Know Your Audience

• Knowing your audience is crucial to telling an engaging story. Are you writing for your immediate family members and close friends? Are you presenting for potential donors or supporting churches? Are you giving your 30-second elevator pitch to a coworker? Your story, and the details you include or omit, will look different in each of these contexts. Try to make sure that you are telling the right version of your story so that your audience can gain the most and be most affected by it.

Know Their Spaces

• Using the best medium for your story is also important as there are many different platforms that offer different benefits and drawbacks and are better or worse at targeting a particular audience.
• Email is one of the most widely used and applicable forms of communication. Virtually everyone has access to a working email address, which offers an excellent way to keep in touch with your family, friends, donors, and sending church. It can, however, offer drawbacks, while everyone receives emails, many will simply pass over them without reading and it does not provide as robust a platform for multimedia files as other mediums do.
• Facebook is another common form of communication. It also offers a reliable form of communication to a wide range of people, though it is focused more on an older constituency. It also offers a better means for multimedia than email.
• Instagram is an excellent way to connect with the younger, on-the-go crowd. It is primarily used for photo and video content, with limited attention given to captions. It allows for “story” content to post relevant and engaging content that disappears after 24 hours. This places less emphasis on text to tell your story, which can make it more accessible to many.
• You could tell the same story in three different ways using the mediums above. These, along with many other forms of storytelling, are vital for connecting with those who care about and support your ministry.

Know Their Interests

• Develop points of commonality with your audience. People like to read about something that connects to their life and experience. Appeal to their passions and the realities they find most interesting and important. Communicate how your convictions and ministry align with theirs.