5 Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose

Printed Page 82-84

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Understanding Audience and Purpose

Using an Audience Profile Sheet

DOWNLOADABLE FORM: Audience Profile Sheet image

Determining the Important Characteristics of Your Audience

WHO ARE YOUR READERS?

WHY IS YOUR AUDIENCE READING YOUR DOCUMENT?

WHAT ARE YOUR READERS’ ATTITUDES AND EXPECTATIONS?

HOW WILL YOUR READERS USE YOUR DOCUMENT?

Techniques for Learning About Your Audience

DETERMINING WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE

INTERVIEWING PEOPLE

READING ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE ONLINE

SEARCHING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR DOCUMENTS YOUR AUDIENCE HAS WRITTEN

ANALYZING SOCIAL-MEDIA DATA

Communicating Across Cultures

UNDERSTANDING THE CULTURAL VARIABLES “ON THE SURFACE”

UNDERSTANDING THE CULTURAL VARIABLES “BENEATH THE SURFACE”

• GUIDELINES: Writing for Readers from Other Cultures

CONSIDERING CULTURAL VARIABLES AS YOU WRITE

• DOCUMENT ANALYSIS ACTIVITY: Examining Cultural Variables in a Business Letter

USING GRAPHICS AND DESIGN FOR MULTICULTURAL READERS

Applying What You Have Learned About Your Audience

• ETHICS NOTE: Meeting Your Readers’ Needs Responsibly

Writing for Multiple Audiences

Determining Your Purpose

Gaining Management’s Approval

Revising Information for a New Audience and Purpose

WRITER’S CHECKLIST

EXERCISES

LEARNINGCURVE: Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose and image

CASE 5: Focusing on an Audience’s Needs and Interests and image

Jason Falls, the digital strategist for the online retailer CaféPress, writes frequently about how companies can use social media to create relationships with customers. What does he say is the key to using social media for business? Knowing your audience. In a 2013 blog post, Falls wrote about some of the electronic services that can help companies figure out who their customers are so that they can better appeal to their interests. One of the services he discussed is DemographicsPro, which supplies information about your Twitter followers. Figure 5.1 shows part of the report that DemographicsPro supplied to Falls about his Twitter followers.

Organizations of all sorts, not just businesses, analyze their audiences. Government agencies that want to appeal to the general public—to urge them to eat better, get vaccinated, or sign up for health insurance, to name just a few campaigns—start by analyzing their audiences to learn how to motivate them. Political campaigns analyze voters to determine the issues they want to see addressed. Charities such as the March of Dimes analyze their audiences to improve the effectiveness of their communications.

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Figure 5.1 Analysis of Twitter Followers

Source: Falls, 2013: http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/demopro-falls.jpg. Reprinted by permission of Social Media Explorer.