Understanding your audience is one of the key factors in the effectiveness and success of any communication plan. Considered along with what the message or information is that you want to communicate and what your desired result would be, it makes your communication efforts more effective in achieving your goals. To understand your audience, you need to fully discover:
- Who they are
- What they have in common
- How they affect your organization
- How they prefer to communicate
- What motivates them
- And even more
Whether you are planning a community event, a social media campaign or any other type of communication, the following resources will help you identify, segment and prioritize those in your audience to achieve your communication plan goals.
Start with Audience Analysis to segment the largest group receiving your message into smaller, more manageable groups based on common characteristics. Analyzing your audience will lead to identifying smaller audiences as well as your stakeholders and publics. Stakeholders affect or are affected by your organization, while publics are groups that you have identified as your prime communication receivers.
Stakeholder Analysis and Publics Analysis will help you refine those groups even further. The linkage model is used to identify all stakeholders so they can be prioritized based on power, interest, support and information needs. Publics will be grouped into four distinctive categories (non-publics, latent publics, aware publics and active publics) using the situational theory of publics, which will help you to predict how active their communication style will be and plan your messages accordingly.
Knowing which Communication Channels are preferred by specific audience members, as well as which channels work best for different messaging needs, is also essential to meet your communication goals. Learn which channels are rich or lean and which methods provide formal or informal communication. If you are using social media channels, use the analytics to Tailor to Your Audience so that your messages fit with who they are and what they expect.
The concepts shared in these resources will allow you to easily and systematically understand your audience so that you can meet their needs and ultimately your goals. While you may not get applause, your efforts will definitely pay off in the end.