Do You Really Know Your Audience?

In the early days of my relationship with my now husband, we went out to the sushi place three blocks from his apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and promptly got into a fight.

He was telling me about the land he hunted upstate as part of a club of mostly elderly gentlemen and told me, quite sincerely, "You would love it." I took no issue with hunting or his friendships with older dudes. I DID take issue with him thinking that he knew what I would love.

Obviously, we got past it, and "you would love it" has become one of our little inside jokes. But I sometimes think about that flash of indignation I felt.

We all want to be seen and understood, even in the content we consume, and particularly by the organizations that we support to be part of something meaningful, like conservation. 

But many of us in comms are guilty of thinking we know our audience better than we do. For example, maybe we know:

• big game photos and videos perform better than anything else we post on social

• our action alert on wildlife crossings was the most successful last year

• polling shows that habitat connectivity is the top concern among hunters and anglers

This is great information, and it certainly gives you a framework for deciding what content to publish and promote with a large block of your audience.

But here are some things you might NOT know:

• Will this audience interact with this content via email, organic social, or ads?

• How likely is this audience to click off a social platform to read more?

• Does this audience turn sound on as they scroll social?

• What segment of my audience is visually impaired?

Without this information, I guarantee that you're alienating some groups with the WAY you're delivering content—no matter how relevant it is to the individual.

So you're personalizing content and calls to action? Fantastic! Segmenting email lists? YES! You may be talking about exactly the right issues with exactly the right crowds, but still in the wrong format or on the wrong channel. There may be some element of their online experience that you're unaware of—and it could be costing you followers, engagement, and donations.

Here are five things to try if you want to reach these widely overlooked audiences:

▶ Add captions as a thoughtfully designed feature of your next Reel, Story, or YouTube video. Yes, video platforms typically support some form of automated closed captioning, but it doesn't always work and it WILL get your message wrong. (Has anyone else attempted to transcribe audio from someone with a thick Cajun accent? Believe me, the technology isn't there yet.) People scrolling through social feeds on public transportation, in restaurants, or around impressionable (or sleeping) kids are not likely to turn the sound on just for your video, no matter how interested they are.

👀 Put the best, coolest, or most persuasive part of your content right in the body of the email or social post. Someone who was unlikely to click through will still get the message, and perhaps think more highly of your brand for ungating it, while someone who is in the habit of leaving the platform to read more deeply can do that, too.

💬 Set up automated DMs for your next link post on Instagram. I feel like I've been seeing this everywhere, and I love it for brands that exclusively share via the link in bio. It takes a few extra steps to turn on automated direct messaging in the back end, but you can then populate an autoreply to a word, set of words, or emoji sent via the comments section on a feed post or reply in Stories. Your call to action will be something like "Comment 'migration' below and we'll DM you the link to download our latest report on big game migration science." It feels personal and kickstarts a one-to-one conversation between your brand and that supporter, which is great for engagement.

📷 Take a minute to fill in alt text fields to benefit those who use screen readers to experience the internet. This means describing images or transcribing the copy within an image when you upload your photo. In some email builders, alt text is actually required, but usually it's easily skipped. On Instagram, you need to navigate to Advanced Settings to add alt text—it's a commitment to changing your workflow, but it will be hugely impactful to some users who already struggle to get information online. Use the alt text space to tell someone what they're missing if they can't see the photo, including what calls to action are within the image.

🔍 Finally, get alerted to accessibility issues by running your landing pages through a tool like WAVE. For those who are visually impaired but don't need a screen reader, for example, low contrast can be a big issue. Look out for light-colored fonts over moderate to light-colored backgrounds, busy images behind copy, and difficult-to-read fonts. WAVE scans for these red flags.

BTW, if you're omitting captions, skipping alt text, or dangling your content behind the link in bio, you're not alone. Major brands do this every day. Still, you could be limiting your reach. After a time, some supporters might feel overlooked by your organization and frustrated with your content. Even if, by all indications, they WOULD love it.

So, does this mean you need to have an automated DM strategy for every piece of content you post? No. And that one tactic won't get you 100% of the potential audience out there, anyway. You'll pick up additional viewership with a targeted email. And more through search. And more with ads.

Your audience isn't a solid block with singular thinking or behavior. We're all moving through the digital space, and the world, in our own way. To know us is to meet us where we are with the message that will resonate most.

In fact, our personal content consumption informs our biases as comms pros. I am pretty adamant about video captions, for example, because I hardly ever turn sound on while I scroll. And I’m usually pretty game to try new Instagram tactics, because it’s the platform I use most. I remember a colleague once suggesting that email engagement was lagging because "no one reads email.” (He was more of a podcast guy.)

So, don’t assume. Seek out fresh perspectives on content delivery and user experience, and keep gathering data. Send email on different days of the week. Target non-openers with social ads. Give up all the goods in your next Facebook post. Break the entire blog post out into a carousel graphic. Or record yourself reading the juiciest parts of the story and use it as audio on a Reel. But, please, add captions.

That’s all for this edition. I just want to end by saying that this email-reading-sound-muting-link-clicker is rooting for you.

See you next week,
KB

P.S. Was this helpful? Do you totally disagree? How are you doing? Send an email to let me know.