Understanding Your Audience: The Key to Connection
Understanding Your Audience: The Key to Connection
Learning Objectives
After studying this unit, you will be able to
- analyze primary and secondary audiences using common profiling techniques
- adjust writing style according to audience size, position relative to you, knowledge of your topic, and demographic
Introduction
The first commandment in any business is to “Know thy audience.” Any act of communication success depends entirely on how well the sender tailors the message to meet the needs and expectations of the audience. A writer should always adjust the message, content and style to what is known or can guess about the audience. A writer should communicate to a customer differently than to a co-worker, and different again when communicating to a manager or to the CEO. In each case, the content, tone, word choices (diction), grammar, and overall style (formal or informal) will change according to the audience.
Understanding how to compose the most appropriate message for an audience takes skill and consideration. However, audience profile allows for effective business messages that achieve their communication goals. When profiling an audience, ask the following questions:
- How big is the main audience? Is it one or two people, a small group, or the general public?
- Who is the primary or secondary audience?
- What is the professional or personal relationship to the organization?
- How much do they already know about the topic or message?
- What is the audience demographic—i.e., their age, gender, cultural background, educational level, and beliefs?
The following subsections delve further into these considerations to help you answer the above questions in specific situations.
Profiling the Audience
Writing for Audiences of Various Sizes
Writing to one person, a group of people, or the general public requires a different writing style. your writing style to accommodate a larger audience. When emailing one person, for instance, you can address them by name in the opening salutation and continue to use the second person singular you throughout. However, when writing for a larger group, a more general and accessible language is required. When writing for the consumer public, in a blog on a company website, language must be as plain and accessible as possible.
Writing Skill 1.1 – Using Simple and Familiar Language: To effectively communicate with your audience, use plain language and familiar words. By using everyday familiar words, the audience will understand the message easily and quickly. Use jargon only when the audience will understand these specialized terms. When, complex words and difficult concepts must be included, illustrate them with examples and provide a glossary when it is necessary to use several such words/concepts. Use concrete rather than abstract words and give explicit information (e.g., “car crash” rather than “unfortunate accident”). Finally, choose one term to describe something important and stick to it; using various