Know Your Audience

As a blogger, one of the main questions you have to ask yourself is, “Who am I writing to?”  Is your ideal audience people who agree with you or people who disagree with you that you are trying to persuade? 

The reason it is important to know your audience is because you will take a different tone depending on who you have in mind.  Part of what made me think about this was listening to other voices in the conservative movement.  Some do not seem persuasive to me at all.  Mark Levin, for example, is a brilliant guy, but he comes off as a grumpy old man who thrashes anyone who disagrees with him. 

Others who I admire seem more persuasive.  Rush Limbaugh did not come off as a grumpy guy.  He did not come off as mean.  He loved parody and satire to make his points.  He would “illustrate absurdity by being absurd.”  He would mock the left.  What made him great was that he came off as a happy-go-lucky guy, with a genial personality and a good sense of humor.  Dennis Prager is also very kind and fun-loving.  He treats everyone with respect, whether they agree with him or not.  He even wrote an entire book on happiness. 

Without hesitation, I will tell you that my main goal is to persuade people.  I want to influence people and make a difference.  I want to explain conservatism in a way that makes sense to people and turns them into conservatives.  Most importantly, I want to point people towards the Bible.  Maybe, just maybe, it will lead someone to turn to God.  Ultimately, that is our purpose for being alive.

What does this mean?  I mentioned that Rush Limbaugh used to mock the left.  Can I joke about people who I am trying to persuade?  Can I mock them?  Can I call them out for believing stupid things?  I don’t want to come off as a complete jerk to reasonable people.  That last sentence holds the key word:  reasonable.

If you look at the likes on my posts and articles, you would think most of the people who read my thoughts agree with me.  If you read the comments, you would think that most of the people disagree with me, or even viciously hate me.  While I want to persuade people, there are people who I am not writing to.  There are people who are completely unreasonable and unreachable.  Their minds are closed.  Don’t get me wrong, I hope they read my articles and think about them.  Maybe that seed will eventually grow.  However, I do not care to argue with them.  It is a waste of time and energy.  Most of them are dug in to their emotional positions and will just harden their hearts to any other viewpoint.  If I do argue, it is for the other people to hear the arguments, not because I think the crazed leftist will budge.  They are fair game to be poked fun at or used as examples of foolishness. 

The people I am writing to are the people who are genuinely open to understanding.  That does not necessarily mean people in the middle.  It might, but some of the most closed-minded people I know are staunchly “independent.”  They are so concerned with seeming open-minded that they will not take a side.  The people I am writing to are people who are actually curious.  Instead of arguing or trying to ask gotcha questions, they ask good, honest questions.  They say things like, “Hmm.  I never really thought of it that way.  That makes a lot of sense.”  If they want to argue, they probably are not ready to hear.

When it comes to the people who already agree with me, my gut reaction was that it does not do any good to “preach to the choir,” but the more I thought about it, the wider my focus became.  There are two main reasons to write to people who are already on my side.  First, I want you to know that you are not alone.  If you turn on a T.V., read from mainstream media sources, or attend college, you hear 95% secular leftist viewpoints.  You might start thinking you are the only sane person left on earth.  Even worse, you may start to doubt your sanity.  I imagine it is a feeling that the Old Testament prophets had when they spoke up for God and the people ignored them.  It is a lonely feeling.  I have felt it myself, especially living in California.  It always helps to hear that other people are with you.  Second, I want to help give you reasons for your beliefs and positions that you might not have been able to put into words yourself.  This might give you ammunition to explain biblical, conservative values to your friends and family.  There have been many times when I have listened to people like the great Dennis Prager and thought, “He is putting into words exactly what I think, but better than I could have!”

Ultimately, I hope everyone reads what I write, but it will only resonate with reasonable people.  Some of you will just get irrationally angry at me.  Please feel free to leave crazy comments.  Those are fun.