“Which people?”
Owen had not had a very good answer.
The next morning he tried again.
At the top of a new document he wrote:
Niche: Home sourdough baking
Underneath it:
Audience: People interested in home sourdough baking
Owen stared at the two lines.
The second one looked suspiciously like the first one wearing a different hat.
He deleted it.
Apparently he still had some work to do.
The same niche can contain very different people
Owen opened the sourdough starter guide he had been writing for the site.
The first few paragraphs explained what a starter was, how to feed it and what it should look like when it was ready to use.
One of his friends had needed exactly that.
The first time she saw Owen’s jar of starter on the counter, she had pointed at it and asked:
“So that’s alive?”
“Sort of.”
“Comforting.”
Another friend had been baking sourdough for years.
He did not need anyone to explain what a starter was.
He wanted to talk about fermentation time, dough temperature and why two loaves made from almost the same recipe could behave differently.
Both people were interested in sourdough.
Both fit comfortably inside home sourdough baking.
But Owen would not write the same article for both of them.
He added two lines to his document:
Someone making a first loaf
Someone trying to improve a fiftieth loaf
Same niche.
Very different place to begin.
So what is the audience?
Owen went back to the questions people had been asking him.
Why isn’t my starter rising?
What flour should I buy?
Do I really need a Dutch oven?
Why is my dough so sticky?
How do I know when it’s ready to bake?
Most of those questions were coming from people trying to get through loaf number one without turning it into another brick.
They were not coming from people trying to perfect loaf number fifty.
Owen wrote:
People new to sourdough
Better.
But it still felt unfinished.
New to sourdough and trying to do what?
Collect starters?
Read about bread?
Become professional bakers?
That wasn’t what his friends had been asking for.
They wanted to make bread at home and have it come out reasonably well.
Preferably without buying half a bakery first.
Owen tried again:
People new to sourdough who want a simple way to bake good bread at home without needing a kitchen full of special equipment.
He read it back.
Now he knew more than the fact that these people liked sourdough.
He knew where they were starting and what they wanted help doing.
His niche was still home sourdough baking.
That was the subject his business was built around.
His audience was the people he had chosen to help within that world.
The two belonged together.
They were not the same thing.
The audience begins changing the work
Owen reopened an article he had started about flour.
Near the top he had written:
For a higher-hydration dough, a stronger flour can make the dough easier to handle.
He read it again.
To Owen, the sentence was perfectly clear.
Then he remembered the friend who had looked at his starter and asked whether it was alive.
If she was reading this, higher hydration was not going to help much.
Owen deleted the sentence and tried again:
If your dough feels much wetter and harder to handle than the recipe suggests, the flour you used may be part of the reason. Bread flour usually has more protein than all-purpose flour, so it can absorb more water and help the dough develop more strength. Use a lower-protein flour with the same amount of water and the dough may feel looser and stickier. Bakers call the amount of water compared with the flour the dough’s hydration.
He read both versions.
Same bread.
Much better place to start.
Owen had also been thinking about equipment he could recommend through affiliate links.
What would someone making a first loaf actually need?
Kitchen scale?
Owen used his almost every time he baked and had already talked two friends into buying the same model.
Dutch oven?
Useful, but not the only way to bake a loaf. Owen would need to explain the alternatives too.
Banneton?
Useful for supporting shaped dough while it proofed. Also something he could explain before telling a beginner to buy one.
Then he reached the temperature-controlled proofing box he had been eyeing for himself.
Owen wanted one.
Very much.
But the friend who had asked whether a starter was alive did not even own a kitchen scale yet.
The proofing box moved farther down the list.
The kitchen scale stayed near the top.
An audience is not a locked door
Owen looked again at the description he had written:
People new to sourdough who want a simple way to bake good bread at home without needing a kitchen full of special equipment.
One thought bothered him.
What happened if somebody who had already baked twenty loaves found the site?
They might skip the starter guide and go straight to the flour article.
Someone with an entire cupboard of bread equipment might still want his starter schedule.
That was fine.
Owen wasn’t putting a gate around the site.
He looked back at the audience description.
“Think beginner,” he muttered.
Explain the unfamiliar term or assume the reader already knows it?
Owen would explain it.
Start with equipment someone could use on loaf number one or an expensive upgrade they might want much later?
Loaf number one first.
Write the starter guide as if the reader had been feeding one for five years?
Probably not.
Someone more experienced could still read it.
Two different questions
Owen went back to the document where he had started.
At the top:
Niche: Home sourdough baking
Underneath it, he pasted his new line:
Audience: People new to sourdough who want a simple way to bake good bread at home without needing a kitchen full of special equipment.
This time the second line was not the first one wearing a different hat.
One answered:
What is this business about?
The other answered:
Who am I trying to help, and what are they trying to do?
Owen looked at the two lines together.
Then he deleted People interested in home sourdough baking from his notes for good.
He reopened the flour article.
There were a few more sentences in there written for loaf number fifty.