If you’re explaining how to make your famous guacamole to an experienced cook, you can cut straight to the special ingredients that make it taste so great. If you’re explaining that same recipe to someone who’s never been in a kitchen and never seen an avocado, you have to provide more rudimentary details: how to cut into an avocado, how to remove the pit, how to mush it with a fork. It’s a different explanation for a different audience. Communicating is no different. You need to customize your content and messages depending on the audience.
This is a mistake I see with many people I coach. They will take content created for one audience and repurpose it word-for-word for another group even though that second audience is completely different.
These differences require you to customize your messages and content if you want to maximize your opportunity to be engaging, memorable and persuasive. Is your audience knowledgeable about your subject or not? Will they understand your references and acronyms? Are they skeptical or believing about the topic? Are they friendly or hostile?
These questions and more should lead you to develop content that addresses the specific knowledge and attitudes of your audience. For instance, I frequently present to engineers who are skeptical about storytelling. In their day jobs, they want the data. So, I begin these sessions with an in-depth section on the science, research and data behind the power of stories. This addresses their skepticism with information they respect in a format they’re familiar with. Then, I can transition to how to create and tell stories and when to use them.
This does not mean you have to develop brand new material every time you’re presenting on the same topic. You can have core content that’s relevant to any group and then customize pieces around it to meet the unique dynamics of your audience.
Let me know if you’d like to have a conversation around customizing your content. Your audience will appreciate it and you’ll be far more effective. And by the way, I do make a mean bowl of guacamole.