Audience Analysis and Reception

Audience Analysis and Reception

Angela Worley

XCOM/275

Andrew Trippi

May, 25 2015

When preparing to write a formal report to be presented to upper management at work you need to know a few guidelines to follow by to be effective and professional. First off you should consider your audience and put their needs and interest first. This will grab the reader’s attention and they will want to read more. By asking yourself a few questions like; what does my readers know about the topic? Are my readers likely to have a response to my work? What are my attentions for my readers to feel, think, or do? You should also consider when it comes to having managerial duties that person is very busy and has many other task to do. Be considerate of their time. Make the report short and sweet and straight to the point you are trying to make. When it comes to upper management they are also having to make decisions all of the time. So, you should immediately present your request or point first. Then you should follow up with cogent and persuasive evidence to the point or claim, who will benefit by the proposal, and are you a reliable source to be giving information. Also, by asking yourself these few questions: How knowledgeable are your primary and secondary audiences about your subject? What concepts or terms will you need to define for these audiences? What level of education does your primary audience have?  When addressing a difficult subject, it is very likely that you may be so concerned with developing the material that you don't want to pause or complicate matters by questioning what others would think about the subject. You may even write a few drafts before questioning how their words and ideas will affect readers. There are many risk when not considering your audience. For instance, if you do not put your audience needs or interest in your writing you will mostly not grab their attention. If you do not grab the readers (your manager) attention he or she most likely will not read your report. Therefore, what point or request you are trying to make will not even get acknowledged. When writing anything you should always consider whomever may be reading it. If not they will read the first sentence and just stop. My view on this is, if you are going to take the time to write something down for another person or person’s to read you will want to consider that person or persons when writing.