Who do you want to read your articles?

If you say "everybody," I swear to all that is holy I will hunt you down and stab you in the throat. (Real line: then you are dooming yourself to failure before you even start.) Yes, everybody wants to be read by the whole world, but the whole world isn't going to be interested in what you have to say. By saying "everybody," you're dooming yourself to failure before you even start writing. (On a second note, you probably shouldn't threaten your readers with bodily harm, either.)

Who is your audience for your product and services? (Hopefully you figured that out before you even started business.) Those are the people most likely to be interested in your industry, but you have to be specific with your audience. The more targeted a piece is, the better chance you have of getting published.



I recommend: Here is a great resource for identifying target audiences and building customer profiles: http://www.alescodata.com/best-customer-profile.html

What is important to them?

Your audience is more than just age and career brackets. New parents, parents of elementary school-aged kids and parents of teenagers may all be parents, but new parents would be more interested in breastfeeding than parents of teenagers. By recognizing what would be important to them, you'll be able to get a good angle on your article.

If your product or service reaches across different demographics, then you have to figure out how to apply it to each of them. Your product might be perfect for stay-at-home mothers, churches and fundraising groups, but you'll need different language and different distribution to speak to each of them. What's important to one won't be important to another, which will render your article ineffective.



I recommend: Learn more about customer behavior here: http://www.lookingfit.com/articles/marketing/732_671fac101.html

See what others have to say

You're not the first person who's thought about writing an article targeted to goat ranchers in their early 20s. Find other publications with the same target demographic, and read them to get an idea of writing style, other topics and even possible distribution outlets. You'd be surprised how many niche publications are out there.



I recommend: Visit Magazine Board to browse a variety of publications http://www.magazineboard.com/ . For industry-specific pieces, look at http://www.tradepub.com/