Almost everything we write today, from text messages to emails and websites, uses technology to communicate and interact with a digital audience! You, as the writer, should speak to your audience no matter where your writing appears; however, when you approach a digital audience, you need to examine some specific issues that are important to communicating clearly and effectively with your digital audience.
Digital audiences receive very different messages depending on both the genre that you write in, and the formatting that the genre requires. A digital audience will also be aware of when your tone is appropriate or inappropriate for the given digital genre that you use. In order to write to a digital audience, you’ll want to pay close attention to the Persona that you are writing to, make sure your message is clear and direct, and ensure it adheres to genre conventions and formatting.
1. Choose a Public or Closed Audience
When writing for a digital audience, you want to first determine whether your audience will be a public one or a closed one. A public audience is able to access your writing when you have published it in a more public space, such as a website or a social media platform like Twitter. In these public digital spaces, you will not be able to control who can and cannot see your writing. A closed audience is one that you are able to choose more carefully, and who requires some kind of permission before accessing your writing. An example of a closed audience would include followers of a private Instagram account or those with a link to an “unlisted” video posted to YouTube.
Deciding your target audience, public or closed, gives you parameters to craft your message. It may also change how you present yourself to your audience and the language choices you use. In a public digital space, you might use more formal language—or you may use casual language if it suits the circumstance better. The same is true for private spaces .
It should be noted that even when writing in a completely closed venue, your writing can be copy and pasted or screenshotted—so it is never truly a “private” space.
2. Write to a Digital Persona Using Audience Demographics
Understanding who you are writing to is vital to digital communication. Because of the varying demographics that read digital writing across the internet, your audience may not respond well to what you have to say if you don’t have a good idea of what their needs and values are.
When writing to a digital audience for the first time, it is a good idea to create a persona. A persona is a simple character sketch of your digital audience’s demographics. Writing to a persona helps your message reach the right people in the right digital spaces. When writing a persona, you should consider the following questions:
- Who is my audience?
- What are their values?
- Where is my audience located (physical space)?
- How will they be viewing my message (digital space)?
- How might they respond to my message?
- What age group does my audience fall into?
- What gender is my audience?
- What is my audience’s race and ethnicity?
- Depending on your topic, you might also want to consider other demographics, such as political and spiritual beliefs.
The questions above help you determine the demographics of your audience, their needs, their values, and their attitude toward your content. You need all this information to get your message to them.
3. Reach Your Digital Audience Through Genre, Formatting, and Tone:
After determining your digital persona, you will want to determine what digital spaces this persona might be part of. Choosing a digital genre helps your writing reach your digital audience. Several categories of digital writing are listed below to help you see the differences in rhetorical situations and formatting so you can make a better choice for your digital audience. (This is not an exhaustive list of digital genres that your audience might read, but it should do for now.)
In each genre, you will want to pay particular attention to the audience demographics to determine if your digital audience uses this genre. You will also want to identify the formatting that each genre requires and the tone used (whether professional, casual, etc.). Attention to these details will draw your audience into your message. If you do not follow the genre conventions, including correct formatting and tone, your audience could easily lose interest and miss out on your message.
Email Audiences
Nearly everyone with access to the internet has an email address, which almost guarantees that any digital audience uses this genre. The purpose of email is to provide a space where more lengthy communication can happen in a digital space. Using email, a writer can not only send text, but they can also send and embed links and images, in addition to attaching documents. Email is used for both personal messages and for professional messages. Because the audience is broader, you will want to take into consideration your message and who you would like it to reach.
Email sub-genres range from advertisements and newsletters to job inquiries and customer service responses. Chapter 1.1 provides more information on emailing as a form of college communication. Each genre takes a unique approach to reaching a specific audience, so be sure to research each genre closely.
Typically, emails are formatted beginning with a subject line to catch the attention of the audience, followed by a salutation with the audience’s name, a body with the main message, and a closing. For newsletter and advertisement-type emails, the information is arranged visually but still follows the above format. This format helps the audience know what to expect from an email the moment they open it.
The tone used in email writing is typically more formal and professional, though a personal email to a friend or family member may be casual.
Social Media Audiences
With over a hundred social media platforms available for use from a smart phone, chances are your audience can be found on social media. Popular social media platforms are available across the world, so your digital audience’s location may vary. In terms of age demographics, Twitter spans age demographics fairly evenly from 18-65+, while Facebook tends to have more of a Millennial and Gen X demographic. Younger audiences can be found on Instagram, SnapChat, and TikTok.
Reaching your digital audience through formatting is especially important with social media, where each platform has its own way of presenting and organizing information. Twitter has a 140-character limit and allows text, photo, video, and linked content with hashtags to organize information; Facebook is similarly organized but without the character limit.
Instagram requires photo or video content with captions and organizes information with hashtags; SnapChat requires photo or video content, which disappears after 24 hours, and TikTok requires video content with captions.
The tone you choose for a social media post depends highly on the post’s intended audience and how you want to represent yourself, as well as the message that needs to be conveyed. Your tone can be professional if representing a business or informal on your own personal social media. You could also choose to be more educational or humorous as well.
Website Audiences
Audiences from all demographics visit websites for a variety of purposes. They may visit a website to shop, to learn, or even to be entertained. Your job as a writer is to determine who your audience would be on the site that you are writing for.
Websites are typically formatted with a Home page, a Menu or navigational bar, an About Me page, and other pages that are relevant to the content. Writing for a digital audience on a website means that you must follow formatting closely, or they may become disinterested and leave the site. Basic formatting of a webpage will include the most relevant and important information at the top of the page, followed by less relevant or important information. Another basic of formatting for websites is to use smaller blocks of text with images interspersed.
The tone you use while writing a web page varies but it is typically formal. You can be professional if your audience requires it—perhaps for a corporate website or a professional portfolio—or you can insert humor and personality into your website if the content is less serious. How your audience responds to your tone also determines their response to the content of your writing.
Blog Audiences
Blogs are similar in audience reach as websites, but due to the various themes that blogs have, not every blog will attract every audience. For example, a blog that focuses on environmental issues will attract a different audience than a blog on environmental activities for children. Both blogs may be of interest to an individual person, but the individual’s need to visit the site will be different.
Blog formatting usually consists of a main “post” that is found on a page. Within the post, you will find
Texting Audiences
While used primarily for a personal, informal audience, texting is often used to communicate with many digital audiences. It can be used to text your boss that you will be late to work, or it can even be used to send out advertisements via a text-message campaign.
Text message formatting varies depending on the situation. You might type a single sentence or a lengthy, multi-paragraph text. Text messages employ the use of text, emojis, images, videos, and often GIFs.
The tone associated with text messages is usually informal, though you may change that to formal based on the situation and your audience. The message you write for your boss will be very different from the one you write for your best friend. Also, you should be aware that the accompanying features with text messages, such as emojis, can help you set the emotional tone of your writing. However, emojis are rarely appropriate in more formal communications, such as a text message to a potential employer.
4. Make Your Message Clear and Direct for a Digital Audience
Another crucial aspect of writing to a digital audience is making sure they can understand your message! Most digital audiences will read quickly through your writing to find the main point and will continue reading only after they have found it and determined it is relevant to their needs and interests. Writing clearly and directly can help your audience identify that point quickly, and exercising caution while writing will keep them reading.
Write Clearly and Directly
When writing to a digital audience, your point should be clear from the beginning. The first few lines of your writing will determine whether your digital audience will continue reading or not, so make your topic plain early on. Unlike academic writing, you do not need a long introduction to engage your audience. Starting with the purpose of your communication will give your digital audience the information they need to continue reading.
5. Write Carefully
Because writing that is published in digital spaces is largely public (or can be made public quite easily), it is recommended that you exercise care in your use of language and expression of ideas. Write and revise before publishing anything. You might consider having a friend or colleague read your message before posting. There are countless “grammar trolls” that would easily dismiss your message if there is a mistake in it; and there are plenty of instances where someone’s message went viral and was taken out of context. Also be sure not to disclose personal information if not absolutely necessary.
Language Use
According to Handbook for Writers, you may make careless mistakes while writing for a digital audience because of the speed and convenience of electronic communication. Your use of a casual tone depends solely on whether your audience will understand what you are saying. Writing for school or work does not fall into the casual category. In these situations, you should not use abbreviations, slang, and shortcuts. In fact, you need to use proper punctuation, grammar, and capitalization. You should also use traditional writing rules and a more formal tone when responding to diverse populations and serious situations.
This approach doesn’t mean that you can’t use your own language (including slang and dialect) to express yourself when necessary. But it does mean that if you are approaching a professional audience, you want to consider your rhetorical situation and choose whether or not casual language is appropriate.
Be Aware of Privacy Issues
According to the Handbook for Writers, whether writing in a casual or formal situation, always be aware of the population that has access to your content. Also keep in mind that even if you are writing on a closed venue like a class-wide course management system or on an invitation-only wiki, your digital text can easily be copied by someone with access and forwarded to someone without access. Don’t write anything that could embarrass or cause problems for you or others.
Due to the nonprivate nature of the Internet, you should not provide full contact information. Depending on the situation, you might choose to use your full name (such as in an online class or on a memorial condolence site) or you might choose to use a pseudonym (such as in a response to a blog or to an online newspaper article). Only give your phone number and address when you are on secure sites. Never post your social security number online. If you have a legitimate request for your social security number, call and give it over the telephone.
Example Scenario
Elizabeth works in customer service for a small company in Santa Fe. Her boss asks her to draft an email to a customer about a shipping issue in addition to posting about shipping delays to their public Twitter account. Elizabeth now must decide how to approach each digital audience. Here’s what she came up with:
Dear customer, We wanted to reach out to you and apologize for an unforeseen delay in shipping that will affect when you receive your product. We understand that you were expecting your item on May 15, but it should arrive closer to June 1. Your patience is greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Elizabeth (Customer Service)
Shipping delays of up to two weeks. Find out more on our website: bit.ly/ourproducts #ourproducts #shipping #customerservice
If Elizabeth sent the above Tweet in an email, a customer may be outraged by its impersonality.
Chapter 5.1 contains synthesized and original material:
CC Licensed Content, Original
Digital Audiences, written by Anne Turner, 2020, published by Central New Mexico Community College and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
CC Licensed Content, Previously Shared
- The sub-section “Language Use” adapted from Chapter 17 of the Handbook for Writers by Saylor Academy, 2012, used according to Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0)
- The sub-section “Be Aware of Privacy Issues” adapted from Chapter 17 of the Handbook for Writers by Saylor Academy, 2012, used according to Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0
