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Helping you write compelling content and true thought leadership

Targeting the Right Readers

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Audience analysis using the technology adoption curve

Until recently, I saw audience analysis as fairly straightforward. Now, however, I’m convinced that targeting thought leadership demands a more nuanced approach.

Targeting content used to be fairly simple—decide which people in which positions in which functions in which kinds of organizations you wanted to reach, put yourself in their shoes, then figure out what would be useful and motivating to them. The “figure out” part would usually be based on your experiences and conversations with clients and prospects, and perhaps primary or secondary research.

But when developing thought leadership, figuring out which segment your audience inhabits on the technology adoption curve (a/k/a product adoption curve or technology diffusion curve)—or, in certain contexts, within a maturity model—will help you target your messages even more precisely.

This analysis should be incorporated into the analysis I noted above, along with any other targeting approach you prefer, including developing personas.

Curves Ahead

The technology adoption curve (developed by Everett Rogers in the early 1960s) looks like this:

Technology Adoption Curve

Source: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4066/4240337085_4cfbd1a447.jpg

Here are the key points to grasp:

  • The percentages in the figure apply to the sequence in which adopters buy or use a new technology, product, service, or process. The first 2.5 percent to adopt are the Innovators, the next 13.5 percent are the Early Adopters, the next 34 percent are the Early Majority, and so on.
  • The curve applies to adoption of specific technologies, products, services, and processes. A person may be an Innovator or Early Adopter for motorcycling gear but a Laggard for home entertainment systems, or an Early Adopter for clothing fashions but a Late Majority Adopter for new travel destinations. (Those who never adopt are not on the curve.)
  • You can apply the curve to organizations as well as to individuals. Citibank was an Innovator and Early Adopter of technology back in the 1970s when they deployed ATMs all over New York; today, they are experimenting heavily with blockchain technology. Companies tend to have a certain approach to adoption of certain things in their DNA, though it is subject to mutation.
  • Each group monitors the group in front of it—except for the Innovators.
    • The Innovators are the risk takers, the pioneers who break new ground, the explorers, discovers, and trailblazers. They are comfortable with no one to follow, and they are willing to incur the risks and costs of being the initial users. They want any competitive edge they can get.
    • The Early Adopters are close behind, and from a pure business perspective they can be savvier. They let the Innovators bear the risks and costs of being first, and learn from their mistakes. The most aggressive Early Adopters watch the Innovators very closely.
    • The Early Majority watches the Early Adopters, and are willing to incur fewer risks and costs as the product or service becomes more refined and widely used. But they want to be close to the adoption frontier and ahead of the other 50 percent in their space.
    • The Late Majority watches the Early Majority. At this point, the product or service has seen widespread adoption as risks and costs have fallen dramatically.
    • The Laggards adopt a product or service after it becomes the new standard, often kicking and screaming, clinging to their old ways. But don’t knock them—they too are adopters because they are on the curve.

Who’s your audience?

In my view most thought leadership should be directed toward Innovators and Early Adopters. But it depends on your services, clients, and business model. For some firms, the Late Majority and Laggard audiences may be fertile markets (though by then the content should probably be more of a purely how-to nature than inspiring, hey-look-at-this material).

Why is this my view?

True thought leadership, by definition, aims to present new ways of addressing new or existing problems and opportunities. It leads readers to new processes, methods, solutions, and gains. So, a lot of thought leadership will naturally target organizations, functions, and individuals at or toward the front end of the adoption curve.

A lot of it, but not all of it. That Early Majority represents a huge opportunity. They want and need to know what the Early Adopters are up to. The risk-taking, cost-incurring ways of the Innovators scare most of the Early Majority (and terrify the Late Majority and the Laggards). But the Early Majority will read stuff that tells them what’s working and not working for the Innovators and Early Adopters.

Ready? Aim.

So, when you target your audience, think deeply about them. Yes, you need to identify their positions, functions, and types of companies. But you also need insights into their thinking and motivations. The technology adoption curve can help you toward those insights.

A final, very important thought: When you are crafting thought leadership, it is tempting to try to focus on a really large audience. But that’s not always the best approach. It’s also easy to discuss a topic at too basic or too advanced a level, or to strike the wrong tone for a given audience.

Thinking about where your readers sit on the adoption curve, given the topic you’re discussing, can help you hone your message far better than scattershot approaches that “aim” for the largest readership.

Solving the Word-Count Mystery

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The best way to gauge document length

What I call the word count mystery mystifies me (as good mysteries should), and it arises fairly often in my conversations with clients.

Remember back in English class, when Teacher assigned a book report or a what-I-did-last-summer essay? Someone (usually a boy in the back row) would reactively throw his hand toward the ceiling and ask, “How long does it have to be?”

Teacher would say, “Four pages” or “Three pages” or “No more than five pages.”

Can we get beyond this?

I think we will, but it may take time. My contacts in middle school tell me Teacher now quotes word counts for reports and essays. And why not? The word count of every Word document and other word processing applications is clearly displayed in the on-screen status bar.

Yet many of my clients still talk about length in pages.

Here’s the problem: Many documents of five pages take longer to read than many with twice that number of pages. Those five-pagers might mash 700 words onto each page, while the ten-pagers might have maybe 250. The word count for the text-heavy five-pager would be 3,500, and for the ten-pager, with its liberal use of white space and graphic design, 2,500.

The issue of how long a piece should be is another matter, which I will cover in another post. For now, let’s stick with the two key issues around word count: the reader’s time commitment, and the writer’s fee.

Time to read

When you publish, you are asking readers for their time. I believe many thought leaders now worry too much about this. After all, readers can stop reading whenever they decide to and the length of the piece doesn’t change the basic deal between readers and authors: Readers give authors their time, and authors give readers information or entertainment. We’ve all read books that we didn’t want to end, and we have all stopped reading others.

Of course, it’s worth gauging the time you’re asking readers to commit. The average adult reads about 200 words a minute. So a 2,000 word piece should take about ten minutes of reading (not skimming).

You also affect reading speed by the way you write. Short words, sentences, and paragraphs speed readers along. The opposites slow them down.

It’s worth considering word count because your readers instinctively do the same when they come across an article. Here’s the point for our purposes here: When you’re considering length, word count is more important than page count, which is mainly a function of layout.

The Pricing’s Right

An article in the Winter 2017 Bulletin of the Authors Guild (of which I am a member) advises writers to have both hourly and word-count rates when they quote fees. As a business person, only word-count rates make sense to me. (I am open to opposing views.)

Here’s why. My hourly rate is meaningless to my clients unless they can track my time, and they can’t. (Hell, I can’t even track my time!) A writer on a project may be “writing” when she’s staring out the window or driving to the dentist. She’s “writing” when she’s on the phone with the client talking about the piece, when she’s pouring over source materials, when she’s interpreting editorial comments.

Not only is tracking all that time, ah, challenging (in current parlance); it’s almost meaningless when associated with hourly rates.

The real issue is this: If I am slow to grasp the client’s points or struggle to get the words right, why should I penalize the client by charging for those “extra” hours? By the same token, if my experience and skills enable me to nail a piece in several hours on the first draft, why should I be penalized?

So, I charge a per-word rate based on projected word count. That defines the length of the document and an agreed-upon budgeted fee. Neither is written in stone, but both are reliable guides to the project’s scope and cost.

What, you might ask, stops my client from saying he wants a 2,000-word piece, having me quote my fee, and then, through scope creep, adding team members, or expanding revisions, getting a 3,000-word piece? And what keeps me from padding a piece to reach a certain word count?

These are not problems among publishing professionals. Experienced editors and others who regularly purchase writing services understand how projects are scoped and priced. They don’t misrepresent the length of a piece, and if client-generated revisions exceed expectations, they agree to an adjustment in the fee.

So in practice the client, often in consultation with the writer, develops an idea for a piece. If it’s a regular feature, such as quarterly bulletin or the like, the word count is more or less known. If not, the client has a good idea of the desired length, if only by comparing it with similar previously published pieces.

Whatever the desired length, it can and should be expressed as a word count.

Count on this

If it seems I’ve belabored this issue, you may have already been using word count to gauge the length of pieces and regularly using the word count displayed in the status bar as a guide.

So, another of the many blessings of technology is always knowing how long a document is, regardless of how many pages you want it to cover. But it’s still up to us as communicators to know, for the reader’s sake, how long it should be.

Don’t Make It Harder than It Has to Be

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Making thought leadership a bit easier

editorialAIf you and your team or firm struggle to develop written thought leadership, that’s understandable. Developing high-quality thought leadership is hard. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

But you want to understand the difference between the normal difficulties that are a normal part of the process [Read more…]

Seven Proven Business Writing Hacks

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Easy-to-use tips from a former writing workshop facilitator

writingFor a year and a half, in a break from my corporate career, I led writing workshops for managers and professionals in large organizations, including Ford Motor Company, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Boston, Parker Brothers, and many others.

Friends would often ask me, “Don’t these [Read more…]

Assess Your Content Marketing Mix

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Four M’s to go with the Five P’s

marketingI’ve found it useful to think of content marketing efforts in terms of a content marketing mix. You’re probably already familiar with the term marketing mix, which refers to company-controlled factors that influence buyers to buy.

The marketing mix is typically framed as five (or four or [Read more…]

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