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Audience Analysis

Knowing your audience is critical when giving any sort of

announcement or speech. In order to get you points or statements you must
capture your audiences attention as much as possible. As a presenter, your
job is to project your speeches clearly and to make sure your audience
understands what youre trying to get across. My audience is my very own
class. So for me, in order to be successful, I must analyze my audience as a
whole and also to be considerate about those who will be most likely to pay
attention, being able to associate with my classmates by trying to fit my
topics to multiple preferences. In addition, Choosing the right words for a
speech and among other discussion techniques would be necessary, for
example organization of my topic into smaller and more interesting points.
But the most important factor here would be to consider the limitations of
your audience, or most in other terms turning a bad set of ears into
interested and engaged people ready to shoot you with a plethora of
questions.

There are many types of audiences you as a speaker may receive of

the course of your lifespan. Thats why its important to analyze your target. I
have to analyze a couple of things for example, the size of the audience.
That way its easier to look at how your target could be and if this factor is
knowing before time, maybe even take time to adjust your speech or select

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the perfect environment for it. Speaking of environment, a setting will

determine and contribute to where as the audience will feel comfortable
enough to enjoy or listen to whatever you have to say with minimal or no
distractions whatsoever. Disposition towards the topic, occasion and speaker
is also very important, in other words time. (Audience Analysis, pg.2). To be
organized means that you are able to efficiently control or manipulate certain
variables. Think of a comedian and a business man. They both have to get
their objectives across right? They have two things they want to incorporate:
Fun and facts. Its quite obvious the the business man will spend more time
dealing with facts however, he has to make it sound less boring so this is
where he incorporates humor between each two transitions or so. As for the
Comedian, he will decide to organize his time by utilizing facts as transitions
between each joke. Partitioning time is essential, whether you have 3 hours
or 10 minutes of talk time, you should be able to stretch or compress content
respectively. My classroom is a small audience in a relatively small classroom
so in terms of volume, I should be covered due to the echoing of the walls. In
a small audience like this I would want to make the illusion that Im looking
at everyone at once just so I can capture everyones attention and making
them feel important in my speech. Time wise, organizational skill will have to
kick in, because depending on the topic, some sections that I would consider
more important or harder to understand would have to be explained more
and even broken down into sections by using sub points and so forth.

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In a speech, it shouldnt be all just be facts, or information. You have to

consider what is in store for you and your audience. You have set goals in
mind, to get your point/claim/info across everybody accompanying. You also
have to keep them engaged, interested in what you are saying and make
sure the concepts are easy to understand. Analogies are a great way to
break down things into similar terms because all you really need to do is to
put things into a perspective everybody can identify with or anyone can
visualize in. There are two types of analogies, literal and figurative (Speak
Up!, pg.242). Literal analogies are connected to the subject, these are
usually comparisons of two things that have to do with your subject, where
as figurative analogies are are not connected to the topic. These are usually
the ones where you use other examples that you may think your audience
can connect with or have seen done before. Examples are really useful if you
are explaining something broad. Brief and extended examples are used
depending on how much you need to break down a certain subject (Speak
Up!, Pg.234). Another way would be to give definitions. Every so often, you
have to give people meanings of certain words. There are four different types
of definitions, a dictionary definition which are terms presented in a
dictionary, an expert definition where typically a person with a specialty or
knowledgeable background gives his own understanding in his own words,
an etymological definition where it splits words into segments and gives you
its meaning of its composition based on the roots or origin of those segments
and a functional definition where it explains how something is used or done,

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so even you can use your own definition of it (Speak up! Pg,237). Finally,
whats a credible source without data, statistics? Numbers and pie charts can
be used to show your extensive research with a topic. Facts can give many
people a huge understanding of whats going on.

Speeches can be easy to give; however, you will always have to face
certain problems. Sometimes these problems can lead you to change the
way you give out your speech, to have the correct words. Other times you
have to put yourself in the position of the audience in terms of what they
want to hear and dont want to hear. Demographics is a unique variable
because no matter what you do, there is always going to be one or more
people out there that stand out. It shows the the impact your topic may have
on specific or a large group of individuals. Race, Religion and ethnicity may
be the most sensitive social demographics to deal with because of an
extensive array of beliefs and traditions that some stand over centuries of
existence and many can become offended. It is that words for these certain
audiences and topics must be delivered efficiently and avoid generalizing
about particular parts of these three demographics. Age can be a limitation
as well, why? Simple, because topics trending or affiliating in our society are
more leaning in favor of our younger audiences where as topics older or near
the society the specific person grew in may lean more towards more mature
people (Speak up!, pg.137). What kid that enjoys modern hip-hop wants to
hear about Elvis Presley from the 70s or what 50-year-old that enjoys classic

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rock wants to hear about a new pop star rising to fame? Going back to size,
the amount of people seated in the class also plays as to how your so you
can have a heads up in terms of preparation. We can also look at gender,
because some topics appeal better to males more than to females and vice
versa. However, its not always good to assume since you dont know
anybodys preferences yet. This would be a good place to start of with,
maybe add like a small sample survey at the beginning of every presentation
to make sure most of the audience is more easy to carry on with, or if the
topic is persuasive, even more susceptible to convince (I mean that in a good
connotation). Also it would not be a good idea to present gender stereotypes
or sexist language in front of anyone because it makes you look biased,
unethical and you will expect some negative reviews about you (Speak up!,
pg. 133). This also applies to sexual orientation, you as a speaker has no
idea of who every individual is standing out there so even if you have
personal opinions, its best to keep them to yourself. Last consideration I
would take into account would be to expect questions at the end, because
every bit of information is not guarantied to be understood by everybody, so
you as the expert speaking and everybody looking up to you are expected to
clear any misunderstanding, and any clarifications to be made.

Your audience is your priority. It is essential to know your target closely

or almost like the back of your hand. If not, you can suffer greatly and you
can lose credibility from the people if not done properly, even if you put your

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best effort into it. Assimilate into the audience, become one and as you
present, become aware of what you are saying. Using techniques such as
humor or and time management can significantly improve the quality of your
speech because it shows that you know what you are talking about, what you
are doing and that you care about your topic and audience.

References:

1. University Speaking Center, 256-1346, speakingcenter.uncg.edu

Adopted from Lucas, S.E. (1998) The Art of Public Speaking (6th
edition). Retrieved from
http://speakingcenter.uncg.edu/resources/tipsheets/connectingtoaudience/au
dienceanalysis.pdf

2. Fraleigh, D.M, & Tuman, J.S., (2015) Speak up! (3rd Edition)

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