Friday, June 21, 2013

Know Your Audience

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I was, as always, on the road today.  So this post is entered late . . . But since the implicit social contract I have entered into with you stipulates only the day and not the hour, it counts.  

If I had to miss a day, though, better it were a Friday than a Monday or Wednesday.  Because fewer people read this blog on Fridays.  (This is, I suspect, because most people do their idle blog-reading in the office and on week's end are looking forward to the weekend.). That's why if I have an observation that that I think a larger-than-usual number of people will want to read, I post it on a Wednesday or a Monday.

And there is the essence of the principle of "knowing your audience."  It is not a matter, as I'm sure many suspect, of pandering and condescending to one's imagined audience.  It's having some idea of the expectations of such readers who are likely to read the sort of stuff you write and throwing in a bit of explanation or foreshadowing when they need it, but refraining from it when they don't.

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1 comment:

Hal Davis said...

Well, that was an edifying read. Guess I'll drop in Wednesday.