Know Your Audience
In preparation for a talk I’m giving this weekend titled, “Communicating in the 21st Century”, I’ve been tuning my antennae to tech talk, social media and other permutations of the interwebz. As surprising as it may seem, there exist some strange tribes that don’t embrace all of these technological marvels.These tribes of which I speak are many and varied. One might be interested to learn that high school and college kids don’t use Twitter. They’re too busy texting. Older adults don’t text much (but they’re learning). Younger professionals shy away from e-newsletters.Communicating in the 21st century is far from a simple challenge. The diversification of audiences and the exponential growth in communication options create a complexity never seen before. The key to success is knowing the desired audience(s) and their preferred communication modes. One size fits all communication campaigns are doomed to failure.Here are some critical questions to ask as you’re designing a campaign:
- Who is the target audience?
- What are their demographics (age, etc)?
- What communication vehicles do they use?
- What type of response or action am I hoping for?
- How can I track the success of the campaign?
To have the best chance of success, a communication campaign must match the message, the medium and the audience. What works for one group may not work for another. Choose wisely.