How many times have you sat down for a lecture, seminar, webinar or conversation and walked away scratching your head and wondering who the heck were they speaking too? Did the speaker really know his audience?

With any form of written or verbal communication, keeping your “intended audience” in mind while you organize your thoughts can help you make good decisions about what materials to include and how best to support your ideas and argument. Knowing your intended audience and tailoring your message specifically to them provides clear and distinct dialogue. Plus, your audience will feel much more connected and involved.

Targeting also allows you the opportunity to utilize the correct approach in terms of speaking and writing styles, tones, slangs, images and graphics, recognizing different audiences understand different messages. For example, if you are writing a term paper, you would choose a much more traditional use of words and sentence structures. However if you are posting a blog, phrases, slangs and abbreviations are more applicable for your intended audience. And when sending Grandma a birthday wish you would send her a card, not an email when you know she doesn’t have a computer.

How to prepare for an audience? Make an outline and answer the following questions. It will surprise you that after answering these few questions, your preparation time will be cut and your audience will walk away wanting more.

1. Define your audience – who are you addressing and could there be more than one audience? List them.
2. What is important to your intended audience? What do they want to hear? You can determine your intended audience by interviewing several members prior to preparing your presentation or writings, research demographic profiles, or collect research data. Do not make assumptions without first doing your homework. List their top three- five priorities.
3. What element of surprise or “WOW Factor” that can you offer based on your research or level of expertise?
4. How can you organize your thoughts and views in a way that best suits your audience?
5. What opinion(s) or argument(s) do you want the audience to “take away” based on your presentation?
6. Review your content and ask yourself, “would I want to read or listen to this”?

When you know your intended audience and you know your message, then communicating your thoughts, opinions, views and arguments in an organized and interesting manner becomes a lot easier and more informative and interesting too.