Storytelling with You

chapter 1consider your audience

Your audience: these are the people you are going to inform, inspire, and incite to act. Ultimately, everything you do when you plan, create, and deliver content is for them.

Yet, this is a dramatic shift from how we typically operate.

Take me, for instance. The most natural way for me to communicate is for myself, from my perspective, and with my preferences in mind. I live in my head, so I'm pretty familiar with what goes on in there. This means it's quite easy—I don't have to give it much thought—for me to communicate for myself.

Communicating to others is more complex. It's harder, because we have to actively work to understand them. What compels people to do the things they do? When we can identify our audience's motivations and appeal to them, we can gain their attention and drive the action we seek. In other words, it's by being thoughtful about those we are communicating to that we can get our own needs met.

In this chapter, we'll begin by prioritizing our target audience and then explore how we can better appreciate their needs. We'll also cover strategies for getting to know an unfamiliar audience. Once we have clarity on who they are, we can tailor a great number of aspects to our audience, setting the foundation to communicate effectively.

Prioritize your target audience

Who are you communicating to? When I pose this query to clients or workshop attendees, it's not uncommon for them to hold out their hands and begin counting on ...