What should you know about your reader?

Can demographics help your writing?

First, you need to understand where your reader is coming from. And for this, record the demographics that include details like age, education, gender, occupation, ethnicity, and location. Don’t worry selecting one gender would not do injustice to the other you can always multiple personas for different readers. There are usually some commonalities between interested people based on which you can create these personas.

For example, if you select a 35-year-old female who is a graduate working professional from Mumbai, the article you write would not just appeal to this lady but also to a male who is a graduate and working as a professional in Mumbai. Take the benefit of specificity to come up with your write-up and then the rest would automatically be taken care of.

But how does demographics affect your writing? And what does this demographic tell us about the reader?

Understand Persona And How It Helps

Demographics

• Name: Kiara
• Age: 35 years old
• A 35-year-old is a mature adult which means you can use a mature thought process and can be a bit philosophical.
• Occupation: Working professional
• Working professionals can understand business and management jargon, concepts, and terminologies.
• Education: Graduate
• A graduate is well-educated to understand medium level vocabulary words.
• Industry: IT industry

You can take an example of how an IT industry works if you are covering any topic that involves explanations of work processes.

Profile: Sr. Manager

A senior-level manager can understand company processes and even team dynamics so, in your article, you can talk about mature corporate content such as processes, team structures, organizational structure, leadership, etc.

Location: Mumbai

Being a metro dweller, and living in a crowded city, you can integrate day to day challenges when welling up emotional stories in your piece. For example, you can talk about traffic congestion, crowd, pollution, pandemic, etc.

Ethnicity: Christian

Adding religious content that is specific to Hindus or Muslims can be avoided so create content that is universal.

Each information in the personal list above can actually help you come up with an idea for an article, story, dialogue, or information that would appeal to your reader. You can either use them individually or combine a few to come up with ideas. Below are some of the examples

• Share a list of best books on social networking
• Must-avoid timewasters that eat your productivity in the office
• Use your analytical skills to become an influencer on social media
• A book that can help you get rid of distractions around you

Once you have your full persona ready, your next step would be to analyze each piece of information to come up with a style guide for your write-up so you are not just taking care of the topics of their interest but also of their reading preferences. Your analysis of the persona details must provide you some insights on language and vocabulary levels to use, understand expectations of the reader, and explore their reading habits.

• Expectations: Good grammar, clarity
• Vocabulary Level: Good
• Language level: Good
• Reading habits: What? blogs, books…What kind? Business related, analytical, productivity enhancement, etc.

Every Person Is Different, But how does it make a difference to the writer?

Having done with demographics, let us now go to the next level and collect more personal information. This should include interests, hobbies, likes, dislikes, habits, pain points, strengths, and weaknesses.

• Interests: books
• Hobbies: writing, reading
• Likes: guiding others, meeting people
• Dislikes: Time-wasters
• Habits: reading daily
• Pain points: Work-life balance
• Strengths: Analytical understanding
• Weaknesses: easily distracted

Each information in the personal list above can actually help you come up with an idea for an article, story, dialogue, or information that would appeal to your reader. You can either use them individually or combine a few to come up with ideas. Below are some of the examples

• Share a list of best books on social networking
• Must-avoid timewasters that eat your productivity in the office
• Use your analytical skills to become an influencer on social media
• A book that can help you get rid of distractions around you

Once you have your full persona ready, your next step would be to analyze each piece of information to come up with a style guide for your write-up so you are not just taking care of the topics of their interest but also of their reading preferences. Your analysis of the persona details must provide you some insights on language and vocabulary levels to use, understand expectations of the reader, and explore their reading habits.

• Expectations: Good grammar, clarity
• Vocabulary Level: Good
• Language level: Good
• Reading habits: What? blogs, books…What kind? Business related, analytical, productivity enhancement, etc.