Audience

It's not about you; it's about them.

Your communication must focus on the audience and their needs.

Imagine you are writing a message, such as a status update on your current project.

Your first thoughts might just be to write the message and send it, including everything you want to say. That's normal, but not effective.

Your boss might need a status update to make sure the work is getting done on time, to make sure you are fixing any issues, and to check you are able to communicate to them.

To be effective, you need to think about that audience, their work, and what they need from your message. This thinking is called audience analysis, and this analysis is a fantastic habit to learn. The more you focus on the audience and their needs, the more chance your communication has of being successful.

How to analyze the audience?

Take writing a resume as an example, so you can see the types of questions to ask to focus on the audience. Below are some example questions with possible answers.

Who is the audience?

The audience might be Human Resources (HR), a technical person (senior developer), and a Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

What does this audience need to know?

First, do you meet the key bullets from the job description? Can your resume show that you can do the job? What technical projects have you built? What are your team skills?

What do they already know?

HR: they know they need to hire someone with the right skills. If they get it wrong it might fall on them.

Senior Developer: they know how to do the job. They know what it takes to be a project member. They know what it's like to work as a developer at the company.

CEO: they know what developers are like. They know you need to help them make money, improve their business, build their product for their clients.

What will they do with my message?

They may scan it for 30-60 seconds to make an immediate decision to interview you or not.

Why are they reading it?

They may have been told to, or they may have been asked to. They may not want to.

Is this a regular part of their job?

For some people, like HR, yes. For others, this is a task they have to do which adds more tasks to their busy job (senior developers, for example).

Why does the analysis matter?

When you have audience understanding, you are in a better position to target your communication.

Answering audience questions allows you make your message, here the resume, complete, correct, credible, coherent, and clear to that specific reader.

Analyzing the audience can also help with your purpose, which in this case is to convince the reader that you can do their job and help their company.Some of the things you may do on your resume include the following:

You choose persuasive words and style
- keywords from job description; accomplishment statements to show project success
You format the resume well
- single side for busy readers; white space; small use of colour; bullets for key information
You showcase your information in the way they can get the most out of it
- show you have previous experience doing job tasks; show you can help their company

Summary

Your goal as a communicator is to help your audience understand your message immediately. Analyze each audience to get a clear understanding of their needs and to help you with content, word choice, style, and formatting.