{"id":310,"date":"2011-03-25T10:55:23","date_gmt":"2011-03-25T17:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/?p=310"},"modified":"2011-03-25T11:00:34","modified_gmt":"2011-03-25T18:00:34","slug":"communication-strategy-%e2%80%9ca%e2%80%9d-is-for-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/25\/communication-strategy-%e2%80%9ca%e2%80%9d-is-for-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"Communication Strategy: \u201cA\u201d Is for Audience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/dreamstime_4555098-Letter-A-Sign-Language.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-312\" title=\"dreamstime_4555098 (Letter A Sign Language)\" src=\"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/dreamstime_4555098-Letter-A-Sign-Language-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/dreamstime_4555098-Letter-A-Sign-Language-200x300.jpg 200w, http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/dreamstime_4555098-Letter-A-Sign-Language.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a>Whenever I hear \u201csocial media should be real, transparent, and audience focused,\u201d I find myself nodding and wondering at the same time. I agree. It should. But why stop there? All communication should be that way. If it were, it would be way more successful.<\/p>\n<p>Fresh from graduate school, where all I studied was communication\u2014how we humans communicated, what worked, what didn\u2019t\u2014I approached every marcom project as a communication vehicle. My view: it didn\u2019t matter how snappy the writing was or how cool the design looked, if it didn\u2019t resonate with audience\u2014if it didn\u2019t <em>communicate<\/em>\u2014the chances of success were slim.<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward 15 years, and the mantra of \u201creal, transparent, and audience focused\u201d is heard everywhere\u2014but only for social media. It\u2019s a start, and I love it. But let\u2019s make it the mantra for all communication.<\/p>\n<p><strong><!--more-->Know Thy Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not enough to focus on your audience based on your best guess. You need to <em>know<\/em> your audience:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Who<\/strong> are they (customers\/prospects, peers, influencers, mentors, others)?<\/li>\n<li><strong>What<\/strong> do\/don\u2019t they like?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Where<\/strong> are they?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Why<\/strong> should they care?<\/li>\n<li><strong>How<\/strong> do they like to interact with you and how can you help them?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I know, \u201cDuh, obvious.\u201d Yet, we don\u2019t\u2019 always communicate this way. Why? Because we\u2019re most comfortable talking about what we know. And what do we know best? Ourselves. And, of course, there are those who think the best way to sell is to just talk about how great the product or service is, but that\u2019s a topic for another post.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Pick a Tool for Gathering Knowledge About Your Audience<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>There is a multitude of ways for learning more about your audience, from traditional to social:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Query existing and past clients\/customers\/patients<\/li>\n<li>Ask your social media followers what they think<\/li>\n<li>Be a \u201clurker\u201d:\n<ul>\n<li>Find discussion groups and communities in your focus area by doing keyword searches and investigating different sites<\/li>\n<li>Follow the same process to find other blogs in your focus area<\/li>\n<li>Conduct similar searches on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Keep up on your audience\u2019s interests using social media monitoring tools like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/help\/?search=insights\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook Insights<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.socialtimes.com\/2010\/09\/complete-guide-youtube-insight\/\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube Insights<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/insights\/search\/\" target=\"_blank\">Google Insights for Search<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/trends\" target=\"_blank\">Google Trends<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.quantcast.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Quantcast<\/a>, etc<\/li>\n<li>Conduct old-fashioned market research<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once you\u2019ve done your research, be adaptable and open to feedback and changing any approach that isn\u2019t working. Most importantly, focus on helping your customers. No one wants to be \u201csold\u201d to or pressured or bombarded with marketing messages. They want information. They want assistance. They want to laugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever I hear \u201csocial media should be real, transparent, and audience focused,\u201d I find myself nodding and wondering at the same time. I agree. It should. But why stop there? All communication should be that way. If it were, it &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/25\/communication-strategy-%e2%80%9ca%e2%80%9d-is-for-audience\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[11,19,40,14,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317,"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aveconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}