Checking in with your Audience: 629 Blog #3

   When creating, especially for the internet, there is a lot to think about. Riding the creative wave always starts with knowing who your audience is. In the design process, "Understanding your audience and how they learn best is step one" (Questline, 2022). Using video helps you reach more people, but the size of that audience depends on where you share it.  Lawrence (2022) writes that you have to ask, "Who is the audience? Or who are the audiences? What do they want or need to know? What is the most effective way to send that message to your audiences?" (p. 21). You have to ask if your audience is older or younger. Are you trying to teach them or entertain them (or both)? What would you like your audience to take away from the video after they watch it?

    For many content creators, knowing their audience is essential to their job. "Creative professionals need an audience to consume and legitimize the work they create; without a substantial audience, along with the positive reactions it can provide for their creations, most would not be able to continue creating due to lack of commercial or financial viability (Duffy et al., 2019; McRobbie, 2018)" (Pillemer et. al. 2026, p. 217). Audience reaction to their content can make or break a content creator. However, educational digital writers may use a different approach when determining who their audience is, since they do not have the pressure of views/audience engagement. 

If video creators are trying to educate, knowing your audience can determine how you disseminate information. For example, you do not want to display information at a collegiate level if your video is for a 4th grader. Digital writers need to keep in mind that what they post may be reposted to thousands of people. Fact-checking multiple times before you post is a good idea when giving your audience information. Misinformation and disinformation are very prevalent in digital writing. They are also very, very hard to take back once they've been seen by a wide range of audiences. Digital writers should take that into account when writing for their audiences as well. 

In the video below, the speaker discusses the importance of being specific about your audience. If your audience is vague, your content has nowhere to land. 

                                                            (HubSpot Marketing, 2025)

In fact, it would probably be very difficult to know what to write if you do not know your audience. "Because individuals disseminating information to a heterogeneous audience may need to cater to a diverse set of beliefs (Bond et al. 2004), we propose that audience diversity is an important dimension for content creators to consider" (Fossen & Schweidel, 2025, p. 2).  Audience diversity is a safe assumption, but it changes depending on where you post. Diversity can mean many things; for example, are you posting your digital writing where mostly women will be reading? 

For revising my video, I did just that-I looked at my audience. For the first version of my video, I introduced myself to my classmates and shared my thoughts on social media use, both personal and business. For this new video, I decided to tailor it to students, as if I were a teacher in an online instructional technology course. Talking to students at the elementary level is my usual audience, so this was something different.

Below is my new video:

Knowing your audience makes digital writing easier. You know who you are writing to, therefore your content can be to the point. Knowing your audience's age, education level, and the diversity of your audience is something to consider when you are writing digitally. 

References:

Fossen, B. L., & Schweidel, D. A. (2025). Emotionality in political social media communications: The moderating role of audience diversity. Information Systems Research. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.0064. 

HubSpot Marketing. (2025, July 8). How to find your target audience in 2025         6 step framework +   free templates [Video]. YouTube.                     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mugRyElbd0

Lawrence, D. (2022). Digital Writing: A Guide to writing for Social Media and             the web. Broadview Press.

Questline Digital. (2022, July 14). When to use video vs written content. https://www.questline.com/blog/when-to-use-video-vs-written-content/

Pillemer, J., Harrison, S., Murphy, C., & Park, Y. (2025). Audience entanglement: How independent creative workers experience the pressures of widespread appeal on digital platforms. Administrative Science Quarterly, 71(1), 215–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392251399652