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Learning ObjectivesUpon completing this chapter, you should be able to:
Framing the Audience AnalysisThe communications landscape changes rapidly over time, but one criterion for successful communication remains the same: the importance of knowing who your audience is and understanding their needs. Imagine you want to give a presentation to people in your department at work. You likely know your colleagues’ personalities and what they expect of you. You might know their education levels and you are sure they understand all of your company-specific jargon. You think delivering your message should be easy, except many of them are so comfortable with you, they decide to skip your presentation because you took for granted that they would be interested. On the other hand, if you had to present to the board of directors, you might need to do more homework on who they are and what they expect from you. In other words, it is always important to get to know your audience as much as possible to give yourself the best chance at communicating successfully. In this chapter you will begin to examine differences between primary, secondary, and hidden audiences. Then, using the AUDIENCE acronym as a tool, you will participate in activities that will help you flesh out information you need to know about your audience in order to persuade, inform, or entertain them. You will have at least three chances to practise your audience analysis skills and get peer feedback. Then, near the end of this chapter, you will craft a message that considers your audience’s needs and expectations. This process will lay the foundation for you to become a communicator who is effective in persuading, informing, or entertaining an audience because you have done your best work in getting to know them, their needs, and expectations first. Identifying Your Primary, Secondary, and Hidden AudiencesYour audience is the person or people you want to communicate with. By knowing more about them (their wants, needs, values, etc.), you are able to better craft your message so that they will receive it the way you intended. Your success as a communicator partly depends on how well you can tailor your message to your audience. Your primary audience is your intended audience; it is the person or people you have in mind when you decide to communicate something. However, when analyzing your audience you must also beware of your secondary audience. These are other people you could reasonably expect to come in contact with your message. For example, you might send an email to a customer, who, in this case, is your primary audience, and copy (cc:) your boss, who would be your secondary audience. Beyond these two audiences, you also have to consider your hidden audience, which are people who you may not have intended to come in contact with your audience (or message) at all, such as a colleague who gets a forwarded copy of your email. Check Your UnderstandingTo help you get to know your audience even more, we will begin by working through a set of steps that, together, spell the acronym AUDIENCE. These steps will give you an idea of what questions to ask and what information can be useful in better connecting with your audience.
These categories of information have been assembled into a job aid to help you conduct your very own audience analyses. As you review the tool, list the traits that apply to you for each section. If you would like to expand this reflection, consider how you might fill this tool out with traits that apply to you in your personal life versus your worklife. What are some methods you might use to find out more about an audience? For your audience analysis, choose one of the scenarios and fill out the following form. Submit it according to your instructor’s directions. Now let us take a look at putting this tool to use in a scenario. Read the following news story about an executive at a company [http://bit.ly/1Qyqdyy]. Reflect on these questions regarding his email:
Revised Message: Subject: Daily Fantasy Football goes live! Greetings, folks. Jerry here. I am proud to announce my team is now ready to bring you what you have all been waiting for: Daily Fantasy Football! Starting today, we are going to have NFL preseason contests on staging. Here is how to play: 1) On Desktop: link 2) On iOS: Download the latest dogfood app, which will point to the staging environment. 3) On Android: not yet available 4) Join the Daily Fantasy Football contest before 4 p.m. today: [link] Please join contests, create contests, invite your friends, and make sure to alert the team at [link] if you find any technical problems. One more thing: The team is also testing out deposit bonuses! For every dollar you put in, we give you another dollar. If you signed up for Fantasy Football, we give you two dollars. It’s easy money! When you spend money on a contest that runs, your deposit bonus becomes real money at a rate of 4 percent. That means, if you enter a $1 contest, you get 4¢ from your bonus. So try that out and make sure your investment gets returns! So let’s go for the win-win. Play dogfood Daily Fantasy football so we can all have fun and make some money while we’re at it. Cheers, Jerry When you communicate with an audience, you are normally trying to achieve one or more of the three following broad outcomes:
Check Your UnderstandingHere are two possible use cases where analyzing your audience will help you improve your communication:
Can you think of others? In both of our suggested use cases, the AUDIENCE tool provides a framework to identify key factors you should consider when creating, revising, or reviewing communications. Below you will find three scenarios that you can use to practise your ability to identify your audience. Using this Audience Analysis Form, complete an audience analysis for each of the three scenarios below. Fill in the Audience Analysis template below and submit it according to your instructor’s directions. https://h5p.org/h5p/embed/265399 ConclusionIn this chapter you have learned what an audience is and why an awareness of your audience’s needs and expectations is important to communicating your intended message. You learned to define primary, secondary, and hidden audiences, and thought about ways to persuade, inform, and/or entertain them. You also used the AUDIENCE tool to examine an audience and begin to recognize when the audience and message are mismatched. You should now be able to create messages that more effectively match your objective to successfully persuade, inform, or entertain. You are also well-positioned to get more practice and/or move on to the next module topic. Learning highlights
Wollert Hickman, D. (2014). Audience analysis: Primary, secondary, and hidden audiences. Retrieved from
http://writingcommons.org/index.php/2013-12-30-04-56-15/2014-02-04-20-46-53/audience-analysis-primary-secondary-and-hidden-audiences Attribution StatementThis chapter is a remix containing content from a variety of sources published under a variety of open licenses, including the following: Chapter Content
Check Your Understandings
Which audience may stop your message from getting to its intended audience?A gatekeeper has the power to stop your message instead of sending it on to other audiences. The gatekeeper therefore controls whether your message even gets to the primary audience.
What does the secondary audience do with your message?Primary audiences are those who receive the communication directly. Secondary, or "hidden", audiences include anyone who may indirectly receive a copy of the communication. These include anyone who will receive a copy, need to approve, will hear about, or be affected by your message.
What type of audience may be asked to comment on your message or implement your ideas after they have been approved?The primary audience will make the decision to act on your message. 3. The secondary audience may be asked to comment on your message or to implement your ideas after they've been approved.
What is the watchdog audience?Watchdog Audience: This is an audience with political, social or economic ties to your message and document. They may have a stake in your message or may become legally involved.
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