One of the assumptions you can make about writing is that it is done for an audience. In marketing and advertising, knowing your audience is vital: it will guide you in developing your content strategy, determining the topics they are interested in, and help you organise information in a way that makes sense to them. It will direct how you express your copy for your audience.
Ultimately, understanding who you are writing for will ensure that you are able to communicate your message to them and thereby increase the likelihood that your copy will achieve the desired result.
Step one of writing for digital is to ensure you have researched your audience and understand what they want. Once you have a clear idea about this, you can figure out how to fulfil those needs using your copy.
Holly Buchanan of Future Now(Buchanan, 2008) summarises this with three questions you should ask:
1. Who is my audience?
2. What actions do I want them to take?
3. What information do they need in order to feel confident taking action?
When you are researching your audience, there are two useful concepts to bear in mind: the audience of one, and personas.
