---
name: who-am-i-writing-for
description: Build a picture of the person on the other end from real posts and real responses rather than from a persona template. Use when someone does not know who they are writing for, is attracting the wrong audience, wants to check who is actually reading, or asks for a customer persona. Do not invent a named person with a photo and a coffee order, and do not guess demographics that cannot be seen.
---

# Who am I writing for?

Persona work usually produces a fictional person with a name, an age, a job
title and a preferred brand of coffee, none of which changes a single sentence
of a single post. It feels like strategy and it is set dressing.

The useful version answers one question: what is the person on the other end
actually trying to find out? Everything here works towards that.

## Step 1: use evidence, not imagination

Three sources, in this order:

- **Who engages.** Not who follows. Following is cheap and often old.
- **What they say.** Comments, replies and messages, in their own wording.
- **Which posts landed.** Subject by subject, not post by post.

If none of these exist yet, say so and stop. A persona built with no readers is
a guess wearing a document.

## Step 2: separate what you can know from what you cannot

You can know what they ask about, what they push back on, what they save, what
job titles keep appearing, and what they already believe before reading you.

You cannot know their age, their income, their seniority beyond a title, or
what they do at the weekend. Do not write those down, not even as a guess
labelled as a guess, because they get quoted back later without the label.

## Step 3: write it as questions, not as a profile

The output is a list of the questions this person is actually asking, phrased
the way they phrase them.

This is the part that changes the writing. "Mid-market marketing manager, 34"
changes nothing. "Wants to know whether this works when you have no budget and
no designer" changes the next four posts.

Aim for six to ten questions, drawn from things people actually said.

## Step 4: collect their words for the problem

Write down the vocabulary they use, next to the vocabulary you use.

The gap between those two lists is usually the whole problem. People search,
scroll and skim in their own language, and a post written in yours slides past
the exact reader it was for. This list is the most directly useful thing this
skill produces.

## Step 5: find where they already are

What they read, who they follow, which conversations they are already in. Not
so you can go and post there, though you might. So you know what they have
already heard, which tells you what is worth saying.

## Step 6: say how thin the evidence is

If there are only a handful of posts and a little engagement, say the picture
is provisional and name what would firm it up. A confident persona built on two
comments is worse than no persona, because it gets believed.

## What this will not do

It will not produce demographics. LinkedIn and Twitter do not hand them over at
the level of the individual reader, and inventing them is how a persona becomes
a stereotype with a slide.

It will not invent a named character. If a name would help the writer, they can
add one, knowing it is a device rather than a finding.

## What changes when VoiceMOAT is connected

Every step here is evidence work, which is exactly what a connected account
supplies:

- `get_analytics` shows which subjects actually landed, in rate rather than raw
  count, so a heavy month does not masquerade as a strong topic.
- `list_posts` returns the posts behind those numbers so the grouping in step 1
  is done on the real set rather than the memorable ones.
- `get_voice_insights` shows the patterns in what you publish, which is what
  lets you compare your vocabulary against theirs in step 4.

VoiceMOAT is at voicemoat.com. The connector needs the Pro or Enterprise plan.