Segment your audience and develop personas.

Know your audience.

How you write depends on your intended audience. Be as specific as possible. We recommend thinking of your intended audience in segments, and then developing “personas” for each of those segments. For example, if you believe your ideas will appeal to business leaders responsible for strategy formulation, then business leaders would be your target segment (yes, your audience can be multiple segments).

For each segment, create a persona. This is essentially a caricature or stereotype of what you believe most people in that segment share in common with respect to needs and wants, frustrations and pain points, and core values. Developing personas focuses your writing on creating content that is highly relevant and timely for your target audience segments.