Jorge C Analyzing your Audience

Knowing your audience

You want to analyze your readers before you start writing, so you will know what format, vocabulary, or level of information is needed. Analyzing your readers or audience is a really critical point in the writing process, because it determines how effective your writing is going to be. For example, if you are writing a report on a science class for a team project that you are going to present for the same class, you probably want to go in-depth and be specific since they have the background knowledge, whereas in a different subject class, you would want to generalize and explain the meaning of different ideas because they lack the background knowledge in what you are writing.

You could understand why analyzing your readers is important if you look at it as an advertiser does. People who work in advertising spend the majority of their time investigating their customers. Once they are familiar with the customers, they can give form to their advertisement by using words, format, and graphics that appeal to the target audience. For example, when Nike shoes target teenagers they use famous celebrities and professional athletes to advertise their shoes because that is what appeals to teenagers’ interests.

Key aspects that help you think about and investigate your audience are: level of expertise, level of education, cultural differences, and expectations. In the first example, it was described how level of education and expertise play a role with the audience. Another important thing is keeping in mind that people have different cultural backgrounds; what you consider normal or good might not be necessarily be looked at the same way in another culture. Next time you have that paper to do and you wondering how much do I have to write, how much details do I need to give, or is it ok to put this information, remember to analyze your audience very carefully and that would help you to answer those types of questions.

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