By Jeff van Booven, Production Associate

When creating content, developing credibility is a key aim. There are three main areas for building credibility: logical, ethical, and emotional--or respectively, logos, ethos, and pathos. By attending to all three of these areas, your content will have better viability and engender better trust with your end user. 

Logos, or logic, is the most important of the three. At a bare minimum, it calls on you to get your facts straight. Nothing will turn off a reader quicker than factual errors. Logos is more than that though. It calls on the author to apply logic properly, avoiding logical fallacies—a simple Google search will introduce you—and to make a fair attempt at both gathering and applying evidence fairly. Showing the reader that other arguments and concerns have been taken into consideration helps to build their trust in you and your product. 

Ethos, or ethics, is about building your own credibility. It asks, why should anybody trust you? Developing credibility through logos and pathos helps to build personal credibility, but more than anything, demonstrating a clear grasp on the matter at hand is key. The reader is looking to you to present them with information they don’t have and subsequently desire. For example, if you’re buying a car, do you want a veteran mechanic from an independent shop or the marketing guy for Chrysler? Think for a moment why you might prefer the mechanic over the marketer. For one, the mechanic clearly has better credibility to evaluate the product, but he also is free of conflicts of interest. Lastly, a basic command of the medium is an important step to building your own personal ethos. 

Pathos, or emotion, is perhaps the most conflicted forms of credibility when it comes to marketing, particularly as it is practiced today. While good writing and emotional credibility would suggest you avoid using emotional appeals, particularly of the sentimental variety, I assume most of us know the power of the emotional appeal in order to promote a product or cause. Spend enough time watching television and you’ll see the sad puppies set to sad music. You can’t get much more sentimental than that, but most advertising does tend to rely on such tactics of cheap emotional appeals to some degree—what is technically called sentimentality. While I would argue to avoid using sentimentality to manipulate the audience, doing so would be disingenuous when we all clearly can see how effective it is in marketing. However, from time to time, your audience may surprise you with their ability to see through such manipulative attempts, so it may be best to use it sparingly and in tempered manners. 

By Jeff van Booven, Production Associate

To effectively write to an audience you should strive to at least consider a few things, even though, like most things, it’s far more complex: education, desires, socio-economic status, and life experiences. 

What understanding these things will do is help you craft your message appropriately. For example, with education, think about what language you would use when talking with a doctor versus a toddler. You want to use language appropriate for your audience. Aside from language, knowing what your audience already knows and doesn’t know can be another important approach. If you’re in the plumbing business, your average customer may benefit from an explanatory piece on how the work is done and why, but if you’re selling supplies to other plumbers, such an explanation would seem ridiculous. 

Desire, as a methodology, is harder. Knowing what your audience wants, how they see their lifestyle, and how your products and services fit into that spectrum can be tricky and complicated. For example, if you’re aiming to sell beer to college students, you’re going to show parties, events, people having fun and not the austere woodsman, as much as the world would benefit from more Ron Swanson in every part of life. 

I single out socio-economic status as it is often conflicted with how the individual actually places themselves. While the vast majority of Americans may think of themselves as middle-class, their actual purchasing power and spending patterns don’t mirror that ideal. Understanding how your audience approaches purchasing decisions can help you craft your message and the way you do business to better accommodate these factors. 
 
Last, life experiences are important to understand because, contrary to what our culture continually tries to impress upon us, there is no such universal experience. Even when we know this, it’s still hard to avoid universalizing our own experiences and expecting others to be similar. This is often further complicated by the fact that those we grow up around do tend to have similar experiences by proxy. A recent study demonstrated that people who read Chekov before an interview were more likely to get the job. Part of this reason is that reading fiction exposes you to thinking about the experiences of others and thus builds empathy. We want to do the same with our audiences. We want to understand the experiences of our customers, not from our own perspective, but from their own. Thus, it’s important, that when we discuss how our products and services fit into an experience, that we don’t try to overly universalize and thus alienate our target demographics. 
 
Thus, with just a little thought to your target audience, your content will have greater appeal and work inherently better, even for the purposes of SEO. It never hurts to put yourself in the position of your audience and to reflect upon how they will interact with you. 

By Jeff van Booven, Production Associate 

In teaching composition, I dedicate at least an entire class period to discussions of audience and what it means to be aware of it. Even outside of academic writing, to achieve the best results, the piece needs to match the abilities and interests of the people who will read it. For example, dry, jargon laden, technical piece will not do well to supplicate the needs and desires of high school students. 

Knowing and envisioning an audience is the hardest and most important part. Data, in this arena, is king for a reason and why there is big money to be made by selling it. This data, when properly processed, can give incredible insights into an audience. However, in the small-business world, access to this level of data is likely not financially viable. This fact does not mean, as somebody in this position, that we’re out of luck. There is a host of data to be gained from simple analytics, customer data, and even analyzing the marketing of products to similar demographics as those we desire. This approach might mean a little bit of hard work, but we wouldn’t be in the small-business world if we were adverse to rolling up our sleeves to expend a little elbow grease. 

Think about commercials for household products and cereals. Have you ever noticed the preponderance of middle-class families in spotless homes that are slightly more expensive than the ones people actually live in? There’s a reason: they’re targeting a specific audience, not as it actually is, but as it sees itself and desires to be. The message is these products are part of the desired lifestyle and will help you achieve it. Meanwhile, your Saturday morning commercials for breakfast cereals have a different approach: flashy graphics and cartoon characters. They’re not about achieving a middle-class dream, but rather having fun. They’re aimed at children. While the example might be apparent, it is an example of the differences in approach based on audience. 

Next time, we’ll get into some of the basic components of what to consider when addressing audience.  

By Jeff van Booven, Production Associate 

Writing content is not easy, particularly if it’s demanded daily. There’s only so many good topics, ideas, and time to find necessary information. The important thing to remember is, if you’re not writing for Cracked.com, the list is a cheap way to create filler. Sure, Buzzfeed does them. Sure, Upworthy does them. Sure, every other website that feels the need to pad their daily output of bland, insipid, and uninspiring content does them. You shouldn’t, because quality matters and we don’t need more Upworthys and Buzzfeeds. The dull content market is flooded. 

The list often functions as barely better than a collage of vaguely related subtopics and rarely does it seek to get into any quality detail. The list is poor organization, poor transition, and poor thinking. Furthermore, any item in these list articles would likely, if properly embellished and expanded, make a fine piece of content in its own right and be more interesting to the reader. 

The first question that should really be asked is, “what are my content needs?” Far too often, when I visit the website of a restaurant or store, the pieces of information I’m looking for are completely absent: their hours or their menu. Think like your customers, or better yet, talk to your customers. Quality writing depends upon being aware of the audience. Why spend money and time maintaining a blog when the vast majority of customers interested in your product or services have no interest in reading such content, but instead have similar questions that need answering? 

Without asking questions about your audience, you are playing into a host of unqualified “advice” about what you need to do to grow your business. Content is not a one size fits all solution. Considering your audience will save you time, money, and help you develop the quality content that is right for your business. 

Next time, we will delve deeper into the particulars of considering audience.