It’s a bit tough to imagine who exactly views any written form of art, as there could be tons of possibilities. There could be people who relate to the art or the site’s general theme, and others who are brand new to the idea. Whatever the case may be, one essential aspect of writing is the audience. Any time you write something, you want to have as many viewers and readers as possible, which means hard work on the writer’s end. One question about this idea is, does it have to be a specific audience? Or, in other words, who specifically would want to read the art being written? 

I’ve continued reading “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser and have been thinking deeply about this topic. Most of what I read essentially relates to me, not just as a writer, but as a person, too. When I read the fifth chapter of the book “The Audience,” I noticed that Zinsser discussed the question “Who am I writing for?” – just about the same thing I asked. He answers this question by saying that, despite most writers looking for a broad audience, you’re really trying to aim to write for yourself. He mentions the use of a tone that you would use in a real-life conversation, as well as being yourself when writing. The part about being yourself when writing really gets to me, because that’s literally something I’ve been working on for a long time. Back then, I used to put myself in competition and compare myself to others. It’s an entirely different story now that I’m older. 

While I totally understand where Zinsser is coming from, the idea of targeting a specific audience when writing content is a bit new to me. Initially, having an audience from a wide variety was fine because you never know who might start engaging with new content. While I still believe in that, writers should have a specific audience in mind for their content. For example, I’ve written a lot of New York Mets content over the past couple of years. In the future, I could start targeting Mets or baseball fans and potentially build a strong community. I could follow Vgen Media’s advice in this step-by-step guide to success in social media marketing in 2025, which mentions knowing people’s demographics and interests as beneficial. 

So, the audience plays a critical role in writing and content in general. If nobody cares about the content, then the influencer won’t be successful. I’ll be sure to keep all this new knowledge in mind moving forward.