49 1.5 Importance of Audience

 

Another key part of the definition of technical and professional communication is the receiver of the information—the audience. Technical communication is the delivery of technical information to readers (or listeners or viewers) in a manner that is adapted to their needs, level of understanding, and background. In fact, this audience element is so important that it is one of the cornerstones of this course: you are challenged to write about technical subjects but in a way that a beginner—a non-specialist—could understand. This ability to “translate” technical information to non-specialists is a key skill to any technical communicator. Technology companies are constantly struggling to find effective ways to help customers or potential customers understand the advantages or the operation of their new products.

In addition, communicating with employees within an organization also requires superior professional communication skills. Employees prefer detailed information in a timely manner when there are companywide changes such as layoffs and wage cuts (Sguera et al., 2021). When companies do not communicate, employees tend to become cynical and unhappy with their workplace. An individual with excellent communication skills is an asset to every organization. No matter what career you plan to pursue, learning to express yourself professionally in speech and in writing will help you get there.

Profiling or analyzing your audience takes skill and consideration. An effective communicator will need to consider the length of the message and the channel in which the message is communicated based on the audience’s needs. When you sit down to write, prepare a presentation or communicate with clients or coworkers, ask yourself the following questions:

• How big is my main audience? Is it one person, two, a few, several, a dozen, dozens, hundreds, or an indeterminately large number (the public)?
• Who might be my secondary or tertiary audiences (e.g., people you can see CC’d or people you can’t because they could be forwarded your email without you knowing)?
• What is my professional or personal relationship to them relative to their position/seniority in their organization’s hierarchy?
• How much do they already know about the topic of my message?
• What is their demographic—i.e., their age, gender, cultural background, educational level, and beliefs?

This section is adapted from the following sources:

What is Technical and Professional Communication. In Howdy or Hello? Technical and Professional Communication Copyright © 2022 by Matt McKinney, Kalani Pattison, Sarah LeMire, Kathy Anders, and Nicole Hagstrom-Schmidt, available at Howdy or Hello? Technical and Professional Communication – Simple Book Publishing licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Analyzing Your Audience in Communication at Work (2nd ed). Copyright © 2025 by Jordan Smith, available at Communication at Work – Simple Book Publishing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

 

Discussion

 

• Discuss how verbal communication impacts your line of work.
• Discuss how written communication will be utilized in your field.
• What type of communication skills will be necessary to succeed in an engineering or science field?
• Consider audience analysis for a moment. You are writing a proposal for a land surveying company for an app to speed up their communication process related to projects. The owners of the company are from The Boomer and Gen X generation. What would be your audience considerations as you develop your proposal and upcoming presentation?

 

References

 

Ford, J. D., Paretti, M., Kotys-Schwartz, D., Howe, S., & Ott, R. (2021). New engineers’ transfer

of communication activities from school to work. IEEE Transactions on Professional

Communication, 64(2), 105–120. https://doi.org/10.1109/tpc.2021.3065854

 

Griffin, E., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. (2015). A first look at communication theory (9th Ed.).

McGraw-Hill.

 

Martin, J. N. & Nakayama, T. K. (2018). Intercultural communication in contexts (7th ed.). New

York: McGraw-Hill.

 

Rothwell, J. D. (2019). In mixed company: Communicating in small groups and teams (10th Ed.).

Oxford University Press.

 

Sguera, F., Patient, D., Diehl, M., & Bobocel, R. (2021). Thank you for the bad news: Reducing

cynicism in highly identified employees during adverse organizational change. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 95(1), 90–130. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12369

 

Society for Technical Communication. Defining Technical Communication (2024). Retrieved

January 28, 2025, from https://www.stc.org/about-stc/defining-technical-communication/

 

Watzlawick, P., & Beavin, J. (1967). Some formal aspects of communication. The American

Behavioral Scientist 10(8); 4 – 8. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764201000802

 

Wolters World (2017). German hand gestures that throw off tourists [Video]. YouTube.

Retrieved Jan 28, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Dul0MOvc8