In this second-part edition of "How to Find Your Target Audience", we're going to talk about maintaining and growing your existing fan base. If you need help finding your fan base, go back to last week's post and start there!

Once again, I'm going to be pulling information from this article on Standout Books. It's very informative, so go there and read it and plunge forward into finding your audience!
Here are some easy things you can do to help you understand who your audience is, and to help you grow your following.
1. Use Facebook!
Seems like everybody and their momma has a Facebook these days. I've mentioned before how comprehensive Facebook's algorithm is, and you should capitalize on this! When you set up a Facebook page, it gives you insights into who is following your page. This can be very helpful in finding your target gender, age range, and other important factors.
Use this Facebook Insights Beginner Guide to help you!
2. Use Email Lists!
Having a newsletter is extremely important. It allows you to share exclusive content with your readers, like free stuff and author events. I use MailChimp, which keeps track of how many opens I get, where they originate from, and which email addresses have the most opens. It also ranks the email addresses with stars based on how active they are.
There are other ways to mine data from your email lists. I'm not sure about MailChimp, but some providers can give you specific data about your subscribers.
If you need help building your subscriber list, check out websites like Instafreebie and MyBookCave!
3. Use Polls!
This is where having a subscriber list comes in handy. Create polls to help you determine what your audience likes, and what they'd like to see more of from you. This helps you narrow down your target profile.
4. Most importantly, Create a Profile!!
"This step applies to new and established authors as a reader profile is at the heart of your marketing efforts. Doing this will not only give focus to your marketing campaign, but it will also make your campaign far more effective. Suddenly, you are able to address the specific needs and desires of your readers which forms the foundation for developing relationships and breeding loyalty.
You may wish to write a bullet point list of your perfect reader or you may even want to stick a photo of your perfect reader in your office. Some of the authors that we work with actually write a short biography about their readers. You can take any approach that works best for you, as long as that approach gives you a clear understanding of your readers."
Don't forget that you can have two profiles for the same book. You can have more than one type of reader that would enjoy your work. Obviously, having one "ideal" reader is easier to work with, but once you've determined who this person is, begin to broaden from there.
"Here’s how you can do this:
-Sally from San Diego becomes “Women in California”. -36 years old becomes “aged 30 -40”. -A boy called Angus and two girls aged 3 and 5 becomes “has a family” or “is a mum”. -That turtle called Shelly morphs into a generic “loves animals”. -Those years of partying at college become “has some college education”.
You can go into as much detail as you like."
And, of course, once you find your target audience, you have to interact with them! You have to tell them about your book and start building ways to keep in touch with them to let them know about what you're doing. At this point, you should be or should have already started building your brand. Next week we'll talk about what that means!