Before you start looking for the people who will be interested in your content, you need to define very clearly who these people are. Once you have a specific picture in mind in terms of both demographics (age, gender, location, education etc) and psychographics (values, interests, lifestyles, etc), it will be much easier to work out how to reach them.

In coming up with your business idea in the first place, you presumably had an ideal user in mind. What specific problem are you solving with your website? What do you know about the kind of people who experience this problem? Where do these people spend their time? What might be the barriers for these people to try your service and how can you overcome those barriers?

A detailed understanding of your ideal user will allow you to identify the communities, social networks, and so on that you need to target in order to get your message in front of these people.

When it comes to content partnerships, I would encourage you to think about “what’s in it for them?” How can you pitch your idea in a way that demonstrates the value to your prospective partner? If you can nail the “so what?” then you’ll be creating a pull demand rather than just pushing.

Get in touch if you’d like help with clarifying who you’re actually targeting or, once you’ve done that, how to reach them!