The Power of Knowing Your Audience
How knowing your audience is the first step to achieving meaningful impact
If you’ve ever been in a Word Force meeting where we’re getting the necessary information to produce content then you know we ask two key questions every time:
Who is your audience?
Who is your target?
These questions help us understand the correct tone we need to strike in the content being produced as well as whether the content being produced is the most appropriate for the intended audience and target. Circuitous explanation aside, here’s what we mean when we talk about audience and target.
Audience
Your audience is made up of the people, groups, or coalitions you need to reach and organize around your narrative. These people can be those in your immediate network such as those subscribed to your email list or who follow you on social media. Let’s call them your Day Ones. Your audience also includes people outside of your immediate network who you haven’t reached or come into contact with before but who would be supportive of your message if they knew about it. Let’s call this group The Friend of a Friend. Finally, your audience may also include people who may not always agree with you but may be persuaded to support you on some issues. Let’s call this group Sometimey Susans.
To reach your Day Ones, Friend of a Friend, and Sometimey Susans you need to know who they listen to and who they’re influenced by. In short, who does your audience trust and where do they get their information? By having this understanding of your audience you’ll know not only what kind of narrative focused content to produce but also where to place it and who to collaborate with to amplify your message (when possible) to reach the largest group of people as possible who will then repeat the messages of your narrative in their own networks and friend groups until it reaches your target.
Target
Your target is made up of the people, groups, or coalitions that your audience can influence and move toward action. Simply put, your targets are the people who have the power to take action and make change. This can include lawmakers, business owners, entrepreneurs, or titans of industry.
Your audience and your target are not the same. Your audience are the people who will carry your messages and seed your narrative to influence your target. Your targets are the people who will make an actual policy change in support of your overall organizational goal.
So, how do you strategize about who to reach in your audience to influence your target for the most success? This requires power mapping.
Power Mapping
Power mapping is just what it sounds like. You’re going to make an actual map to determine not only who has the power to accomplish what you want, but how much power they have as well as how much or how little they agree with you in the movement toward achieving your organization goal.
In the visual representation of your power map you will have four quadrants. Moving counter clockwise, quadrant one includes those people with a lot of power and high agreement. Quadrant two features people who have strong agreement but significantly less power. Quadrant 3 includes people who have low agreement and the least power. Finally, quadrant four includes people who have low agreement but a lot of power.
As part of Narrative Initiatives’ ongoing work through the Changemaker Authors Cohort and other literacy focused projects we power mapped different aspects of the publishing industry including the distribution of published books and who has high agreement and influence in that area.
You can map the power of both your audience and target depending on the content, project or program to figure out how to fine tune your narrative strategy to maximize its impact. At the end of the day, your message, your narrative strategy, and your organizational goal mean nothing if you don’t have a group of people willing to support your work in a way that forces those who hold power in government, in business, in industry to not only take notice of the change you’re demanding but then to actually follow through and make that change.
