Who Is Your Audience?

Attentive listeners at PodCamp Pittsburgh. Photo by Kimberly Reed.

Chris Brogan asked this question on his blog the other day. While commenting upon it just now, I realized I had a completely different take on the issue:

Everyone is concerned about motivating their audience. Without an active, engaged audience, you're missing the community that powers the engine of whatever it is you're currently doing in your life.

But I think you need to make a key distinction: your (target) audience and your fans are not always the same thing.

Your audience is the people you BELIEVE are hearing your message, the ones you CREATE the message for.

Your fans are the people who RESPOND to your message, who TAKE ACTION based upon what you say or do.

We may think we're creating something that appeals to a certain group of people when, in fact, it appeals to a completely different group for completely different reasons that we never considered.

For example: you might be writing a blog that deals with all the minutae of being a better teacher. But if a lot of your suggestions are rooted in organization aand time management, rather than direct communication and educational theory, don't be surprised if you find your actual "fans" are people from all walks of life who are searching for better productivity tips. Or, conversely, if you do focus on better communication skills, you may find your teaching blog being bookmarked and cited by public speakers, managers and politicians.

Once you really understand who's responding to your message, you can better evaluate whether you're on target with your original goals. Or, if your actual audience differs from your anticipated audience, you can decide whether you need to change your message or embrace your unintended fanbase. Either way, you can't truly be sure you're succeeding in your original plan without being able to accurately assess your audience AND your intentions -- which is one reason we surveyed our audience last week.

As the pipe company who owned the "utube" URL proved when they were slammed with misguided YouTube traffic, it's not who you THINK you're talking to that matters; it's who's actually HEARING you.