Adapting Your Message to Your Audience

2. To learn how to Continue to analyze your audiences. Begin to adapt your message to your audiences. Begin to understand what your organization wants. Adapting Your Message to Your Audience

3. Start by answering these questions: Who is my audience? Why is audience so important? What do I need to know about my audience(s)? Adapting Your Message to Your Audience

4. Start by answering these questions: Now that I have my analysis, what do I do with it? What if my audiences have different needs? How do I reach my audience(s)? Adapting Your Message to Your Audience

5. Kinds of Audiences • Initial Audience • Gatekeeper • Primary Audience • Secondary Audience • Watchdog Audience

6. PAIBOC P What are your purposes in writing? AWho is (are) youraudiences? IWhat informationmust your message include?

7. PAIBOC continued BWhat reasons or readerbenefitscan you use to support your position? OWhatobjectionscan you expect your reader(s) to have? CHow will thecontextaffect reader response?

8. The Communication Model Perception Interpretation Choice/ Selection Encoding/ Decoding Channel Noise The Communication Process

9. Audience Analysis Factors • Empathy • Knowledge • Demographic Factors • Values and Beliefs • Personality • Past Behavior

10. Discourse Community • A group of people who share assumptions about • What channels, formats, and styles to use. • What topics to discuss. • How to discuss topics. • What constitutes evidence.

11. Organizational (Corporate) Culture • Norms of behavior in an organization are revealed • Verbally through the organization’s myths, stories, and heroes. • Nonverbally through the allocation of space, money, and power.

12. Adapting Messages to an Audience • Strategy • Organization • Word Choice • Document Design • Photographs and Visuals

13. Gatekeepers and Primary Audience • To reach, focus on • Content and choice of details. • Organization. • Level of formality. • Use of technical terms and theory.

14. Written Messages • Make it easier to • Present many specific details. • Present extensive or complex financial data. • Minimize undesirable emotions.

15. Oral Messages • Make it easier to • Answer questions, resolve conflicts, and build consensus. • Use emotion to persuade. • Get immediate action or response. • Focus the reader’s attention. • Modify a proposal unacceptable in its original form.

16. Communication Channels • Channels vary according to • Speed. • Accuracy of transmission. • Cost. • Number of messages carried. • Number of people reached. • Efficiency. • Ability to promote goodwill.

17. For Written and Oral Messages • Adapt the message to the audience. • Show the audience how it will benefit from the idea, policy, service, or product. • Overcome any objections the audience may have.

18. For Written and Oral Messages continued • Use you-attitude and positive emphasis. • Use visuals to clarify or emphasize material. • Specify what the audience should do.