The Art of Not Shouting Into the Void (Or, How to Stop Alienating Your Actual Audience)

Look. You’ve made a thing. A beautiful, weird, soul-spilling thing. A novel that defies genre, a painting that whispers secrets, a song that cracks open chests. It’s the best part of you, given form.

So you do what you’re told. You go to the digital town square, Instagram, your mailing list, that website you hate updating, and you shout about it. You shout in the style of other shouters you see: the perfect reels, the quippy tweets, the desperate “link in bio!” And then you hear it. The most deafening sound in the connected age.

Silence.

Or worse, the polite applause of your mother and three loyal friends.

You start to wonder the dark, unspoken thought: Is it the work? Is it me?

No. It’s almost never that. It’s because you’re shouting into a void you’ve never bothered to map. You’re broadcasting when you should be conversing. You’re an archer, firing exquisite arrows into a fog, hoping by sheer luck to hit a target you’ve never seen.

It’s time to stop being romantic about your obscurity. Obscurity isn’t a badge of artistic integrity; it’s a failure of communication. And the first step out of the fog is building a buyer persona. Not a corporate buzzword, not a soul-crushing spreadsheet, but a compass. A character sketch of the human you’re trying to reach.

Why Your Muse Needs a Map: The Persona as Creative Compass

Think of your favourite author, painter, or filmmaker. Do they create in a vacuum? No. They have an ideal reader, a viewer in mind, even if subconsciously. A persona makes that subconscious thought conscious and strategic.

It Aligns Your Creative Marketing with Your Creative Work. The post you write for a 60-year-old literary fiction reader will be catastrophically different from the one for a 25-year-old fantasy manga fan. The persona tells you where to be, what to say, and how to say it. It turns marketing from a generic chore into a targeted extension of your creative world.
It Wastes Less of Your Precious Energy. Time spent making content is time not spent making art. A persona focuses your effort. Instead of 10 posts that land nowhere, you make 3 that land in the heart of your ideal audience.
It Reveals the Real Conversations. You’re no longer guessing what to talk about. Your persona tells you their fears, desires, favourite other artists, and the forums they haunt. You can now join their world, instead of begging them to enter yours.

The Data That Matters: Beyond “Likes Books”

A useless persona: “Sophia, 38, likes art.” That’s a horoscope. That’s nothing.

A useful persona is a character dossier. You need three layers of data:

Layer 1: Demographic & Concrete Facts (The Skeleton)

Age & Life Stage: A 22-year-old graduate with disposable income for prints is different from a 45-year-old parent budgeting for one original piece a year.
Profession & Disposable Income: Can they afford a £500 painting or a £3.99 ebook? This isn’t crass; it’s realistic.
Digital Habitat: Where do they actually live online? Not just “Instagram,” but “book Twitter (#Bookstagram), specific subreddits (r/ImaginaryLandscapes), niche Discord servers, or curated newsletters like The Browser.” This tells you where to invest your presence.

Layer 2: Psychographics & Motivations (The Heart & Guts)

Core Desires & Values: What do they seek from art/books/music? Escape? Intellectual challenge? Prestige? Community identity? Beauty? Shock?
Taste Signifiers: Who else do they love? What other artists, authors, genres, podcasts, or critics are their touchstones? (e.g., “Fans of Susanna Clarke and Erin Morgenstern,” or “Collectors of surrealist landscape photography.”)
Pain Points & Frustrations: What bugs them in your field? “Hates predictable tropes,” “overwhelmed by algorithmic art,” “finds gallery spaces intimidating.”
Content Format Preferences: Do they devour long-form blog posts? 15-second video essays? Beautiful, silent process videos? Intricate email newsletters?

Layer 3: The Relationship to YOU & Your Work (The Spark)

How They Discover: Do they find artists via curated galleries, Amazon algorithms, YouTube deep dives, or word-of-mouth in specialist clubs?
Objections They’ll Have: “I have no wall space,” “My to-read pile is huge,” “I only stream music.”
Dream Outcome: What transformation does engaging with your work give them? “To feel less alone,” “to be seen as a discerning collector,” “to have a unique atmosphere in their home.”

The Truth Test: Is Your Persona a Phantom or a Real Person?

This is where most artists, authors & creatives go wrong. They invent a fantasy fan. You must ground your persona in evidence, not speculation. Here’s how you audit its accuracy:

Mine Your Existing Audience. Look at the 10-20 people who already truly engage with you. Who are they? What patterns do you see in their profiles, comments, and what they buy? This is your richest data.
Conduct Quiet Interviews. Not a survey. Ask 3-5 engaged followers or fellow creators (whose audience overlaps yours) a few simple questions over email: “What’s the last book/art piece/music album you bought and why?” “Where do you go online to find new work like this?”
Listen on the Platforms. Go to the subreddits, Discord channels, and Instagram tags your persona should inhabit. Read for hours. Are the real conversations there matching the fears and desires you’ve written down? If not, adjust the persona.
Run Micro-Tests. Pose a question or share a piece of content specifically tailored to one aspect of your persona. Does it resonate more than your usual scattergun post? Does it attract the type of engagement you predicted?
Beware the Mirror. The biggest trap is building a persona that is just you. Your ideal audience is often adjacent to you, not a clone. They might love your work for reasons you haven’t considered.

A buyer persona is a living document. It’s not carved in stone. It’s a sketch you constantly refine as you learn more about the real, messy, wonderful humans who connect with your work.

Stop shouting into the fog. Pick up your compass. Draw your map. Then go and have a real conversation with the people who are already out there, waiting to hear from someone who finally understands them.

Your work deserves to be found. Do the work to find its people.

Week in, week out, I’m discussing digital marketing to help creatives market effectively so they spend more time creating that magical thing they want to create. For over two years I’ve been sharing my insights for free. Monday is strategies and guidance. Tuesday is all about some fantastic tools that will help you market effectively. Likes and reshares do not fuel me, but buying me a coffee certainly will.

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