Finding Your Audience

All of the students in our (recently renamed) Visual Journalism emphasis are required to have a blog set up AND to post to it on a regular basis. Their target audience, though, is me. I read it, I critique it and I comment on it.

The hope is that they’re sharing it with others, in which case this post by Tara Hornor over at Freelance Switch on how to focus your blog’s content to attract your target audience is worthwhile reading.

We talk about elevator pitches for story ideas – what happens if you get in an elevator and are standing next to an editor from National Geographic? What can you tell them before they get off the elevator so they’ll remember you and maybe give you that coveted assignment? Hornor puts it this way:

If you can’t say what you do in a sentence, you might be trying to reach too broad of an audience.

Three words. I ask my students to tell me their story idea in just three words – Who What Why (or How). Can you do that for your web site?