Look at the image above. I love this image! Meet Miles Thomas Haren…son to Tom and Jennifer Haren. This is their third child and the first boy our family has seen in a few generations.
Miles is my little nephew and I spent the afternoon helping Tom and Jennifer take his newborn pictures. Tom used to be a baseball player, catcher for Erskine College. You can see in the picture above his bat and glove from his college days.
I was having breakfast with a client and friend…Sally Foister. We were chatting about marketing, social media, digital media, etc. The one thing that we kept on coming back to was the idea of knowing your audience.
She has one of the most interesting jobs, in my humble opinion, as she is the Director of Marketing for Greenville Hospital System here in Greenville, SC. Imagine dealing with all the audiences and marketing efforts for the largest Non-Profit Health System in South Carolina. Audience is key.
As we were talking…I just thought more and more about the idea of audience. It is so key in today’s balancing act of digital media, traditional media, and even public/media relations efforts. We can get so hung up on our message, our brand, our services…but sometimes we have to sit back and think about those who are receiving this message. What about those who should be receiving the message and are being marginalized by virtue of our marketing efforts.
Sometimes it it is good to pull back and really think through the people we are trying to touch, have a conversation with, build community around, or just meet. Marketing is more than just delivering a message…it is also about engaging conversation. Before we can engage conversation, we must truly know who we are chatting with…who is on the other side of the coin.
When we use social outlets to post content, do you think through who you are posting the update to…who do you want to read this message? When you are creating a video…do you think through the audience? Can you visualize the audience and see the message, hear the message, share the message through their point-of-view.
Sometimes it takes just a few minutes to do a simple audience analysis, to sit back and visualize who you want share your message with. Then, imagine life through their eyes, ears, daily routines, and heart.
When we call our parents, talk to our children, share dinner with our significant other/love one…we talk and communicate with love and compassion. We do so because we really know our audience. We have taken the time to learn how they think, how they listen, how they see the world. We listen to their responses and try to respond with respect and more thought provoking conversation. Imagine if we used this same method with our marketing efforts.
Audience is key…and marketing is still communication.
***Sally is also writing a blog, just in-case you want to read…CLICK HERE.
How do we make information for our communities creative, usable, and easy to access? Thinking back to my academic days of User-Centered Design and Usability Testing Methodologies…it is all about AUDIENCE.
We have to find a focus! Seriously, we have to have a mission statement for the information we are trying to communicate. It takes a some time to sit down and write out a mission statement. The one thing that helps me frame this initiative is to identify three points.
1 – Who is the audience
2 – What is the purpose of this communication effort?
3 – How are we trying to reach this audience with this piece(s) of communication?
Not hard, but sit down and do this simple analysis. Take time to break down the audiences, list them all. Then, write out the purpose of the effort/initiative when communicating to these audience(s). next, how are you going to get this information to the audience. Take a few moments and see how each of these are inter-dependent. The method of distribution might differ from audience to audience and might even change your purpose.
Now use this research to write a mission statement for your overall initiative. Explain it to yourself and say it out loud, imagine if you have to pitch this to your client.
OK…to make it usable, you have to know your audience. You have to live, breath, eat, sleep, smell, taste, etc…just like your audience. You have to know their pre-dispositions before your can communicate with them .So, take that little analysis above and list out each audience. Then for each one, write a complete description for each audience. Describe them in a way that you can paint a picture for your mother who knows nothing about these people. You want to paint that picture so you can almost see everything through their eyes.
Once you have done this little exercise, you should have a better understanding of your audience. Now, begin creating your piece of communication. Go through the creative process iteratively. Create static drafts of the design, rough drafts of the copy, story boards of the video, etc. Put together the first look.
Now, pull out that audience analysis you created previously, and ask yourself if you think they can see/understand this information. Use this as a litmus test. Then, conduct a simple usability test, invite individuals that represent each audience and let them interact with these “static” designs. You think of this as a focus group, but to me you are conducting a simple usability test. Let them play, ask questions, but do not predispose them .Do this on a global basis, looking at the overall communication initiative; and also do this very micro with a small part of the communication piece. RECORD THIER THOUGHTS. DO this either with note taking, audio recording, or video recording. Then…make changes based on the mission statement.
Now…create the piece of communication in a dynamic form. This means make the website, the Facebook page, the Blog, the Video, etc. Pull out the mission statement and audience analysis and compare the final dynamic piece and with this initial research. Find another group of individuals to come to review. Let them watch, interact, etc. with the dynamic piece of communication. Watch them as the interact. See where they engage and disengage. What their faces, their eyes, and their body language.
Does this make any sense. Is it too methodical. Well, you can make this as big or as small a process as you want. But ultimately, it is the purpose to come up with a creative idea, understand the audience, test with the audience, adapt, and launch. This empowers a community of creatives and audiences to engage in a process to learn and come up with a wonderful piece of creative!
Be passionate…communicate passionately…engage with your audience(s) passionately!
I was hanging out on Twitter the other day chatting with a few friends, and the conversation kept towards audience. Well, trying to fully get into the mind(s) of the audience(s), to fully understand their view-point. Why do we do this as communicators, so we can clearly communicate our message. I do this mainly because I cannot produce any piece of creative for a “client” until I fully understand the audience.
I look at the communication relationship with the audience like ballroom dancing. You know, you will have people watching your every move, so you have to be in complete rhythm with your dancing partner. You have to know the next steps, the next twist, the next move and you have to do this completely anticipating your partners movements. In-order to do so…it takes practice, communication, and trust. To eloquently dance across the floor with complete fluid movement, you have to know the person you are dancing with…it is a relationship.
When I create a presentation, a video, a graphic, or any piece of creative…I have to know my audience. I have to completely feel that I am seeing their respective view-point. This has to be done in-order to create a message that is effective and efficient. I have to know what makes them tick, what makes them look away, what engages, and what distracts. It is more than demographics and hard numbers, it is the subjective pieces of information the defines the passion behind their inner being.
This takes time and research. Many times (to begin the dance), I just get out an ole piece of paper and draw a simple triangle…a perfect triangle. You know, a triangle that has equal lengths on all three sides thus creating equal angles. At each point I write three different words: Audience, Purpose, and Delivery. In the center of the triangle, I write Context. I do this each time I begin a project. I define the audience(s), the purpose behind the project, and the method(s) the message will be delivered. From this, I write a mission statement that yields context. By defining the purpose and delivery of each piece of communication, it takes us closer to understanding the audience and how/why we are communicating the message.
Each piece of communication is delivered on some platform whether via print, web, video, email, radio, etc. But this is the theatre for our performance. Our audience(s) are sitting in the seats. The goal is to engage the audience with the piece of communication. We want them to dance with us! We want them to forget their peripheral vision and interact with the message.
Before we can dance with our audience, engage them with the message, we must know them! We must be able to look through their eyes, hear with their ears, feel their tendencies, and understand their pre-dispositions.
When is the last time you went to dinner or went to grab a drink by yourself to listen? You know, take the time to walk down to the ole watering hole and enjoyed a good drink to listen? Sat down with the sole purpose of listening to the stories around you? There are so many stories to be shared at the local watering hole. People enjoying conversation, ole times, catching up, beating their chest, war stories…ones that connect and make us feel real.
Listening…the lost art.
Sometimes while on trips, I like to find a bar, pick a stool in the middle, order a brew, and listen. Instead of facing straight ahead or looking right at the television, turn sideways and engage in a new conversation. How do we listen? We read body language and listen to the stories that we can relate.
Asking questions…inquiry.
The easiest way to listen is to find someone you can relate and ask questions. Empowering your audience to share. Putting the people you can relate in a position to share and empower you. Asking questions provides connection and willingness to engage.
Stories from questions…empower our audiences.
Questions come from listening and listening comes form questions. We all like to learn and we as humans are social creatures. We connect with those willing to share the stories and that inspire emotion. Quality questions come from those who listen to their audiences. When we want to hear rich stories, we ask, we inquire, we explore, and we search for the red-string that connects our stories to theirs. This empowers our relationships.
When is the last time you have gone into a public place, a bar, a meeting, a networking event…and spent more time asking questions than answering? When is the last time you have inquired about others experiences than filling the void of the conversation with your own? It is amazing who we can meet, what we can learn, people we can empower, and relationships we can build.
Storytelling is not a lost art!
Storytelling is the art of listening…to tell others stories. Our stories get old after a while especially when we have told them so many times they get to old to find the new iteration to make people engage. Telling others’ stories is lot more fun when we listen and tell others stories. Are you a storyteller or are you one that just tells your own story? Our own stories gets old after a while…take a few minutes to listen.