets tossed around a ton these days. Essentially, an Avatar is the person or group of people to whom you are creating content for. Traditionally, you may look at your Avatar being the students in your class. When you create your lessons, you select age and subject appropriate materials and methods from which you will begin your instruction.

In the world of being an Edupreneur, your Avatar is the educators, business owners, and service professionals which you wish to reach with your content.

How Do You Choose Your Avatar?

When I work with educators who are just beginning their blogs or podcasts, I always tell them to think of who their listener will be.

• What do they do for a living?
• What type of family do they have?
• What are their goals and objectives when reading or listening to the content that is being produced by your channel?

For many first-time content creators, when being asked who their audience is, their answer is too broad. They often say “my audience is teachers”.

While that answer may be true, it's extremely broad and it sets a goal that will never be reached. When creating your content, you must always identify your target audience and only then ask the question … “what does my Avatar seek?”

Once You Have Your Avatar In Mind … Now What?

In our next blog post, we will be expanding the concept of “how to define your avatar. But, before we get to our next post, we have one more important thing to do which is to create a needs assessment for our Avatar.

What Is A Needs Assessment?

Essentially, a “needs assessment” is a list … it could be short or long … that puts your Avatar front and center.  Your needs assessment should produce 3-4 unique topics that your Avatars seek.

For example: If you are reading this blog, you probably are interested in:

• Creating or expanding your website
• Creating or growing an audience
• Building a Social Media following

In our next blog post, we will discuss how these topics will turn into Categories and Tags for your website and be the backbone for your content creation strategy.

Enrolling In Our FREE Online Course Today To Learn More!

If you are visiting this post, you probably fit into one of two categories:

1. You have a passion project you are working on and would like to get it to the point where you are making money from it.
2. You have an idea for a passion project and would like to learn how to make it profitable.

Does this sound like you? If so .. we would love to invite you to join us for our Build Your EDU Brand Online Course. Through this course, you will not only be able to interact with me 1:1 but will be given a host of additional worksheets and videos to help you with your goals.

Let's Work Together To Turn Your Dreams Into $$$'s

If you haven't had the chance to fill out our Branding Survey, please take a moment and let us know a little bit about yourself today.

Don't be afraid to reach out with any questions you may have. We are all in this together!

I'm excited to be a part of your journey and look forward to working with you!

See you soon,

Jeff