When you write knowledge, communications, and web content, you have to consider your audience. At the University of Minnesota, we have many potential audiences:
- Students
- Staff
- Faculty
- Alumni
- The public
- All of the above, many of whom are English as a second language speakers and many of whom are not tech savvy
These audiences may have different needs but all of them need to understand content easily and quickly. The current standard is to write for a sixth or seventh grade level. Even if people can read at a higher level, simple is best for everyone.
Whether a piece of content is for the public or for internal use, your goal is to help the user:
- Find what they need
- Understand what they find
- Use what they find to meet their needs as quickly as possible
Although it is a guiding principle of writing to never assume someone's skill level or understanding, sometimes we create content for audiences that are highly technical. We rely on our partners to know who these groups are, and this knowledge may change our approach.
For example, if we're emailing a group of system administrators about a change, we might forgo providing certain context around the system itself and focus more on describing the change. This isn't a hard and fast rule, so use your best judgment.
When in doubt, write it out.
Additional Considerations for Comms
When we create communications (emails and announcements), we usually know who our audience is and can target certain user groups. However, sometimes the full impact of a technology change is unknown or too broad for direct communications. In these cases, we use the channels available to us to communicate broadly to the University community. These channels include MyU, Brief, other newsletters, and pop-up or in-app notifications.
At the beginning of a communications project, we often complete an audience analysis to better understand how to target specific groups.
Additional Considerations for Knowledge
When we create knowledge articles, we usually know who our audience is and can set the knowledge to be available to certain groups/audiences.
- Internal knowledge is knowledge whose audience has access to the TDX environment.
- Public knowledge is knowledge that's available on the Technology Help website. Most articles are available to the general public, but an article can be put behind login authentication (SSO) to only allow University affiliated audiences to view it.
Additional Considerations for Website Content
Most pages are available to the general public, but a page can be put behind login authentication (SSO) to only allow University-affiliated audiences to view the content.