Know Your Audience!

Audience
When writing a memo, a business letter, an executive summary, or any other document, you must know your audience. Writing for a business audience is different than writing for an instructor. When you write for your instructor, the focus is on you, the writer. You want to show your teacher how much you know about the subject at hand. When you write for a business audience, however, the focus shifts from you to your audience. In other words, the needs and expectations of your business audience become the most important factors in determining how and what you write. The information below is designed to provide you with ways to think about audience awareness.

Rhetorical Triangle
Any writing you do is based on a relationship between the author, the subject, and the audience. These three factors do not work separately; rather, they are interdependent. For instance, an understanding of your audience determines how you present your subject matter and how you present yourself. In other words, your audience's knowledge, experiences, assumptions, and beliefs affect the stylistic decisions you make about such things as form, word choice, and paragraph division. Understanding the relationship among the audience, the author, and the subject go into the construction of any written text. Begin with an understanding of who the audience is. Ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Whom am I writing to?
  2. What do they need to know?
  3. When do they need to know it?
  4. Why do they need to know it?
  5. What form is most useful?

Know Your Business Audience:
It is important to know as much as possible about your business audience. Make sure you know something about the audience's corporate culture. Also, guard against making false assumptions about your audience (i.e. gender, class, race). It is important to consider how ethical considerations affect your writing. Don't make assumptions about your audience's gender, culture/ethnicity, age, income/occupation, or education/knowledge. The bottom line here is to know your audience as fully as possible. It is also important to understand the corporate culture of a company when writing. Do research because there are different types of business audiences, and you want make sure you understand which audience you need to target! You should strive to understand the following:

Different Types of Business Audiences