Articles: Who Is Your Audience?

By Garth Roberts

A letter, a memo, an article on artichoke harvesting, a Pepsi commercial, or a Juno award winning drama all have one thing in common. They're composed for specific audiences. To write effectively you must know your audience.

Can you write if you don't know your audience? Of course. Visualize your Aunt Martha, if she seems like she might want your article. Guess what a CEO in Zimbabwe might look like, if you don't have any specific information. Then write.

Invent and draft to your hearts content. You know you have a pretty good idea about the person you want to inform, influence or entertain. However, before you start the editing process and begin working on that final draft make sure you know the who, what, why, where, when and how of your audience.

Following are some questions that Professor Anne Hungerford developed for a course at Simon Fraser University.

Audience Heuristic - from Advanced Study in Writing for Business and the Professions by Anne Hungerford

Who is my audience?

* What is the economic or social condition of the audience?

* What is the educational status of the audience.

* What general philosophies of government or politics does the audience hold?

* What values and beliefs would be common to an audience of this age?

* What value does the audience place on education, religion, work?

* Which of these values - economic, social, political, educational - is most important to the audience? Least important?

* In general, how does the audience feel about its heritage or events that happened in the past? That are going on in the present? What hopes for the future does the audience hold?

In general does the audience expect certain patterns of thought in what it reads?Who Is Your Audience?

* Should I include a lot of data to convince the audience of my point?

* What authorities would be most convincing?

* Does the audience need to see the causes and effects of my proposals?

* Would stories or analogies confuse my readers or encourage them to understand what I want to say?

* What terms will I need to define, and what terms can I assume are already understood?

What sorts of issues most frequently make the audience angry or defensive?<BR>
* What things can I say without antagonizing my audience?
* What options do I have for presenting unpopular opinions to my audience?
* What is the most convincing appeal I could make? Should I try to convince by being reasonable and logical? Should I appeal to the emotions. Or should I demonstrate that I am an honest, trustworthy, sympathetic expert whom the audience can trust?

* Have I stereotyped my audience, overlooking individuals who may hold views that are different from those the rest of my audience believes in?
* Am I just saying what my audience wants to hear, or am I also saying what I honestly believe to be true?

Another approach

Following is another way to look at your audience. These are the questions I have used for many years when starting a media project.

TARGET AUDIENCE

a) Media literacy - does your audience understand techniques of media.
b) Intelligence - more intelligent tend to learn faster.
c) Level of formal education - generally the less education the more realistic the program must be.
d) Age - certain ages are more perceptible than others, some are more susceptible.
e) Sex - gender affects identification with different characters and situations.
f) Life Space - this is a difficult section to analyze but it is vital for you to understand how your audience thinks. You must know:
a. how does the program affect the audience.
b. what is the audience's pre-disposition to topic.
c. what does audience consider important.
g) What do you want the target audience to do after seeing the program.

In their book, "Getting Started - A Preface to Writing" authors Harry Rougier and E. Krage Stockum list the following as "universals",


fear
anger
love
pity
sorrow
compassion
sacrifice
honor
shame
the desire for understanding
for justification
for knowledge
for success
for survival
for existence after death
for peace.


The authors say, "Universals are constant; they renew themselves for each generation. For each generation, they are real, and they seem new. Each man discovers them as if he were Adam"

So to Unleash Your Creativity one more time, based on the 'universals' freewrite on the following: 'The universal that 'jumps out' at me is …"

Now try an assignment that will test your knowledge of your target audience - "The person I must reach with my writing is …"