Find Out What Your Audience Really Wants 🧐

Ben Dixon

Ben Dixon

— 2 min read

Hi, Ben here.

A great bio and a few posts are a fantastic start for any project. But to keep people engaged long-term, you need to solve the problems they actually have. The big question is: how do you figure out what those problems are?

You could spend hours scrolling through forums or social media groups. Or, you could use AI as your personal research assistant to do it for you in just a few minutes.

This recipe will show you how to discover the most common questions and pain points your target audience has, giving you a treasure map of content ideas that you know they're looking for.

What You'll Need

  • Tool: Google Gemini (or any free chatbot)
  • Time: 3 minutes
  • Difficulty: Easy

Step 1: Clearly Define Your Audience

Who are you trying to help? The more specific you are, the better the AI's research will be.

Let's use our community gardening club example:

  • My Audience: Beginner gardeners in the UK.

Step 2: Copy the "Magic" Prompt

This prompt tells the AI to act like a market researcher. It asks the AI to scan online communities and identify the most pressing problems and questions for your specific audience.

Copy this entire block of text:

Act as a market research expert. My goal is to understand the biggest challenges and most common questions my target audience has.

Please search online communities like Reddit (e.g., r/gardeningUK) and other forums to find the top 5 pain points and the top 5 most frequently asked questions for my audience.

Present the results as two simple lists.

My target audience is: [Describe your audience here]

Step 3: Use the Prompt in Gemini

  1. Go to the Google Gemini website.
  2. Paste the "Magic" Prompt into the chat box.
  3. Replace the [Describe your audience here] part with your own audience from Step 1.
  4. Hit Enter.

Step 4: Get Your Audience Insights

The AI will search the web and summarize the key problems and questions for you. For our beginner gardener audience, it will return a goldmine of content ideas like this:

AI's Research Summary:

Top 5 Pain Points for Beginner UK Gardeners:Dealing with slugs and snails destroying their plants.Knowing what to plant and when in the unpredictable UK climate.Not having enough space (small gardens, balconies, etc.).Soil quality being poor (heavy clay or sandy soil).Feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start.

Top 5 Frequently Asked Questions:"What are the easiest vegetables to grow for a complete beginner?""How do I improve my soil without spending a lot of money?""What can I grow in pots on a small patio?""When is the best time to start planting seeds for summer?""How do I get rid of slugs organically?"

Look at that! You now have at least 10 proven ideas for your next posts. Each one is a real problem that real people are asking for help with.

Alternative Tools for This Recipe

  • Perplexity AI: This tool is specifically designed for research and always cites its sources, which is great if you want to see the original forum threads.
  • ChatGPT: Also excellent at sifting through information and summarizing key themes from online discussions.

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