Audience Personas

Audience Analysis Documentation for Rhetorical Technical Communications

Abstract

An important trend in the expansion of audience analysis from technical and professional communication is the development of audience personas, or documentation of the typified audience characteristics, as technical buyer personas in the field of technical content marketing or user personas in the field of user experience (UX). This article provides technical communicators with an audience persona template that is a composite of the documentation used in industry. Audience persona documentation transforms audience analysis theory into communication practice and prepares technical communicators for positions in technical content marketing and user experience. The coupled audience analysis and recoding of findings in the audience persona documentation helps design technical and professional communications as well as user interfaces. The audience persona also can be used for sharing the concept of a target audience among writers, editors, and media publishers.