What do you do if you’re creating content for your blog, and you know your writing is good, and your
Is it you?
Is it your niche?
Is your blog ugly?
What’s going on?
Before you throw the towel in and give up on your dreams, take a long hard look at what you’re writing about.
You could be missing your audience’s pain points, and if you can’t hit on these, no amount of good writing is going to boost your traffic.
What Is a Pain Point and Why Do You Need Them?
Your audience’s pain points are essentially just problems that your audience needs to solve.
One of the most effective ways to build successful blog content that gets people to keep coming back to YOU (and not your competitors) is to find a significant issue your target audience is facing – then tell them how to fix it.
You need to solve pain points for your audience for a few reasons.
Not only will this generate a considerable amount of traffic to your blog, but it also helps to build trust and loyalty with your audience. Plus, these kinds of posts are the most likely to be shared and liked across social media.
I know that whenever I read a really great post that teaches me something valuable, I view that blogger as an authority, and I come back to their blog the next time I need something.
How Do You Find Your Audience’s Pain Points?
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to find problems that you can solve for your audience, once you know where to look.
Here are 11 easy ways that you can find out what your audience wants, and then give it to them!
1. Think of Universal Pain Points and How They Can Fit Into Your Niche
There are a few pain points that affect pretty much anyone. Things like:
- Saving and Making Money
- Improving Health
- Becoming Happier
- Gaining Freedom
If you can find a way to help people in these areas from within your niche, you’ve struck gold.
These kinds of posts are especially useful because they’re known as ‘evergreen’ – (they’re always relevant because people will always be looking for solutions to these problems)
Think of problems that everyone is facing, and try to find ways that you can solve them, while still relating to your niche.
This is an excellent place to start if you’re new to blogging because you’ll target a broader audience. From there, you can start to source fresh, niche-specific pain points as your following grows.
2. Look in Comment Sections
Comment sections are a great place to look for pain points – especially if you’re a new blogger.
You can check out the comment sections in spaces that are relevant to your niche, such as:
- Social media accounts
- Blogs
- Youtube Videos
- Articles
Many content creators and bloggers will ask their audience to let them know in the comments if they have any questions – and that can give you a great insight into what kind of things people in your niche are looking for, and want to know.
(Comment sections are also a great place to find out what is working well for other bloggers in your niche and what kind of content your target audience enjoys seeing, which you can use as inspiration for your own posts)
3. Look at Forums and Groups
Forums and Groups are an excellent resource for finding out what your target audience wants.
Join Facebook groups and online forums that are specific to your niche. Find out what people are talking about, what they are saying, what they want to know. Then start building some ideas about what is missing in your niche and what is popular.
The great thing about forums or Facebook groups is that you can just ASK people what they want.
Which leads us to our next point…
4. Just Ask
Just asking your target audience is the easiest way to find out what they want. If you already have an audience on your blog, this is super easy, because you can just ask your audience what they want in blog posts or on social media. You can just use the comments to inspire post ideas.
If you’re new to blogging, there are still other ways to ask.
You can go on forums, discussion websites, groups, or on social media comment sections, and ask people in your target audience what kind of problems they wish they had solutions to.
5. Use Quora and Reddit
Quora and Reddit are sites that people use to ask and answer questions.
These are fantastic resources for seeing what kind of discussions are being had in your niche, or for asking questions and connecting with potential readers.
You can reach a vast audience through these sites. It’s as easy as just asking, ‘what do you wish you knew about….?’
(These can also tell you what is popular in your niche and what consistently generates attention.)
6. Reviews
One of the best ways to see what your target audience feels is missing or struggles with is reading reviews.
These can be reviews about books, products, courses, or services.
Good reviews will show you what you should aspire to, but BAD reviews will show you what your audience feels they are not getting.
For example, if you see a majority of the bad reviews for a phone company say something along the lines of ‘we could never get hold of the complaints department’, – you could write an article called ’10 Phone Companies Known for Their Amazing Customer Service’.
7. Keyword Research and Trends
Finding trends and using keywords is a great way to stay relevant and bring in traffic.
Sites like BuzzSumo or Google Trends can give you an insight into what keywords are popular, what content is trending, and what the most popular posts from other content creators have been.
It can even be as easy as just going to the bottom of the page during a google search and checking out the ‘related searches’ that google gives you.
If you can see that something is consistently trending or that one type of post always ranks highly for others in your niche, then you know it’s something your audience is continuously looking for.
Once you have identified popular keywords, you can brainstorm post ideas that solve issues your audience is facing that are related to those terms.
8. Social Media
Social Media is one of the most powerful tools to find out what your audience’s pain points and interests are.
You can look at what is trending on twitter, or which hashtags are generating interest in your niche.
You can also read the comments on your socials or the socials of other people in your niche to see what kind of things people are talking about.
People are usually really vocal on social media about what they wish they had and want to see more of (especially in the comments sections!), so if you can work out how to give that to people, you’ll build yourself an audience.
It’s also another platform that you can use to reach out to your target audience to ask about the kind of things they are struggling with or interested in learning about.
9. Start Conversations in Everyday Life
If you’re looking to find out what kind of problems people want to solve, why not just ask the people that you know?
Find out what they would like to know about your niche, what kind of problems they would like answers to, and what they are struggling with.
Even if you don’t know anyone with knowledge of/interest in your niche, you can still hit on some universal pain points. You can also ask people who fit into the demographic of your target audience what they’re biggest struggles are and gain some insight that way into what is important to that group.
10. Use Pinterest
Pinterest is one of the most valuable tools for a blogger, especially a new blogger.
Not only will Pinterest send you emails notifying you about current trends and popular searches, but you can also use it to generate keywords and trending terms.
If you type a word into the search bar, underneath, you’ll see all the other related terms that people frequently look for.
Every time you click onto one of these keywords, you’ll get more keywords that are in demand, so there’s no limit to how many trends you can identify.
11. Keep Track of All Your Own Pain Points
This is the easiest and possibly most overlooked way to discover a pain point.
If you think about how many people there are in the world, it’s safe to say that someone else is wondering the same things you are.
When I write about blogging, a lot of my content ideas come from things I wanted to know when I started and the problems that I needed to solve.
Make a list of all the problems you’ve encountered in your niche, and keep that list updated whenever something new comes up. If you’ve struggled with it, someone else has (or is) too!
So there you have it! I hope this list helps you to understand your audience and bring in more traffic! If you have any of your own suggestions to share with the community, let me know in the comments below!
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