target-audienceI’ve been hired to write an article for a technology company. When the company exec first approached me with the idea, my first impulse was to turn him down. His website was a mystery to me, presenting technological specs for IT and engineering professionals in a jargon I couldn’t break.

But my contact didn’t want me to write an article for engineers, he explained. He wanted me to write an article about his technology for business people and general consumers. He wanted me to have an AHA! experience about what his company does and then convert the concept into general terms so other non-technical people could understand.

Thanks, I think, to my journalism background, I’m actually good at these types of pieces. I wrote for quite some time for an animal science group, where I’d read scientific journal articles and translate them into press releases for the general public. And I love delving into a complicated concept and coming out with a way to share the information so that people can understand.

Similarly, I’m proud of the fact that I’ve never taken a marketing or PR course. I’ve always found it a benefit that I don’t understand the rules that everyone else understands. I simply approach every topic as if I was a member of the target audience. What types of things do I read that may communicate this message? Why would this message be important to me? How do I want to digest it? Answering these questions can usually give me a strong plan for developing a piece that reaches the right audiences.