Understand who you are developing the content for. This is a critical exercise where you should spend time. Talk to the people who interact with the customers. If possible, talk to some of the customers directly. Ask questions that help you uncover the problems they were facing, how they went about finding the solution. What would happen if the problem was not solved?
How critical was the solution to their comfort or life, what they like about the brand what they don't like, if you don't have direct access to the customer, talk to the salespeople, the field guys, the call center executives and other people who can share this information. You need to understand who your readers are your viewers, your listeners, depending on the kind of content you come up with. You need to understand the demographics and the psychographics. And demographics. We have things like their age, the gender, the parental status, ethnicity, education level, income, things like this. And in the psychographics you understand In the interests of your audience, what is their behavior like?
Both online as well as offline? What are they afraid of? And what are they aspiring to? This will help you develop an angle on how you need to communicate to this audience. How well informed are they on the subject? Will you need to introduce the topic to them?
Are they familiar with it? For example, if you're talking about mobile devices, are these users tech savvy or not? Will you need to explain basic stuff? If you're talking about an enterprise software to a business user? Would you focus on benefits or features? how interested or attentive will they likely be?
Age and interest? These two things define how attentive reader or viewer will be. And there's the eternal question. What's in it for me, if you're talking about enterprise software features to the IT guy Who has to decide whether to request a demo or not? whether you'll be interested, take the same content to the end user. He may not be interested because he's not sold into it yet.
Unless your content addresses the needs of the reader, he's not going to be interested. how sophisticated is your audience? This is something which we understand with the readability index. readability index defines the comfort of a reader with the language of communication. The words you use the level of solidification, length of sentences, length of paragraphs, all must follow certain guidelines to be understood by an audience at a certain readability index. Usually, if your content can be understood by an eighth grader, you're good.
Microsoft Word and other word processing tools show you the flesh Kincaid grade. What is the writers relationship to the audience? Is he a stranger or respected authority a senior appear a blog post developer, you can be published under the authorship of someone else, that's a fairly common scenario. When developing content, keep the relationship of the author and the audience in mind, if it's internal communication, and the author is known and respected, what he says is going to be accepted. But if the same person talks to an external audience very isn't well known, he needs to build credibility. your content must cite reports and opinions of renowned people to build a case and drive the point home.
How much time Are they willing to spend on content consumption? Again, this depends on the question. What's in it for me? millennials who are accused of having very low attention span spend hours on Netflix and gaming sites. Why? Because it entertains them or challenges them.
The medium of communication used by a business to engage with audience segments is guided by this question. You may want to use video rather than a text blog, or tell a story versus a case study of chosen ebook or a white augmented reality virtual reality, these mediums are being increasingly adopted to communicate the value of an offering to users. And understanding of your audience is a must if you want your content to deliver the expected outcome. Now you have all the information you need to fill the project requirement document