4 Factors for Reaching—and Moving—Your Audience
Much of Libretto’s work is about engaging audiences at pivotal moments. Those audience members may be learning about a transformative new initiative, contemplating a major gift, or evaluating the fit of a school for their child. So, what’s the best way to frame that vital information?
The best writing succeeds at reaching the intended audience by taking multiple factors into account. While the considerations below may appear binary at first glance, each pair exists along a continuum; writing successfully for a specialized audience requires balancing those seemingly contradictory characteristics.
Here are the factors to consider to make sure your content hits your audience as intended:
Simplicity and sophistication
Every donor, volunteer, potential employee, and prospective student has the option of engaging with other organizations besides yours. Your content needs to reward their attention while respecting their time.
A great way to do this is by linking everything back to your foundational values and differentiators: Why do you exist? What do you do exceptionally well? Who benefits from engaging with you? Use the simplest possible language—but without sacrificing flair or resorting to truisms.
Subjectivity and objectivity
Your content should appeal both to the individual reader and across a broad audience, and working from your own point of view can be the easiest way to achieve this.
For example, consider why biodiversity matters to you personally: Is it about being able to encounter wildlife firsthand? Ensuring access to nature for future generations? Engaging and persuading officials to adopt nature-friendly policies? Attempting to answer questions that intrigue you makes it more likely that the narrative you create will be relevant and compelling to others.
Facts and emotions
Every topic has a rational and an emotional dimension. Effective narratives interweave those perspectives gracefully (and, hopefully, seamlessly).
For example, schools that raise a certain level of endowment funds are better positioned to benefit from budget relief over the long term (rational argument). Funds generated from that endowment could make the dream of an excellent education possible for a student from an under-resourced family (emotional appeal). Content that moves both rational and emotional levers is much more likely to engage and move your audience.
Authenticity and ambition
Someone once said that a poem should have one foot planted on the ground and the other kicking at the stars. Effective writing inhabits that middle ground between being true to what an organization stands for and exploring new terrain—while inviting the reader along on that journey. Respect your organization’s ethos, legacy, and identity while thoughtfully challenging the status quo by highlighting how you’re evolving strategically.
Effective content development is anything but formulaic. Ideas don’t take flight in a box, and you can’t play tennis without a net. Taking different audience members’ priorities into account—and providing the right balance between affirming what they know and believe while leading them intentionally forward—goes a long way toward ensuring that the content you generate will motivate, resonate, and delight.
