I recently joined a new company where half the employees are remote and half are located in a central headquarters office. I’ve never had a remote position before but I have done my fair share of home office work since I run my own side business and blog. The first week has been exciting and challenging.

It’s a Partnership

Being a remote employee is more about being in a partnership instead of the typical employer-employee relationship. Each side is ensuing trust in the other. As an employee, you trust that the company is who they say they are. You don’t always have a chance to meet someone in person before you join the team. Even after multiple phone conversations and interviews, there is still something a little odd about joining a company where you have not yet met anyone in person — not even your boss.

The company trusts that you will be online, available, and working when you say you are. I’ve had a lot of people ask me, “how will they know if you’re actually working?” Well, the truth is that if you’re not working, they’ll know very quickly. As a remote employee, the employer doesn’t just see you sitting there at your desk all day, the only information they have to go off of is the work you produce. This is a win-win for every one involved. Those who don’t truly want to work will be weeded out quickly and you’ll be left with people who are dedicated workers.

You Have to be an Excellent (and Honest) Communicator

No one is there looking over your shoulders making sure you’re staying on track, have enough work, or know what to do. As a remote meployee, you have to reach out to your manager or your main point of contact to let them know where you stand. If you are finding yourself with extra time in your hands, you’ll need to reach out ask for more work. If you’re overwhelmed, speak up sooner rather than later. If you don’t understand something, don’t hesitate to ask because it is unlikely someone will notice until it is too late.

Be Open to Feedback

And don’t take things personally. As a remote employee, I’ve noticed communication and workflow moves more quickly. Non-verbal communication is limited or totally absent, so just remember that feedback is not meant to insult you or your work. Be open to feedback so that you can get better and move forward. In fact, I would strongly encourage you to constantly ask for it so that your coworkers are more comfortable giving it — especially in the beginning. Working at a remote company is very much about being a great collaborator. Leave your ego behind and embrace others’ opinions so that you can grow your skills and expertise.

What You Should Look For In A Remote Company

During interviews you might find yourself defending your qualifications and your ability to work from home. It is important for the company to invesitigate you, but it is also important for you to investigate your future employer. You must qualify your future employer in the interview process to make sure you are a good fit.

Questions I Asked

There are a few questions I was thankful I asked. These are questions that I think anyone interviewing for any job should ask.

• What supplies will be provided for me? A laptop? Phone?
• What will the first month of employment look like?
• Does the company offer continuing education opportunities?

These questions allow you to discover more about the company’s culture and generosity. It will allow you to predict a little bit about how flexible they are, you’ll know some of the expectations they have for you, and how invested they are in their employees. Whether you’re looking into a remote opportunity or not, these questions can reveal a lot about a company.

Questions I Wish I Had Asked

I love details and wish that I had asked these questions simply out of curiousity. These are by no means make-or-break questions, but they would have given me a better idea of what to expect.

• How many hours a day or a week will I be on the phone? (Mostly because I am required to use my personal device for company calls at this point.)
• In the first few months, how much client-facing work will I be responsible for and what happens if there is an error in my work? (Because, for me, the fear of the unknown is usually worse than the known consequences.)
• I found this one out during my second week with the company, but I would have loved to ask, “What companies do you model your company’s culture after?”

Again, the answers to these questions would not have turned me off from the opportunity, but I may have been a bit more prepared and had a better understanding of the company’s approaches.

Company Culture Green Flags (and Red Flags)

There are a few signs you can look out for throughout the interview process that will be indicative of how the company works. Here are some green and red flags to look for.

Green Flags

• They will provide you with supplies, including a laptop, before your first day of work.
• They have a structured onboarding plan for your first 2–4 weeks at the company.
• They are quick to reply to your emails and questions and might even be proactive about getting information from you to get you set up for your first day of work.
• They keep you up to date about the hiring process, let you know who you’ll need to speak to next, and when your next interview will be. Again, communication is extremely important in a remote work situation so you want to make sure your future employer is quick to respond and has a tendency to be proactive about things.

Red Flags

• They don’t provide you with at least a laptop to do your work.
• They don’t have a plan or training schedule ready for your first few weeks.
• They don’t reply quickly to your emails and questions.

In the end, trust your gut. If there are constant road blocks and red flags, consider moving on. However, don’t be too suspiscious if things are moving along smoothly, it’s not necessarily that it is too good to be true. Some companies really are on top of their game and will make the process as smooth as possible for you and those are the ones you want to work for.

What are your hesitations about becoming a remote employee?

Canva is currently my favorite online tool. Recently, I discovered that the human brain can process visuals up to 60,000 times faster than text. I had an inkling that there was a correlation between the popularity of a post and its visuals, but this discovery made it crystal clear. Great content marketers must use visuals to further engage their audience.

Visuals should accompany every piece of content you produce and Canva is a FREE drag-and-drop platform to create professional-looking photos for any visual you will ever need. It has become my favorite tool to use

1) Canva for Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest all display images in different sizes. Ideally, you’ll create an image for each social media channel that you’ll use to share your article. Canva offers default image sizes for all types of social media which cuts down the time it takes to make individual images.

Knowing what intrigues people on each type of platform will help you come up with visual ideas for them. Facebook users behave differently than Pinterest users and we know that Twitter posts attract more clicks when the image is optimized for that platform.

2) SlideShares

SlideShare is essentially an online PowerPoint presentation (without animations). It is an alternative to a simple picture, infographic, or video and is highly interactive. Its popularity has skyrocketed since LinkedIn acquired it and now many respected marketing firms utilize SlideShare to further spread their cause.

According to Buffer, Canva images that are optimized for Slideshare should be 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels tall.

Another small bonus for using SlideShare instead of images or videos is that you can include links on your slides for SlideShare. You can lead engaged readers to another article or an email subscription form on your website. To include links on Canva images, you’ll want to download your work of art as a PDF to the link remains active.

3) Quotes

Lets face it, everyone loves a good quote. It can inspire an audience and can be an easy way to trigger your audience to take an action, like sharing the quote on their social media. Displaying the quote can help your article go viral and further inspire your readers.

Canva makes it extremely easy to add an image and choose a font or simply use a template for your quote. In less than two minutes, you can have a motivational image that your audience will identify with which will enhance your reader’s experience.

4) Watermark Images

Whether you’re a professional photographer or not, adding a watermark on your photos can help prevent others from stealing them. Many people don’t understand photography copyright laws and use photos illegally without realizing it. Use Canva to add your name or even your website URL so that others know who the photo originally belonged to.

To add a watermark, simply upload your image, add text in white or black color, and then change the transparency in the text’s options.

5) eBook Cover for Email Subscribers

Canva comes with a 1410px x 2250px template for eBook covers you can completely customize to create a unique book cover. This is the correct size to use with publishers like Amazon Kindle or a standard PDF. Upload your own image or use their free illustrations or icons to design an eye catching cover.

Choose from a variety of fonts and colors to create your own unique style and make something your audience won’t be able to resist.

6) Infographics

Canva offers several free templates for infographics. Infographics are proven to have a longer “lifetime” on the web than typical images. They typically generate traffic for your website for months and years to come in search engines or through links to your sites from other reputable websites. Canva makes them super simple to create with their drag and drop platform. Use the templates as is and replace them with your information or take some time to customize them to your industry to really stand out.

7) Memes

Memes can spread like wildfire. Combine wit and humor in a meme for one of your articles and your readers will be more likely to share your article with their friends. Don’t forget to include a URL to your site on the image itself because memes tend to be taken and shared by themselves without a link to your site if they become very popular. You don’t want to miss out on any free publicity!

8) Comics

With all the free illustrations and icons that Canva offers, you can easily create a comic series. There are lots of chat boxes and thought bubble images you can choose from to give your characters a voice. All it takes is a little creativity!

9) Before & After Examples

Demonstrate your work with the use of before and after images! There’s nothing better than comparing the results of your work by showing the before image right next to the after image. Designers and personal trainers often use before and after pictures to demonstrate their capabilities, but don’t limit yourself if you aren’t one of those! Visuals help people understand the quality of work you can do for them.

10) Flyers

If you’re hosting or attending an in-person or online event - use Canva to make your flyer! They offer a standard flyer size template you can use to create an attention grabbing visual.

There are endless ways you can use Canva to grow your audience, educate your customers, and get more traffic to your website.

Don’t Ignore the Small Print

While Canva offers free images, keep in mind that they are not attribution-free images for the most part. Read their license and credit information before you use them.

https://support.canva.com/hc/en-us/articles/200298540-Do-I-need-to-credit-Canva-when-I-use-Canva-s-images-

Thankfully, there are a few websites that handout free images with no attribution needed.

• Free Stock Photos and Images - StockSnap.io
• Beautiful Free Images & Pictures | Unsplash
• 75 Free Stock Photos Ready for Use Anywhere (No Royalties, No Fees, No Worries)

Avoid Flickr and similar sites because anyone can upload images including those they don’t truly own copyrights to which could put you in a sticky situation in the future.

How Have You Used It?

In what ways have you used Canva on your website or social media? How was your experience with it? Leave your comment below or tweet @inesbmcneil!

Realizing who your audience is can sometimes come as some sort of epiphany. At least, that’s how it happened to me. You read article after article about how important it is to have a target audience. You think you know who you’re speaking to or trying to reach with your content, but there is still no spark with your audience and the people sharing your content aren’t exactly who you expected.

For the first couple of years I spent blogging, I thought I was creating content that my supposed target audience would like and value. I simplified complex concepts in easy to understand terms, but I was still coming off as a professional trying to teach John Q. Public about things he didn’t even know were important to him. Worst of all, I neglected the people who were reading my posts.

Sometimes you either don’t know or just ignore who is really reading your blog because you feel more comfortable writing for who you think is reading it rather than who you know is actually reading it.

Whether it’s because you don’t consider yourself an expert in the field or you’re desperately reaching for a different audience than the one you actually have, you can’t afford to keep ignoring the audience that has grown to follow and support you. Sometimes, you have to pivot your approach to accept the audience you actually have. To embrace the people who already invest time and energy into reading and sharing your content.

Who Is Really Reading Your Content?

When you don’t understand who is interested in the content you’re putting out there, you’re missing out on opportunities to grow your audience and your business.

According to HubSpot, “The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.).” You might be surprised with who you find in your current audience, but take it as information you can use to grow or create a target audience for your products.

Understanding your audience means you’ll be more efficient in everything you do because you’ll have a clear image of who will consume it. You’ll know what the person finds important, necessary, or irrelevant. You’ll be able to provide them specific, clear solutions to their challenges in life or at work.

Qualities You Should Consider When Determining a Buyer Persona

HubSpot recommends that you discover the whos, whats, whys, and hows of any target audience you consider before you begin creating content for them. The more detailed you can get with who the audience is, what they want to accomplish, why they want to accomplish it, and how you’ll fit into their journey, the more specific you can get with your content and connect with them.

Demographics

This is the most talked about characteristic you need to specify when determining your target audience. Demographics should include the person’s age, gender, marital status, race, cultural habits and morals, and more. The more specific you can get, the easier it will be to market towards them.

Geography

More than just where they are located, geography can give you insights into the local culture, interests, and mentality of your audience. A New Yorker, a Californian, and a Texan will have different priorities, local events, values, and experiences you can use to customize your message for your audience.

Status & Motivations in Life

Learning about your audience’s status in life is as important as knowing their demographics. You want to know why they do what they do and, most importantly, why they buy what they buy. Knowing whether they are fresh out of college, newly married, sending kids off to college, or just retiring, can have a dramatic impact on the content you offer. People of different life statuses will have different priorities and goals which can affect their emotions and purchasing behaviors.

Personal and household income level are other important factors to consider for not only targeting your content but also many aspects of your product. Hobbies, causes they are dedicated to, and attitudes are characteristics you can use to dive deeper into the target audience you’re interested in.

Status & Motivations in Career

In an effort to understand your audience, and furthermore, help your audience, you need to learn about what drives them to work every day — literally and figuratively. What do they want out of their career? What is their next step? And, finally, how can you help them get there? When you understand how you play a role in your audience achieving their goals, you’ve found the sweet spot.

Online Behavior

What sites does your ideal audience like to frequent? What motivates them to return to those sites? Where do they like to voice their opinions or participate in discussions? What social media platforms do they frequent? The answers to these questions will help determine some more specific digital marketing strategies you’ll need to reach your audience.

Tools You Can Use to Collect Data Immediately

Even though it is a great strategy, you don’t always have to send out an email survey through Survey Monkey to gather information about your audience. There are a variety of tools that are free and can quickly collect information from your audience without disturbing them.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an obvious choice. It is free, easy to install onto your website, and gives you access to a ton of information about how your viewers interact with your website. You can track age, gender, interests, and so much more about your visitors. I have an inkling that if you’re reading this, you’re already a experienced on Google Analytics so we won’t spend much time on this. If you’re not, check out this article for Google Analytics beginners by Moz.

Facebook Insights

If you have a Facebook page set up for your blog or business, Facebook Insights can take an in-depth look into the people who Like and interact with your page. Insights can get very specific including specific interests your audience participate in. Additionally, you can learn household income, household, home ownership status, spending avenues your audience prefers, purchasing behaviors, and even the type of vehicles they drive. It’s pretty amazing and creepy at the same time.

Facebook Groups

You can gather a great deal of information about your audience by joining Facebook groups that they participate in. Thanks to Facebook’s Poll feature, you can ask them questions on a regular basis without coming off as a spammer. You’ll want to sympathize with and acknowledge people’s responses to let them know you appreciate learning about their opinion. You may even want to ask them further questions based on their answers.

Followerwonk

If you are active on Twitter, you can learn more about your followers using Followerwonk. Followerwonk is another amazing Moz tool that is free. You can get a detailed breakdown of your followers by location, your follower’s followers, and when they are most active.

All of these tools are free, but if you have some sort of market research budget, check out the list Bufferapp put together. As you get more specific with your target audience, the more you’ll be able to identify with them and them with you.

Public Social Media Profiles

This is a more manual approach to researching your audience. Look up their profiles on one or more social media platforms to get a better feel of who they are, what content they share, and what get’s their blood boiling.

Facebook can have some steep privacy settings, but most people will share some things publically. You can take to Twitter, Pinterest, and even Google + to see their publicly shared content and opinions.

While you’re on their social profiles make a note of some other data such as when they are most active online, what websites they are most active on, what content they share the most, and their life and career statuses. On Twitter and Pinterest, you can also collect information such as hashtags your audience uses frequently.

Reasons that Knowing Your Target Audience Will Make Your Life Easier

It is often said that when you write as if you’re talking to anyone and everyone, you will reach no one because your content will be too generic for anyone to identify with.

1. Content Creation will Come Easier

You’ll be able to understand your audience’s struggles on a deeper level. When you define your audience, you will know what to write because you will know what your audience likes to read, the format and platform in which they like to consume or share the information, and the kind of message they will identify with. You can create content that is relatable and helps your audience move closer towards their goals.

2. The Tools You Will Need to Promote Your Content Will Become Clear

A good marketer knows where their audience is. There’s no sense in being everywhere when your audience is mostly on Facebook or YouTube or LinkedIn. You’ll save time and energy by focusing on specific social platforms instead of spreading yourself thin across many. Likely, if your audience is on Instagram, you won’t need to waste time being on LinkedIn, too. Those are two very different platforms and serve very different demographics.

3. More Engagement on Social Media

When you create content that resonates with your audience, not just anyone and everyone, they will be more likely to engage with your content on social media platforms, comment about what they’ve learned in your material, and share your content with the friends. Create content that they can’t help but share it with their friends.

4. You Can Participate in Their Online Discussions

When you know who your audience is, you know where to find them. If you’re targeting male engineers ages 50–65 then you know you’re likely to find them on LinkedIn most days and that is where you’ll want to spend your time.

You’ll want to be where your audience is not only to share your content and do some market research but also to participate in discussions that will allow you an inside look into how they think and what motivates them to take actions on what they read. Participating in online discussions can give you an inside scoop, help you build a reputation as being an expert in the field, and build relationships with influencers in the industry.

5. Better Conversion Rates

When you know where your audience wants to go and the goals they want to achieve, you’ll be able to clearly demonstrate how your material and products will get them there. Your landing pages will go from being generic to very specific which will improve your micro and macro conversion rates.

6. Your Design Can Reflect Their Taste

When you understand your target audience, lots of questions become answers. Even specific questions like the design of your website or landing page can be answered by simply thinking about what your target audience would enjoy. An old school 90s website design will likely be repulsive to an audience that is in their early 20s and, vice versa, a website that is too modern and is filled with sliders with an atypical navigation style can shut down an older visitor that prefers clear-cut menus. Understanding your audience means you’ll know what they are used to and what makes them.

7. You’ll Know Their Objections to Purchasing Your Product

When you take the time to get to know your audience, you’ll get to understand what objections they might have before purchasing your product. Understanding their challenges also means understanding where they might have an issue implementing your product or service into their lives. By knowing their challenges, you can show them how your product or service will like life simpler for them and why it is worth the initial time investment, monetary investment, and learning curve they might need to go through to implement it.

8. Higher Email Open Rates

This comes back to higher conversion. If you can customize emails to suite the reader’s immediate and relevant needs, they will want to read your material. As we all know, the title of an email essentially makes it successful or not. It is the only information the reader has to go off of before choosing to read it. If the title is irrelevant or doesn’t demonstrate or preview its benefits, your reader is likely to hit delete very quickly.

9. Your Call to Action Will be Obvious

When you know your audience, you know what they want. You can create the types of content they want in the styles they enjoy and make your Call-to-Actions irresistible for your readers.

10. Clearer Outreach

Your target audience will have a specific source that they like to get information from. They will also follow a small group of influencers who lead these like-minded people. If you can develop a relationship with these influencers by being helpful, you can potentially get your content in front of a lot of potential customers.

11. Better ROI

All of these factors will contribute to a better return on investment. When your material is shared more frequently, more emails opened, and conversion rates increased, your ROI will naturally have better results.

What Does a Target Audience Profile Look Like Anyways?

Now that you’re determined to put together a detailed buyer persona, let’s take a look at some examples that demonstrate the extent that you can go with this description.

Example 1: Sample Audience for Violence Prevention Effort

Interestingly enough, one of the most detailed audience descriptions was this sample audience for a violence prevention effort.

This description includes all of the characteristics mentioned above, even to the extent to that they list reasons why their audience may hesitate to fully grasp their process or approach.

Example 2: HubSpot’s Buyer Persona for Visual Creatives

HubSpot also provides a detailed example of a young father figure and all the qualities they are looking for in their potential new customer. Included in the description is additional information about the persona’s location in relation to suburban, urban, or rural living location.

Buyer Persona - Visual Creatives

The description goes into so much detail that you begin to think that this is a real person that they just interviewed. Sometimes writing in first person and putting yourself in your reader’s shoes can help you come up with some very specific details about their lives. The more your description seems like a real person, the better. You’re not creating content for imaginary figures, you want to make sure your content connects with real people.

Example 3: Visualizing the Target Audience

While this may not be the best example, it is an example of visualizing your audience. For many people, it helps to visualize who they are speaking to (I’m one of those).

Target Audience Profile

Creating a graphic around your ideal target audience can help you narrow down some specifics. This particular example could have gotten more detailed, but it was still worth including as an example to demonstrate that you can get creative with these profiles.

Be Wary of Assumptions

As humans, it is normal to make assumptions about other people. Our brains naturally categorize things, experiences, and people for quicker decision-making, but it can tarnish your audience descriptions with characteristics that are not a true representation of who they are or what motivates their actions. All of us have our biases, which is fine, as long as you are aware of them. Taking the time to get to know your audience now will save you a lot of back pedaling in the future.

Did you find this article helpful? What are some strategies you use to learn more about your audience? Comment below or tweet @inesbmcneil. I’ll do my very best to reply to everyone.