Printed Page 82-84
Understanding Audience and Purpose
Using an Audience Profile Sheet
DOWNLOADABLE FORM: Audience Profile Sheet
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
CASE 5: Focusing on an Audience’s Needs and Interests and
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.
Figure 5.1 Analysis of Twitter Followers