Who's Your Who? Identifying Your Target Reader Avatar

Lesson 2 of 11: Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career

Welcome back, writers!

Just like you would for any product or service, it’s worth it to spend some time thinking about your ideal customer or reader in this case. So today, we’re trying to identify: Who is your who? 

To discover your WHO, Bailey Richardson, Substack’s Head of Writer Success, encourages you to ask yourself two “deceptively simple” questions:

• Who does your writing bring together?

• Why will people rally around your writing?

According to Richardson, it’s better to describe your audience in terms of behavior and motivations rather than demographics. She suggests, “Describing your audience in terms of a shared perspective creates the space for something that anyone can be a part of… That could mean a diverse group of people who overlap not in age or categories but in a passion point.”

For example, Emily Atkin describes her publication

HEATED

as “a newsletter for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis.” 

A couple more clear examples are Jessica Valenti’s Abortion, Every Day — for feminist commentary on reproductive rights, aka a newsletter for people who are pissed off about abortion bans — and Jessica DeFino’s The Unpublishable — “what the beauty industry won’t tell you, from a reporter on a mission to reform it,” aka a newsletter for people who are pissed off about consumerism and ridiculous beauty standards.

Depending on your topic, it might make sense to combine behaviors AND demographics for your ideal reader avatar. 

To come up with her ideal reader, Codie Sanchez of Contrarian Thinking put herself in the shoes of 25 to 40-year-olds who read The Hustle, Trends, or Morning Brew and would also be reading her content. Sanchez described her avatar as: “A loud-mouthed 30-year-old who knows a thing or two about finance. But has this dirty mouth, pounds too much coffee, and is ranting and raving on all these different ideas.”

I can picture this reader so clearly. Can’t you? Let’s try to see our own readers with such specificity.

This is what I came up with for

Podcast Bestie

:

Podcast Bestie is a best friend to indie podcasters who are eager to grow their shows, monetize, and perhaps break into the industry. They're creatives, side hustlers, probably skew anti-establishment, and they want to have fun on their podcasting journey.

To give you some food for thought, here are six newsletter writers on their main audience: