It's the Audience, Stupid

The most important thing to think about when you're writing is the audience.

Whether you're writing a corporate announcement, a marketing brochure, an email, a tweet, or a user manual, your audience is everything. And it's the only thing.

If you don't know who you're writing to, you can't write. At the very least, you can't write effectively. You have to know who the audience is to know what works with them.

I've driven quite a few managers up various walls by insisting on identifying the audience before we ever began talking about the message we needed to communicate. I know why they were blowing a fuse, too; it's because they hadn't stopped to think who the audience would be. They only thought about sending out a message.

In any kind of business writing, the audience is the absolute key. Is the audience made up of line employees ("worker bees" as we've called them at too many places where I've worked)? Is the audience made up of mid-level managers? Is your audience executive row? You really need to know which group you're writing for, because each group has its own hot buttons and its own sore spots. Hit the wrong one and your message misses by a mile. But when you hit the right buttons, your message nails a bulls-eye.

You say your message is going outside the company? Okay, who is the audience? Is it the customer base? Is it a group of prospects? Is it your suppliers? Each of those audiences has different relationships with you and expects different kinds of information. In addition, each audience has different motivations. You really need to keep all of that in your head when you're crafting your message.

You're a journalist or a fiction writer? You need to keep the audience in mind, too. But I'll have more on that in a future post.