How to Put your Audience First When Communicating Data

In this episode, I talk about how to put your audience first when communicating to them, whether it’s through reports, data viz, presentations or whatever other form of communication.

I gave a version of this training to the Phoenix Tableau User Group in Dec 2021 (the training covered more than just this topic) but I think you can benefit from this material as well.

You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

What You’ll Learn in this episode

Why getting to know your audience can improve your communication
How to get to know them better for the context of your work and communication
Questions to ask about your audience

Action Items

Use the questions attached below to get to know your audience better before presenting your work to them
Download the Blueprint to Effective Data Visualizations so you can use this workbook before you create visualizations for your audience

Questions to ask about your Audience

What motivates them? What are their concerns? What keeps them up at night?
Why would/should they be interested in this topic?
What questions do your stakeholders ask about this topic or wonder about?
What information do they wish they could access easily and how often do they need this information?
What message are you trying to convey to your audience?
What’s their level of knowledge when it comes to this topic? What terms or concepts would you have to explain for them to understand the topic or your message?
What’s their level of graphical knowledge, or knowledge of different types of charts and how to interpret them?

Get in Touch with Hana

Let me know what you think of the episode, you can message at hana@trending-analytics.com or on Instagram @hanalytx.

If you are looking for podcast updates and want additional tips on how to visualize and present data sent straight to your inbox, then make sure to subscribe to my weekly data letters here.

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If you enjoyed this episode, check out the next episode about why you should visualize data.

Episode Transcript

When I was in college, I was a student journalist for a magazine. And I distinctly remember one line from training “reader king”. Sure this isn't phrased in the most inclusive way. And keep in mind, this training was almost a decade ago, but essentially the message was your reader is royalty. You serve them. It's about them and not you. The reason this emphasis was important was because many writers write for themselves, they enjoy the craft, or they assume that just because they can comprehend it.

So can anyone else. And this phrase was emphasized to remind us that we write for our readers, not for ourselves. We should be keeping them in mind. They are their priority. And this is in the context of journalism. The same approach I've applied for the work I do with my data communications.

I should be keeping my audience in mind. In today's episode, we'll be talking about how to put your audience first when communicating to them, whether it's through reports, data, his presentations, or whatever other form of communication.

I gave a version of this training to the Phoenix Tableau user group in December, 2021, the training covered more than just this topic, but I think you can benefit from this material. So how to put your audience first when communicating to them, the first step I recommend you do is identify who your target audience is.

Sure. Other people may be receiving your communication as well. Like your manager, or maybe your colleague will also be seeing this, but consider if they are the target . Now, once you identify who your target audience is, it's time to get to know them. You should get to know your audience because it will determine which insights you highlight and how you show them depending on what they are interested in and how they can easily understand your message.

Doing this will also increase the chances of your work actually being used and referenced by your target audience because it's catered to them. I know some of you may resonate with that, especially if you have dashboards collecting dust. It's probably because it's not providing them with relevant information that they need, that they end up needing to reference often.

So, you know, you can have well-designed visualizations and even informative ones, but if they are not relevant to your audience, they will probably only look at it once and not reference it again because it's not providing what they need. So how to get to know your audience, more, try to answer these questions about them.

And don't worry about jotting these questions down as they will be available in the show notes. The first question is figuring out what motivates them. What are their concerns? What keeps them up at night? Second? Why would, or should they be interested in this topic? The third question.

What questions do your stakeholders ask about this topic or wonder about, and in the context of creating data visualizations, if that is your deliverable, this question can help you figure out which charts to make and how to even title them. I actually use the questions my stakeholders wonder about as titles for my charts.

Question number four, what information do they wish they could easily access? And how often do they need this information? Number five. What message are you trying to convey to your audience? And these messages or takeaways actually make really good titles for charts.

Remember that you serve your target audience and that they take priority. You may understand some concepts really well, but consider if they need some extra context. So here are some additional questions to ask question number six, what's their level of knowledge when it comes to this. What terms or concepts would you have to explain for them in order for them to understand the topic or your message now, in the context again, of creating data visualizations or dashboards, this is actually this information is actually good to put in caption or subtitles in order to explain these, or to give this extra context for your audience.

Now the final question, question number seven, what's their level of graphical knowledge or the knowledge of different types of charts and how to interpret them, now, based on the answer of this question, you can either limit charts to ones that they're familiar with, or you may need to add instructions in the deliverables or include a demonstration on how to interpret these charts that they may not be familiar with on how to interpret this charts. When you're going through these questions, it's okay. If you cannot answer all of these questions, you can reach out to people who know your target audience, or reach out to them directly to fill in the blanks as needed.

Again, you can find these questions. I mentioned in this podcast, in the show notes on my website, you can definitely add more questions of your own or tweak these existing ones to better suit your projects and your needs.