Craig Wise

Nothing Interesting Happens in the Office (NIHITO)

As a technical communicator and a copywriter, I often struggle to accurately define my audience and clearly understand their world view. The 5 practices described below will ensure that your writing persuades or informs your audience effectively.

Without this clarity, a writer easily can make small assumptions that lead to terrific misunderstandings. For example, I often take my own ease with technology and computers for granted. My company’s audience includes buyers who aren’t entirely comfortable in our highly connected world of free information.

While I assume online forms save time and effort, some people are confused and even frightened by the instruction “visit [our website] to RSVP.”

The five practices outlined below have helped me better understand my audience and reduce or altogether avoid the danger of miscommunication.

1. Build Reader/Buyer Personas—The NIHITO principle is easy to practice if you work in sales. It’s more difficult to find the time as a copywriter and can be practically impossible as a technical writer. Building reader personas based on target users or buyers often gives me a clear sense of who I’m trying to reach with my writing.

There are many strategies available to help you create these personas. I recommend visiting the Pragmatic Marketing blog pages for some tips and tricks. Most strategies define a persona based on behavioral traits (how much time does the reader spend online? How much time does the buyer spend watching television?) or demographic information (such as their level of education or average annual salary).

Once the reader’s background, preferences and tastes are clearly defined, I have found that I can more clearly write to that person. To help keep the reader in mind, you might find it helpful to name your ideal reader/buyer.

2. Know What They Know—One of the quickest ways of getting to know your audience is to learn about the issues and topics that interest them. For example, I often read the magazines and journals that my education technologists receive, such as Campus Technology and Inside HigherEd. Page after page, these resources help me discover what my audience understands and what they are concerned about.

Often successful, industry related magazines or journals offer seminars and webinars that your readers will attend. Sign up for the titles that your readers will attend. A fifty dollar a year subscription and a few more pieces of junk mail are a small price to pay for clearly communicating the company’s message to buyers and your readers.

3. Go Where They Go—The working professionals you’re trying to reach and inform often need to network with their peers and learn from each other. This kind of valuable interaction takes place at annual conferences and user groups. I highly recommend attending presentations and sessions right along side your readers.

Not only does this practice mirror the same principles outlined in practice 2, Know What They Know, it also gives you an opportunity to meet these people face to face. I try to strike up conversations with the most engaged attendees—the ones asking challenging questions are often the market mavens Malcolm Gladwell defines in The Tipping Point.

Once people realize that I’m not out to sell anything and that I have an honest interest, they usually open up and tell me about their experiences with the technologies and solutions they use daily. However, our conversations are fairly one sided, with me asking a lot of questions.

4. Build Personal Relationships—I learned this principle from successful members of our sales team, and it flows naturally from practice 3, Go Where They Go. After running into the same administrators and information officers at annual conferences, I have begun building relationships.

When I expect we’ll be at the same conference, I send them an e-mail inviting one friend out to lunch or dinner. We catch up, and he’ll often talk about what’s important in his work today. This kind of insight has been invaluable.

Warning: Never actually ask the question “what keeps you up at night?” Your subject will likely have one of two possible responses. They will shut down the conversation immediately, or they will explode with laughter at your expense. This is a hard won lesson.

5. Create or Visit User Communities—While seminars and conferences are a great place to meet with the people you’re trying to reach and inform, they can be costly affairs. Not every communicator’s manager or budget allow for these visits. Practice 5 brings the reader/buyer directly to you in a socially networked environment.

A few years ago, the marketing director I work with had the foresight to create a Ning site for our customers. The site, which only customers can join, provides them with a secure environment for discussing their issues and needs. This has been a veritable gold mine for me as a copywriter.

While the marketing team and I strive to provide our customers with value added information about our products, the customers respond by helping us better understand the features that can fill their needs. The customer community has become an open forum in which they communicate with our product managers and each other. This kind of user-generated content drives many marketing and product initiatives.

In the End

I recommend a proactive approach for getting to know your readers and their needs—find a clear window into their world. In short, get out there, press the flesh and meet the people you’d like to persuade or inform with your writing.

There you have it, the sum total of my audience defining experience. I would love to hear about your experiences with these and similar practices. More importantly, if you have other strategies that help you target your users and buyers, I’m always eager to learn.