Writing for Your Target Audience

This material might be better suited for a marketing section, or a special page on psychology, reading levels, and the art of targeting an audience. Let's just start by saying that there are a few basic ground rules to follow, and a lot of common sense that needs to be used. The best place to start is simply to ask the question, who will be reading my work? Will there be technical references involved? What level of audience education will I be dealing with? Is my target audience working in a highly specialized field? Is the point to educate this audience on a general level, or give them specific details? Am I writing this piece to educate or entertain?

Backing up a bit, we find that the vast majority of the public does not read at an advanced college level, or even an advanced high school level. Most of them read at a competent sixth, seventh, or eighth grade level. Yes, right now I hear the arguments, the gasps, the murmurings that it can't be true. It is. I didn't bring up this as a negative statement about our education system, and I'm not using it as a soapbox about how movies and TV are dumbing down our ability to read, or that we are spoon-fed so much information on a daily basis that we are overloaded. It's simply a statement of fact. Between our reading skills and our comprehension abilities, that is the level that most of the literate public resides at. It is also the level where the majority of writers must work, or at least begin to work.

However, it's not all bad. For someone wanting to read a light book for relaxation, the last thing they want to do is struggle with unfamiliar words and dialog that no one has used since the turn of the century. Even period dialog in an historical novel must adapt to modern vernacular and skill levels when dealing with a reading audience. Adaptation and target audience awareness must be in place with every chapter and verse of your creation.

Let's take the case a convention room filled with techno-geeks theorizing about the latest and greatest advances in quantum physics and the breakthrough testing tools available through foreign markets. Gearing a paper toward that crowd would lead one to the deeper side, the technical side, the philosophical side of their world. You would use wording and terms in the general body of your publication that might be unfamiliar to an outsider.

But how about the home user of the newest notebook computer or PDA? There we would need to aim our general directions at the average reading skill level, with ample references to attached technical information. Those with the thirst for more details can wade through the techno-data in glossary after glossary, but the initial presentation of information must be geared toward the general public with an average knowledge and skill level of the product, as well as an average reading skill level.

When we step into the world of leisure reading, or relaxation literature, then technical references usually get tossed out the window. We should be careful not to let the pendulum swing too far the other way now, toward the absurdly lame. Don't oversimplify your text until it's only a step or two away from a lengthy Dick and Jane reader. Don't talk down to your audience, rather talk with your audience at the appropriate level. Have a conversation with them. Make them a friend. Tell them a secret. Speak (write) as if they were your best friend. No pretense, no front, just honest dialog. If you want to personalize your text and create a hold on your readers, then speak to them on a personal level.

If you want to see examples of what not to do with your writing projects, go to any college library and look through the archives of textbooks written in the early half of the twentieth century. Thumb through a page here, a page there. You'll see what I mean about talking down, being overly wordy, proving your command of the English language by utilizing obscure and outdated synonyms and inner circle educated text. You will soon see why most of these books are not included on lists of classic and valuable literature.

In closing, let me sum it up with the following words. Be genuine and be realistic. Keep things down to earth, accurate, and audience friendly. After all, our audience is really our customer base and (if we are lucky) the ones who pay our wages. Without a solid customer base, we will only perpetuate the stereotype of the starving writer . . . simply because we will starve.