No, the title doesn’t have anything to do with James Cameron’s movie…

This exercise is meant to help you identify and classify your target audience so you can get to know them better and ultimately feed them with the content that they want to watch.

So what you want to do next time that you go to bed is to spend maybe 4 or 6 minutes creating these ideal characters that you think represent your 2 or 3 average types of viewers.

Let me break this down for you…

If you’ve ever played a roleplaying game then you know the first thing you have to do is to create a character or an avatar to represent you, give it some physical appearance, clothes, weapons, mental skills, strengh, dexterity and all that stuff.

I used to be an illusionist stealthy con-thief kinda guy back when I was a kid and played this kind of games… now I’m a professional magician and ex reputated local card cheat (just kidding…)

Anyway,

Think about the kind of people that would most likely watch your videos, give them some life in your head and do it in a fun way, just as if you were playing The Sims, WoW or Dungeons and Dragons.

Here are some ideas that you can use…

Maybe you can think of a 26 year old artsy, design lover, bohemian indie guy. Or a nerdy tech guy in his mid thirties that is addicted to the internet and buying geeky gadgets online; a 22 year old sports guy that loves night clubs and getting drunk at music festivals who only checks the internet to see if that girl he picked up the other night left him a message on facebook so he can… well, you get the point (I call these guys “offliners” by the way…)

Perhaps your ideal viewer is a business man that is looking to make money online or he’s just browsing youtube for some reviews on a new and expensive dslr camera that he wants to buy…

What kind of books does he read? What kind of music is in his iphone? What car does he drive? How many children does he have? Does he watch Lost? How I met your mother or maybe Sex in the City…

Try to make a mental picture of two or three ideal viewers that you’d like to see sitting in the front row if you had to deliver your video’s content in the real life, face to face. Even give them a name if you want.

I bet you’ve never thought about this before, have you?

Here is why you want to spend 4 minutes tonight doing this thing…

WHY WOULD I BOTHER DOING THIS?

It’s not a secret that you must know who do you want to communicate with before you even try to start a conversation, specially if you want to profit from that relationship, in a way or another.

You might want to engage your viewers and make them subscribe to your videos, spread the word about your channel, get some serious feedback via video responses and comments, or perhaps you just want to sell them a tshirt with your brand’s logo.

There must be a reason that explains why you don’t talk to different people in the same way when you are in different contexts. Here are some examples:

What kind of voice and words do you use when you talk to a baby or your neighbours pet?
Do you speak the same way in a family meeting and when you are out with your friends?
How about when you were young and kissed your first love?

See, you don’t talk the same way, and when you do videos and publish them online you are communicating with a huge range of weird different people at the same time.

The better you know the guy on the other side the better and stronger the communication will be and the message will get stuck into their minds deeper and longer.

So, here is the important lesson…

Try to narrow down your target audience as much as you can and act and behave as one of them. Use their jargon an tribe slang, talk about things and news that happen in their everyday life and use stories about people that they can relate to so you can bond with them and be perceived as a friend, not just a weirdo at the other side of the screen.

You wouldn’t believe how much of a difference this little piece of advice can affect the way you deliver your content.

Try it out, all you have to do is spend 4 minutes tonight laying in bed with your eyes closed thinking about the giant blue freaks that are going to make you be the next nigahiga, Fred or hotforwords.

Now tell me seriously, have you ever thought about this before? I want to hear your comments

Alejandro

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