is the fourth time I have re recorded this audience analysis and so I hope this is going to actually be probably shorter than it uh should have been um but today we're talking about audience analysis because audience analysis is the key foundation for successful business communication professional communication personal communication and here's the reason why it's not about you it doesn't matter how you like to communicate if you can learn how to understand how others like to communicate that creates a much better communication Channel so you may have your forms of preferred communication maybe you'd rather text um and maybe you'd rather pick up the phone and call maybe you'd actually just prefer face-to-face meetings um it doesn't matter how you prefer to communicate it's how does that person you are communicating with like to communicate so as we try to understand our audience we can look at things like demographics and we've all filled out some variation of these before so what is your age gender ethnicity marital status income level of Education religion occupation Family structure housing status do you rent our own what is your political affiliation what is your religious affiliation nationality disabilities of any what is your social class lower middle upper so whatever you can glean from income but it's also very interesting to ask how they self-identify so this tells us a lot about who an audience is the problem is it doesn't tell us why or how they communicate or who they are so we have something called psychographics and these are personality characteristics so I had a boss um or I was interviewing for a final job or final interview with the job um with the lady who's gonna be my boss and she said if you have to pick up the phone and call me or send a text or email what is your preferred way to communicate so I look at her I think she's in her 50s um she is you know probably love or probably phone call that's probably what her most her level of comfort is so I said pick up the phone and call she said wrong answer picking up the phone and having to call is a huge waste of time I'd rather you send a quick text or email and I learned right then and there it is about how they prefer to communicate and it would have been better for me to ask I need to understand what are your preferred ways to communicate and I'm happy to accommodate um and so because she lived a very busy lifestyle she wanted things that were quick and efficient and she didn't have time to pick up the phone and call unless it was absolutely necessary um things like what are their social class because again they might have more access to technology or less what are their habits so do they have um are they involved in other things are they um like maybe they are maybe they they're very into you know Tick Tock or social media and so that would also depend on or give us some information about their communication preferences what are their behaviors so do they spend a lot of time in the car and it's easier to pick up the phone and call and then what are their interests so as we try to understand who a audience is we want to actually create an avatar and so you'd go so far as to name your avatar so let's see let's say I'm about to give a presentation about why you should buy a one of those giant 40-ounce Stanley Cups that I carry around everywhere um so I'm going to try to develop this app this Avatar and Pitch this Stanley capture person so my Avatar's name is Katie she's in her 30s she has a family she owns her own home she has a higher level of Education she has a college degree or higher maybe a master's um I think she I said she had a family she works and she has activities outside of her Hobbies outside of of working family um her communication preferences is that she prefers email or text and so that's how we would would pitch this to her she spent some time on social media each week um and so we would use again either probably email marketing or social media marketing to capture her attention so when we look at generational differences and how that comes into play in the workplace you will end up working with all three other Generations as you enter the workforce so we see these baby boomers who are born 1946 to 1964 so they're in their 60s to 80s um contrary to what you would think they actually embrace digital technology this group um loves their iPads they love Facebook they love apps and again that's not all of them that's a lot of them um they do prefer face-to-face and phone calls so if you're in the office with this group you want to make sure that if you've got a meeting or they are in the office that they see you that you have communication face to face they actually welcomed remote work because this allowed a um a group who was maybe it's starting to have some health issues that they could only have to come into the office a couple days a week or give them some other options then we have Generation X and this group is from 1965 to 1980. um they will be a lot of the people who are upper level um have some seniority as you guys enter the workforce email's their preferred method of communication at work and at home so they um are probably going to see texting as personal email as personal and work if that makes sense they like short brief messages opposed to lengthy ones Millennials so I fall in this group 1981 to 1996 so we'll say uh late 20s to early 40s I guess they avoid face-to-face meetings and prefer digital messaging we grew up with texting and so that is probably our preferred way to communicate it's easy it's always been kind of natural to just send a text versus pick up the phone and call and then we have Generation Z they need technology in the workplace they want rapid responses so instant messaging um and again whatever technology tools helps the office work smarter not harder so as you consider your audience for your presentations you want to look around and look at your audience size for one I have to have completely different presentations if I'm presenting to 400 versus 25 when I've got a group of 25 it's more discussion based when I've got a group of 400 um I have to just do more information I'd say overload but just more content it's an informative type presentation you also want to figure out who are the key decision makers in the room so if I have to go give a presentation to a board um I need to know there might be 10 people I'm presenting to but who is the ultimate decision maker who has that final Authority and what are their values if they're a finance person I need to make sure that um budget considerations are at the top of my my key points and if if I'm presenting to our some of our electings of students I need to make sure that student retention and student numbers are actually the first and then what is their knowledge of the topic so this is a fine line between um giving people enough information so that they understand what's going on but then not boring them because they're very well very familiar with this topic so that's why you have to consider who your audience is do they know a lot about this so if you're talking about parking on Texas Tech campus most people at Texas Tech understand that it's kind of a pain and so you can just quickly cover it and get right into the content and then you want to understand what are the audience assumptions so I use the example of if you've ever gone to ask your parents something and you already know what they're going to say you know their assumptions so what biases do they have about this what are they what are their immediate feelings about this and how can you prepare your talk or presentation to accommodate those assumptions and then what is the accountability of the audience are they there because they have to be or are they there because they want to be if they're there because they have to be how do we keep them engaged and make them want to listen and then lastly what is your relationship with the audience um if you know this group you have worked with this group you can you have to say your name because it's being recorded but you don't have to give a lot of background now if this is a group you've never really met with before you need to be prepared to talk about who who you are and really beef up your um Authority on this topic the thing about audience analysis though is that you you want to consider your audience before you send an email before you pick up the phone understand how they want to communicate and how they would like to be communicated with um and this has gotten very brief this one for me a 45 minute lecture to a 22 minute recorded video to 15 to now less than 10 because that's what happens when you have to record this four times so make sure that you do your activities associated with this thank you