My confession: I have taught the same lesson on target audiences, to thousands of students, and some of them still walk out thinking "everyone" is a valid answer to "who is your customer."  They say, “We don’t want to miss anyone.”
The businesses that grow aren't the ones shouting into a crowd hoping someone's interested. They're the ones who picked a person, learned exactly what that person worries about at 11pm, and then showed up exactly there. Everyone else just gets to watch and feel left out, which, oddly makes them want in too.

Who is the Hero of Your Story?
Not you. Never you. The hero is your customer. You're Gandalf. You're the wise person who shows up with the right tool at the right time and then steps offstage. If your "About Us" page reads like a story about yourself, congratulations, you've cast yourself as the hero of a story nobody asked you to star in.
Understanding your audience isn't a "got it, moving on" kind of lesson. It's a "relearn it” every time the market changes or someone invents a new way to do something. Businesses don't fail because nobody tells them about target audiences. They failed because they heard it once, nodded, and then went right back to talking about themselves.

Knowledge doesn't always stick. Practice does. (A teaching moto of mine)

What Actually Works

• Name the one person, not the demographic. "Sarah, 34, who just took over her family's clothing store and is terrified of looking incompetent in front of the regulars" beats "homeowners 25-54" every single time.
  
• Find the 11pm worry. What keeps your hero up at night that your product or service quietly fixes? Lead with that, not your founding story.
  
• Make them the hero in your content, not a supporting character in yours. Posts about their problem   outperform posts about your product, every time I've measured it.
  
• Stop optimizing for "everyone might like this." Optimize for "this one person would screenshot this and   send it to a friend."​

If you want the long version of this lesson without sitting through my actual class, read Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller or This Is Marketing by Seth Godin. Both make the same point I do, with better production value and no tests.

Follow @thesocialprof on Facebook or Instagram.

Kellie Emrich, DBA
Marketing and Business Professor ​

​One of the biggest mistakes people make on LinkedIn is writing as if they're having a conversation at a dinner party. At a dinner party, people have chosen to be there. They're sitting down, relaxed, and ready to listen. They expect conversation and are willing to give you their attention.

LinkedIn is different.
LinkedIn is more like a busy city street.

People are scrolling between meetings, answering emails, waiting for a Zoom call to start, or standing in line for coffee. They are moving quickly and making split-second decisions about what deserves their attention.

Your post isn't competing with the people at the dinner table. It's competing with everything else happening in their day.

That's why many LinkedIn posts struggle to gain traction. They start too slowly, provide too much background, or bury the main point several paragraphs down. If you want people to stop scrolling, you need to give them a reason immediately.

Instead of opening with:
"I was recently thinking about an experience I had several years ago that reminded me of something important about leadership..."
Try:
"Most leaders are solving the wrong problem."

Which statement makes you want to keep reading?

The goal is to earn attention by leading with an idea, insight, question, or observation that matters to your audience.
​
Here are a few ways to make your LinkedIn posts more effective:
Start with a strong hook
Give readers a reason to stop scrolling within the first one or two lines.
Get to the point quickly
Don't make readers work to find the lesson. Lead with it or get there fast.
Focus on one idea
The best LinkedIn posts are often built around a single insight, not five different topics.
Create curiosity
Share a surprising observation, challenge a common belief, or ask a thought-provoking question.
Deliver value
Once you've earned attention, reward it with a useful lesson, practical advice, or a meaningful story.

You're not speaking to an audience that is waiting to hear from you.
You're speaking to a busy audience.
Your job isn't to have a dinner-party conversation.
Your job is to say something interesting enough that a busy person walking down the street stops, turns around, and says:
"Tell me more."

Follow @thesocialprof on Facebook or Instagram.

Kellie Emrich, DBA
Marketing and Business Professor