Writing for the DIY Industry

In the last few years, the DIY (Do It Yourself) has blossomed as evidenced by the growth of Pinterest and the numerous DIY blogs across the world. The industry is so prevalent that large corporations such as Sherwin Williams are creating content to market their products to the DIY community. DIYers abound, some influenced by the desire to live frugal lives, others interested in creative outlets and even more because they enjoy getting their hands dirty. Whatever the impetus, you can find DIY solutions to almost every project. These projects range from sewing a child’s Halloween costume to building your own home and everything in between. For authors writing white papers for this industry, style and verbiage can be an issue. It is important to understand who the target market is for each article before you write them.

Who is the Typical DIYer?

Understanding the DIY target market is not quite as simple as you might think. You can generalize the market and say that it primarily consists of young moms with children. However, if you rely on this demographic, you will be missing out on a large part of the DIY community. The reason is because the type of project determines who is working on it. While DIY stands for “do it yourself,” the term is a loose one that covers children’s crafts, adult crafts, home decor, gardening, cooking and construction projects. Therefore, before you start writing, decide on the persona of the target audience.

Segmenting the Target Market

For many of the cooking, crafts and home decor projects, the target audience is primarily female, many of whom are young moms. Yet as you dig deeper, you will find a large segment of homeschooling parents, older women including retirees, some men and professionals in the home decor industry. For the gardening and construction projects, many of the people in the target audience change to Millennials without children, working professionals and men.

Working with Clients

As you write for clients, ask them to define your audience. Companies that focus on niche products know their audiences well. A large corporation like Sherwin Williams has a very broad range of clientele in the DIY market. They sell many products for people who want to paint and decorate their homes by themselves including paint, wallpaper, stains and varnishes. These products are generally bought by couples who are saving money by decorating by themselves. However, they also have several craft products including Krylon which have multiple crafty uses. Krylon is used for furniture rehabbing, upcycling garage sale finds and even jewelry making.

DIY Bloggers

Most of the DIY projects posted online can be found on blogs. Some blogs are lifestyle blogs while others are niche blogs that focus on DIY or crafts only. One such blog, Vintage Revivals, was voted one of the top DIY blogs by the Huffington Post. As the name implies, this blog features recycling vintage finds. There are so many DIY niche blogs that you will find no end of things to write about.