Lay Audience:
This audience has no special or expert knowledge. When reading they connect with the human interest aspect of the article, caption, or book. If your audience is searching for entertainment or is a beginner they will fall into this category. “Click Bait” articles and Lifestyle Blogs are often aimed towards a Lay Audience. If you are a coach dedicated to helping brand new business owners set up their businesses it is likely your audience is a Lay Audience needing direction and explanation of general terms you consider to be “common knowledge”. As the Jargon Expert, I do not like to assume everyone understands my words…and I aim to simplify my language and the language of my clients in order to help them broaden their audience scope.
Managerial Audience:
This audience desires background information, facts, and statistics in order to make a decision. They are currently or purposely seeking to learn/know more about something.
There are many business models that may fit into this category. But health coaches, nutritionists, and financial advisors are probably the most common business models with a managerial audience type. As a Jargon Expert, I like to help these businesses to find a balance between easy-to-understand language and keyword Jargon that will help bring the right people to their doors.
The Expert Audience:
This audience requires elaborate and technical writing styles and vocabulary. They expect citations to be reliable and up to date. Sharing a statistic that is more than a decade old is not going to fly with this audience type. This audience type is more a question of format than it is the education level of your audience. Every audience type can have experts who are interested in learning more and seeing exactly how it is you do things. White Papers and Case Studies are great tools for showing off your business skills, but also for giving the appearance that you are an expert in your own right. Think academia and journalism when you consider this audience format and how to connect with them.
When determining your audience some questions you may want to ask are…
Who they are? Age, Sex, Education, Economic Status, Political/Social, Religious Beliefs. These are not the end all be all in terms of audience understanding and you are likely to have various audience types, but it is good to know if you are writing to mostly men or mostly women. If you are writing to those who have strict religious or political beliefs. And the biggest one if you are speaking to those in their 50s, 60s, 70s vs someone in their 20s, 30s, 40s as there is a big diversity in the way the different generations speak and write.
The next question you need to ask yourself is…. What level of information does your audience already have about the topic? This may differ depending on the context/format you are writing in.
Have more questions about audience? Drop them in the comments below.