Almost everything we write today, from text messages to emails and websites, use
Almost everything we write today, from text messages to emails and websites, uses technology to communicate and interact with a digital audience! You, as the writer, should speak to your audience no matter where your writing appears; however, when you approach a digital audience, you need to examine some specific issues that are important to communicating clearly and effectively with your digital audience.
Digital audiences receive very different messages depending on both the genre that you write in, and the formatting that the genre requires. A digital audience will also be aware of when your tone is appropriate or inappropriate for the given digital genre that you use. In order to write to a digital audience, you’ll want to pay close attention to the Persona that you are writing to, make sure your message is clear and direct, and ensure it adheres to genre conventions and formatting.
1. Choose a Public or Closed Audience
When writing for a digital audience, you want to first determine whether your audience will be a public one or a closed one. A public audience is able to access your writing when you have published it in a more public space, such as a website or a social media platform like Twitter. In these public digital spaces, you will not be able to control who can and cannot see your writing. A closed audience is one that you are able to choose more carefully, and who requires some kind of permission before accessing your writing. An example of a closed audience would include followers of a private Instagram account or those with a link to an “unlisted” video posted to YouTube.
Deciding your target audience, public or closed, gives you parameters to craft your message. It may also change how you present yourself to your audience and the language choices you use. In a public digital space, you might use more formal language—or you may use casual language if it suits the circumstance better. The same is true for private spaces .
It should be noted that even when writing in a completely closed venue, your writing can be copy and pasted or screenshotted—so it is never truly a “private” space.
2. Write to a Digital Persona Using Audience Demographics
Understanding who you are writing to is vital to digital communication. Because of the varying demographics that read digital writing across the internet, your audience may not respond well to what you have to say if you don’t have a good idea of what their needs and values are.
When writing to a digital audience for the first time, it is a good idea to create a persona. A persona is a simple character sketch of your digital audience’s demographics. Writing to a persona helps your message reach the right people in the right digital spaces. When writing a persona, you should consider the following questions:
- Who is my audience?
- What are their values?
- Where is my audience located (physical space)?
- How will they be viewing my message (digital space)?
- How might they respond to my message?
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