Discovering the online presence of my target audience
I've started a new blog about plants: Plant care for beginners. It's very different than what I normally write about, but too often I heard that people don't know how to take care of their plants, or "they just keep dying". I've had my fair share of struggles with them, but through a few very simple tricks, I've learned how to keep them alive. So my objective is: "How can I help others to keep their plants alive?".
Starting a blog
Since I love writing, this was a pretty simple start: just start a blog with tips about the plants you own and have been able to keep alive over a longer period of time. So far, I've posted two guides on there, so that's very exciting. One thing that was a bit more difficult was reaching the target audience: people that struggle to keep their plants alive. Being a web developer, I thought to check Twitter but soon realized that the target audience isn't active on there. But then I had a thought: "Why do people like plants?". Well, they make you feel calm and happy, they look good, they smell...Wow wow wow… they look good! You need visual stimulation...Instagram!
Joining people in the place they hang out
This is when I checked Instagram for my target audience, and there are a lot of them! There aren't just a lot of them, they're also very active! They post their own plants, look at other plants all day, they leave likes and comments with questions and they follow everyone in the community. This was a goldmine! This is when I decided to create a new Instagram account for my blog. One that was fully focused on the plants and the care of them. I didn't want any distractions from my personal Instagram account, they needed to be two separate entities.
I set up the account and switched it to a business account, to be able to have insights about engagements and interactions. I put my blog in the bio and just started posting. I didn't expect a lot of engagement in the beginning, but by the second day, I had 65 followers. In the second day alone I gained 50 followers and this blew my mind. Keep in mind that my personal account has 300 followers, but it took me 3+ years to get that amount. Now I have a third of that in 4 days.
Taking my audience to my blog
By putting the link to my blog in my bio, I expected to get at least some visitors to my blog and I actually did get a few. The day when I got 50 followers, I had 6 going to my blog. This isn't a lot, but it's interesting to see that little "spike" when something on a different platform happens. I think I've found where I should focus my attention, besides actually writing blog posts of course, and that's posting quality photos and advice on Instagram. This is where most people will benefit from it. If those people go to my blog and find the detailed blog posts, that's amazing, but as long as I was able to help them with their plants, I'm satisfied.
The next steps
The next steps are to attempt to drive traffic to the blog through helpful comments and advice on Instagram. But using only Instagram isn't enough yet, I'm sure there are more places where my audience has an online presence, I just have to find this. Perhaps they're on Reddit or another platform like this. This is all in the future, but the foundation has been built and from here I'll attempt to grow my audience by doing what I like to do: Help others to keep their plants alive.
Do you have any advice for me what I could do to find the online presence of my audience more easily? Perhaps you have any questions for me about this topic. You can reach me on Twitter or, if you're interested in plants, also on Instagram @plantcareforbeginners.
Posted on: May 11th, 2019I help you achieve great SEO, higher conversions, and help you grow your business
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