How do I find my target audience???

[Toribelle]

Hi bloggers! I write a blog that chronicles my last year of college and all of my learning experiences (internship hunting, career fairs, resume writing) to my job hunt in the real world coming up in December. I try to keep my posts light and humorous, targeted to my age group college students-young professionals.

My questions is, how do I get to them? How do I find people specifically in this demographic to share my blog with? Sure, promoting on bloggeries is great, but I really, truly want to reach people that I think my blog will help! Any suggestions? I'd love to hear any feedback you have! Thanks for your help!!

[ZCgaminglife]

Hm...try looking for college student forums that talk about university? That would be your best guess.

[kellymccausey]

Find and follow college students on Twitter and do the same on Facebook. You can frequently share your blog post links and ask for their comment

Guest blog on other relevant blogs of course.

[Bloggeries]

You need targeted traffic, not just blogger traffic... This place is more to learn / discuss and traffic is gravy on your "whatever meal you love".

Facebook is a great medium and try twitter search for people discussing what you are talking about and go from there...

[Melody]

I've come to the conclusion that a blog is about 80% -90% of your time spent on hard work on the content. About 10- 20% of your time is spent on marketing. Your strategy will depend on what you think will work for you.

I had been using twitter for a long long time before I started blogging, so it was a natural fit for me. Twitter is hard to use well. Too many people try to use it to just push out links. It's about connections. I think if you really are good at twitter, you'll get a great return on your time investment. Use the search box and find other people who have the same interest as you on twitter. Follow those people. And when people follow you, you should follow back most people. Unless you are a real famous celebrity you can't get away with not following anyone.

If you don't like twitter, find another kind of social media that works for you: Facebook, Plurk, Digg, Twitter, or StumbleUpon ... I don't use all of those. But just find one you like, and develop relationships with others who would be interested in your content.

Market your blog also by getting involved in blogs/forums that are on topics you like. For example if you're into Chevy cars, start commenting on high quality car blogs and forums - Do not leave spam!!! Leave really great comments.

And then lather, rinse, and repeat.

Write great content. (80-90% of your time)
Use a little social media (10-20% of your time)
Write great content. (80-90% of your time)
Use a little social media (10-20% of your time)
Write great content. (80-90% of your time)
Use a little social media (10-20% of your time)
And repeat...

[kellymccausey]

I would adjust that a bit, especially in the beginning.

You write great content (25-30% of your time) and spend the rest of the time promoting it, building links to it, connect on social media around the topic, etc.

It's the business of publishing. You write a book and then spend the next YEAR promoting the heck out of it.

[artizhay]

I'm not sure if Twitter has a link on their site to their independent/advanced search feature. I've looked everywhere before but I'm pretty sure it's not there.

Anyway, go to Twitter Search and click on "Advanced Search." That gives all sorts of criteria to search with. You could use the exact phrase filter to search for "applying for internships," the hashtag filter for "#collegesucks," and who knows what else. See what it does for you.

I use it to find people with very similar interests as me (obviously...) and then they read my blog and all of a sudden I get a shoutout, DM, or other type of mention saying my blog is awesome, telling their followers to visit my blog, etc. Happens daily now.

[ChickenFreak]

Originally Posted by kellymccausey

I would adjust that a bit, especially in the beginning.

You write great content (25-30% of your time) and spend the rest of the time promoting it, building links to it, connect on social media around the topic, etc.

It's the business of publishing. You write a book and then spend the next YEAR promoting the heck out of it.

I have to disagree. If you're making a full time job of your blog, then 25-30% of your time, or about twelve hours a week, might work. Though, really, I still doubt that - if your blog is full time, you want a full time income from it, and I don't see how you can write content that qualifies in twelve hours a week.

But if you're the average person who gives the blog maybe two to ten hours a week, the content needs _most_ of that time. And until there's a good backlog of good content, the people who drop by due to your marketing are unlikely to stick around.

[Toribelle]

Thanks everyone! This is all really great feedback! I'm taking samples from everyone and trying a little bit of it all

[Personal Bloggers Unite]

Definetly Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, the top community sites out there.
Of course, Forums.

There are so many discussions and people out there looking for college, and vlogging about college, etc. etc.

Get together! Talk, add these other to your blogroll! Comment on theirs!