Understand your audience.
Now that you know how people think, it’s time to identify the actual people that your content is targeting. Who are they? What’s on their mind? What do they want to get by reading your content? By answering these questions, you’ll know what to write so that your target audience wants to keep reading.
You should not invent these answers. You should derive them from observation, support tickets, sales calls, or direct experience. Different answers to these questions will lead to major changes in your content.
Who’s your audience?
A single piece of content often serves multiple audiences with different needs. Let’s take the vacuum cleaner example from the first chapter to illustrate this.
The target audience for the vacuum cleaner pamphlet includes:
- The person unboxing it and assembling the cleaner
- The person using the cleaner
These might be one, but very likely, they will be two different people. In many cases, a wife will be using the vacuum cleaner and the husband will be tasked with unboxing and assembling it. We’re making stereotypes here, for a good reason. You’ll need to make some generalizations and stereotypes when you define the target audience for your content.
Be careful about over-generalization. A definition of target audience such as “busy people, Asian, 35-45 years old” is not going to help you write effective content.
Here is a much more useful definition of a target audience:
“Python developer, familiar with object oriented programming, researching high-traffic servers, without the authority to make payments, speaking fluent English.”
The first definition (the busy Asian) of a target audience looks nice, superficially, but doesn’t really tell you how to explain anything to this audience. With the second definition (the Python developer), you’ll know what not to explain (because he surely knows it already), what to focus on, what to aim for (try a free tool) and what not to bother with (pay).
Going back to our vacuum cleaner pamphlet, here are two target-audience definitions that should work:
- Assembler: “Has experience assembling simple devices and to use a screwdriver; Follows instructions when they are clear; Wants to spend as little time as possible reading and assembling.”
- Cleaner: “Has experience cleaning floors and furniture; Understands the importance of using the right part for each surface; Will skip lengthy instructions.”
With these definitions in mind, you will avoid writing extensive introductions about why it’s important to follow the assembly instructions or why you should use the right extensions for floors and sofas. Instead, you’ll offer clear step-by-step assembly instructions with short texts and clear graphics. And you’ll include a detailed list of surfaces and the corresponding vacuum heads that work best for each. This is obvious when talking about the vacuum cleaner example, because we all know what that pamphlet should ideally include. Use the same thinking when writing much more complex content.
What is your target audience thinking about and looking for?
The unboxer and assembler is looking for easy-to-follow instructions, so that (probably) he can get done with it as soon as possible. If I was responsible for the assembly, I would be looking for visual instructions, clearly labeled, allowing me to get back to whatever I was doing quickly, and not being called back for tweaks.
The vacuumer is going to use the machine many more times and for longer. She (or maybe he), will benefit from understanding the differences between the different parts, to make the actual cleaning process easier and more efficient. The person doing the cleaning will probably be in charge of maintenance. Using a poorly maintained machine is worse than learning how to clean it properly. If I’m vacuuming and maintaining it, I’m looking for a detailed list of what each brush is good for (pictures would be wonderful) and very clear instructions on how to take it apart, clean the parts and even put it back together. From past experience, I lose more time fighting with the parts than reading instructions. So, detailed instructions would be great.
Why do people in your target audience want to read your content?
In the case of the vacuum cleaner, it’s straightforward. We want to know how to use the machine.
Other pieces of content are harder to figure out “why is someone going to read this?”. We might be looking to satisfy our curiosity, we might be looking for entertainment, we might be looking for a solution to a specific problem. Think about it and you’ll find why someone might want to read your content. Don’t start writing before you’ve figured it out.
In your practice assignment, you’ll compare two pieces of content - one that addresses its target audience effectively and one that treats readers generically. This will sharpen your ability to recognize when audience understanding is driving content decisions versus when content is written from the company’s perspective rather than the reader’s.