Tricks of the Trade | Shawenon Communications Newsletter

Diverse audience skill levels challenge every communicator. Do you dumb it down to the lowest common denominator so everyone will get your message? Or do you speak to your peers and leave the rest of your readership in the dust?

Middle Ground

I'm in favor of a middle ground. With a little extra thought, you can address the needs of most of your audience, no matter how extreme. Dawn Martin writes about art. Some of her readers are very knowledgeable; others know the difference between a painting and a sculpture, but little more.

I can relate. I write a lot about technology. Some of my readers teach courses on the topic; others are still intimidated by their cell phones. Likely you have the same problem in your field. How do you write an article that is interesting and informative and also useful to the full range of your readership?

Tricks of the Trade

Well, sometimes you don't. You just write for one level of expertise. But you can't do that too often or you'll lose the rest of your audience.

Here are some hints for finding middle ground.

Tell a story or use a powerful metaphor. No matter the field, there's always value to going back to basics. But you'll put everyone to sleep with this unless you dress it up. In "Deep Focus" I cloak the fundamentals of delivering a message in a story about an eight-year-old getting her dad's attention.

Use statistics creatively. It was a challenge to come up with something new about Facebook, especially since many of my readers spend a lot more time there than I do. It was Facebook's birthday, so I used that and some staggering statistics about its size to make the article "Facebook Nation" interesting to everyone.

Introduce a provocative point of view. In the same article, I quoted this powerful observation: "All social media involve a mixture of narcissism and voyeurism." This is interesting from a human point of view, so level of expertise doesn't matter.

Personalize a common struggle. Whether your reader is an expert or a newbie, you and your audience deal with some of the same challenges. Examples for me are selecting a new smart phone or dealing with technical support. Putting your personal experience into your article adds interest.

Use links to amplify. Obviously, you can send your readers elsewhere for basic information. But you can be self-referential, too. In "Finding Content," written to help readers get ideas for their own content, I link to examples from previous Web Words. Ditto in this article.

Bottom line: you can reach the entire length and breadth of your readership. You just have to be creative and tailor your message to more than one perspective.