I met an amazing man today, Stephen who produces articles for the Talking Newspapers which provide national and local news for the blind and visually-impaired. He provides a valuable service and one that I am sure lots of organisations don’t realise exists. It made me think about the challenge communicators have to really target activity.
Over recent years teams have been streamlined and got smaller, and one of the risks has been that we focus too much on the traditional media and the developing social media at the expense of really targeting the work. It is much quicker and easier to send out press releases or social media updates that reach a broad range of people. It is much harder to consider your audience for the message and then use a whole range of channels.
All too often we define the audience as everyone which clearly isn’t the case. Some people will require the information or the engagement activity, others may just need to be aware of it and some may not need it at all. It is important that we also don’t assume we have all the answers as people will decide which group they fall into.
There is a lot we can do to gather the relevant data and information to help us make better decisions on how to reach specific communities and more importantly specific people. There are so many people like Stephen who are out and about developing content that will reach people in the way they want or need it. He initiated the contact and came to us for assistance but now we have to find ways to reach out to others.
I don’t think there is an easy answer to how to ensure communication is targeted, but I would love to hear from people about how they achieve it within a tight budget or with limited resources.
Amandacomms's Blog 