Ten Years of Learning -- Audience, Audience, Audience

I was recently struck again by a decade-old lesson in Forum One's web strategy work: Organizations eagerly developing new web tools often skip the critical step of figuring out what their target audiences are actually interested in. This step is usually essential and often overlooked. This time I was reminded in a general discussion amongst over 50 NGO managers and policy makers at a learning forum convened by the Global Water Challenge.

Visionary managers often jump from a powerful idea for using the web, such as sharing lessons amongst influential groups, to deploying online services – and then they experience concern or confusion that few people actually use their nifty new system. But at the same time, they have not always thought about the actual interests, needs, and web habits of the people they must appeal to for their idea to succeed.

While so much has changed online in the past ten years, this point has not. The key is to envision outcomes and overall systems based on your own goals, but to craft details based on the specific interests of your highest priority audiences.

Approaches for gathering that audience-centric information can vary – from carefully researching target audiences with sophisticated frameworks in advance, to experimenting with quick and cheap tools and then adjusting based on how priority people use them – but the relatively common mistake is to fall in between, rolling out tools with neither detailed audience profiling nor by monitoring and adjusting along the way.

Here are some other Forum One blog posts addressing aspects of this topic:

- Engaging the 5% That Matter

- User Personas to Guide Web Planning

- Appealing to International Web Audiences

The core point remains: achieve your goals by attracting users with information and services that will help them achieve their goals.