In Hinduism, an avatar is the manifestation of a deity as a human. In the online world, the term has come to refer to a variety of other things including the hypothetical individual that is a representation of a market’s collective qualities and characteristics.

In other words, as a blogger, you should consider an avatar to be that person you imagine yourself communicating to when you write a blog post. This presupposes one thing, that members of a market have similar traits and qualities, making it possible for bloggers and website owners to create avatars.

Avatar Importance

Imagine yourself for a moment talking to someone. What can help you keep a person’s interest? What can you say that can convince him to listen and interact with you for hours on end? If you know a person well enough, you’d know exactly what topics and themes to bring up during a conversation. If the person you’re talking to is polite enough, you might occasionally get away with references to yourself or to topics that don’t interest him.

Members of a market are a lot like any person you communicate with except that they’re not often polite. When people go to blogs to read or watch videos, they want to be shown exactly what they’re looking for. Write about a topic outside of their interests and they leave.

You need to have an avatar in mind when you blog even if you don’t intend to sell anything so you’ll always know what topics to blog about that are within the interest of your target market or target readers.

Creating an Avatar

You will find the task of creating an avatar less difficult if your blog topic or theme is one that you are also very much interested in. If you love what you blog about, you already represent your market to some extent and you are therefore your own prototype of your avatar.

If this is not the case, this is when you need to create from scratch which is not a very easy task for a lot of people. This is yet again another reason for you to consider from the very beginning blogging about something of interest to you.

Now even if you are already a perfect example of a member of your own market, you still need to clearly define your avatar on paper. This is to make sure you take into consideration other traits you don’t have that others do and to ensure you never forget who your avatar is.

To help you make your avatar, you need to ask these questions:

• Who would be most interested in your topic?
• What are his motivations for wanting to read about what you blog?
• What are his traits, qualities and characteristics?
• Does he have any fears and apprehensions? What are these?
• Does he have any problems in life that you might be able to offer solutions to? What are these?

Some online marketers who are very precise about avatar creation go so far as to recommend that you also identify the smallest details including, but not limited to:

• Age
• Gender
• Civil status
• Geographic location
• Family composition
• Educational attainment
• Employment status

I would say it is important to be detail-oriented, mainly because, the more you know about your target market or reader, the easier for you to communicate with him and keep his attention. For example, identifying your avatar’s fears and life issues can help you create blog posts geared towards helping him solve those issues.

Online Research

The obvious question you’d ask yourself would be: How sure am I that the avatar I’m creating exists? What if I’m just creating someone in my head and there aren’t people like that? Again, you’d avoid this problem if you already represent your market to some degree.

If you’re having doubts about your avatar, online research is the only solution. Visit sites, forums, message boards and communities related to your topic. What kind of group or groups of people frequent these places? Are they mothers, fathers, single individuals? Are they looking for solutions to certain problems? How do they communicate with each other?

Avatar Example

Here is an example of an avatar for a yoga exercises site. This is by no means a complete representation but it’s good enough for the purpose of illustrating how to create and use an avatar.

• 35 year old woman perhaps nearing quarter life crisis
• on the brink of experiencing health issues because of lack of exercise
• works in a 9-5 job while trying to take care of three kids and a husband
• extremely stressed out and about to lose it
• looking for a way to de stress, relax and be happier and healthier
• with some academic background in physical therapy but shifted to sales and marketing for a pharmaceutical company
• experience in PT convinced her to study yoga

What does this tell you? With this avatar in mind, you know that your avatar’s problem is stress. Hence, when you write blog posts, you’ve got to do so with the intention of helping this individual find the solution through yoga. Since your avatar is around 30 and has some knowledge in yoga and the health industry, you’d also know how to shape the tone of your posts so as not to appear like you’re talking to a total beginner.

This is just a starter’s guide to visualizing your avatar. Use the guidelines here to create your first avatar. Expect however that as you get better at what you do online that you might have to tweak your avatar along the way.