Hello Reader!

Last week, we talked about the 3V framework for content success in 2026: Visibility, Voice, and Value.

This week, let’s zoom in on the first part: Visibility

Visibility is the first pillar of the 3V content marketing framework.

Writing online is about reaching the right people, capturing their attention, and moving them toward action.

If your content doesn’t live in the places your audience already spends time, sadly, it doesn’t exist.

But here’s where most people get it wrong: they jump straight to distribution tactics—SEO, social, newsletters—without doing the foundational work first.

Visibility doesn’t start with channels.

It starts with knowing exactly who you’re trying to reach.

So before we get into where your content should live and how to get it seen, we start here:

Phase 1 of visibility: audience research.

The two most critical parts of my content brief (which you can get here) are goals and audience-oriented. See:

If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve or who you’re talking to, you’re wasting your content budget.

(Note: I can’t tell you how many briefs I’ve received from clients that have no mention of content marketing goals or target audience info. In these instances, I back up, and we figure this out. Otherwise, I end up charging a client thousands of dollars for an asset that they don’t know what to do with.)

Anyway, it’s probably worth hiring a firm to do audience research for you if you have the cash flow. But let’s be honest: not all companies have the budget to invest in audience research. And, with the right guide and tools, you can DIY it.

What is audience research in terms of content marketing?

Audience research is the process of getting to know the people you’re trying to reach before you try to influence them.

It means understanding their needs, pains, goals, frustrations, preferences, and buying triggers.

It means knowing w what they’re actively searching for, what they ignore, what they save, and what makes them click (or read in a zero-click world).

Audience research in the content world also dives into learning how they think and speak:

What words do they use to describe their problems?
What tone resonates with them?
Where do they spend time online?
What creators, communities, newsletters, podcasts, and platforms shape their opinions?

Tools content marketers use to do audience research

There are many valid ways for content marketers to learn about their audience. Here are some of the most popular ways to get started:

Customer interviews: One-on-one conversations with customers or prospects to uncover real problems, motivations, objections, and language patterns.
Sales call recordings: Reviewing sales calls to hear how buyers describe their challenges and what questions they ask before purchasing.
Support tickets and chat logs: Mining customer support conversations to identify recurring pain points and confusion.
Surveys: Sending structured questionnaires to customers, subscribers, or prospects to gather qualitative and quantitative insights.
Focus groups: Facilitated group discussions that explore perceptions, reactions to messaging, and shared challenges within a target audience.
Search data: Using tools like keyword research platforms to see what your audience is actively searching for and how they phrase queries.
Audience intelligence tools: Platforms that show what your audience reads, watches, listens to, and follows online.
Social listening: Monitoring conversations on social media, forums, Reddit, and industry communities to understand sentiment and trending topics.
Website analytics: Reviewing behavior data (pages visited, time on page, conversion paths) to see what content resonates.
Competitive analysis: Studying competitors’ content, engagement patterns, and positioning to understand what’s already capturing audience attention.

I realize it’s oversimplified to list a bunch of research methods and leave it at that.

Audience research is an ongoing process, and each method has potential issues.

For example, customers sometimes aren’t reliable self-reporters, making us a bit leery of interviews and surveys. Search data can give us keywords and traffic sources, but sometimes the actual influence/purchasing decision happens elsewhere in the funnel.

But starting with one (or more) of these methods, with these caveats in mind, and building as you go is a great place to start.

If you’re looking for a tool to help with this data, I’m a big fan of Sparkktoro (I’m not an affiliate, just a fan).

SparkToro shows you what your audience pays attention to online. You can search by job title, keywords, hashtags, domains, or even a specific website, and it will surface the podcasts they listen to, the YouTube channels they watch, the publications they read, the social accounts they follow, and the websites they visit.

This data will help you define/understand your customer and then map out a content and distribution plan that makes sense.

How to communicate who your audience is to your content team

Capturing audience insights is a great first step.

Next, it's getting your whole team on the same page—and keeping them there.

You need to translate that knowledge so your strategists, researchers, and writers have the same, new best friend—your audience.

A cool approach is to build a living Audience Operating Brief (AOB) or a one-page snapshot that makes your audience feel real.

In your AOB, include things like:

The primary problem they’re trying to solve right now
What they believe about the problem (common assumptions or misconceptions)
What they’re afraid of if they get it wrong
How they describe it in their own words (pull this from interviews, sales calls, Reddit threads)
Where they look for answers first (search, LinkedIn, YouTube, AI tools, industry Slack groups)
What would make them say, “This was written for me.”

Then add one more thing most teams skip: a short “Anti-Audience” note. Who is this content not for? When writers know who they’re excluding, they write more precisely. Designers choose visuals more intentionally. Everyone makes better trade-offs.

Finally, pressure-test it. Before approving a draft, test it with another focus group. Ask them, "IS THIS YOU!??!?!?!?"

How to turn audience research into content ideas

For this section, I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Amanda Natividad, who you absolutely already know.

If you want a masterclass in turning audience insight into content, Amanda has already mapped it out.

In this blog post, Amanda shows us systematically turn what you learn into repeatable content ideas.

I’d recommend just reading her full blog post, but here’s the short of how she breaks it down.

First, mine your research for what Amanda calls “content triggers.” Look for:

Questions your audience keeps asking
Recurring frustrations or pain points
The exact language they use to describe problems
The content they’re already consuming

Use those as prompts. Then, instead of brainstorming randomly, apply proven content frameworks to those triggers:

Problems → Solutions
Misconceptions → Reality
How-To
Comparison
Trends & Analysis

One pain point can generate multiple pieces of content. One recurring question can become a guide, a LinkedIn post, a webinar, and a comparison article.

Finally, validate before you commit. Check search demand. Test the topic socially. Assess business value. Look for competitive gaps. Not every idea deserves a 2,000-word blog post.

Next week, we'll dive deeper into visibility by exploring some AI search specifics. yay.

Thanks for reading,

Ashley R. Cummings

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Expert Interview | Nathan Ojaokomo

1. Tell me about your journey into content. How did you get started, and what led you into B2B SaaS writing?

I got into content writing through a friend. He got gigs off a guy on Upwork and often passed some to me when he had too much to handle.

Eventually, I started working with the Upwork guy (Dunno why, but Upwork and Fiverr never worked for me). The rate at the time was around 1 Naira per word (That’s less than a dollar for 1000 words currently, and around $3 at the time).

But I did it anyway. I mostly wrote about tech products, HVAC systems, lawn mowers, etc.

I then left writing for a while, but picked it up again sometime in March 2020 when the lockdown started. I was stuck at home, and writing was the only way I knew how to earn an income online.

I didn’t want to do the $3 jobs anymore, so I started browsing online to see if people made a sustainable living from writing. Twitter was my main source and it was at this time I found people like yourself, @Elise, @Kaleigh, @mike, @Lizzie, @Kat, and others.

To brush up my skills, I was also taking the free courses from HubSpot, Semrush, and the like.

As I combined what I was learning with the work of other freelancers, B2B SaaS was a common theme. So I made the natural decision to focus all my attention there.

I then set up my LinkedIn, website, and messaging to position myself as a B2B SaaS content writer.

2. What advice would you give freelancers who want to break into B2B SaaS writing or land better clients?

-Don’t wait until you feel “ready.” Most new freelancers spend months tweaking their website and second-guessing their rates when they should just be sending pitches. You learn way faster from a real client rejecting you than from perfecting a portfolio page nobody’s looked at yet.

-Have subject matter expertise or be willing to learn. AI is getting better by the day, but those with expertise (whether through learning or talking to experts themselves) can sniff out surface-level insights. This gives you an edge over content that’s 100% AI-generated.

-Talk to other people. This was something I wish I had done more of when I started. I could only get to where I am today by seeing what others were doing from the outside.

I imagine how many people I would be “friends” with if I had just sent them a simple text, even just to say how much their content has helped me.

3. What skills or habits have helped you most in building a successful freelance writing career?

The biggest one is learning to think like the business, not just the writer. Early on, I was focused on “Is this well-written?” Now, the question I ask is: “Does this move someone closer to a decision?” Those are very different standards, and the second one is what clients pay more for.

Treating it like a business from day one helped a lot, too. That means tracking whom you’ve pitched, following up consistently, and not just waiting for work to land in your lap. I’ve made the mistake of waiting after I’ve lost clients to start pitching again. By then, I’m already stressed, taking whatever comes in, and undercharging because I need the money now. Boring as it sounds, a bit of outreach every week, even when you’re busy, changes everything.

Another habit that has helped is staying curious about the products I write about. I use the tools and poke around the features. That sounds like extra work, but it shows up in the writing in ways clients notice.