Thinking about communication and outward facing content for onboarding

There are two types of people in the world:

Those that remember a memory card for their camera, and those who do not.

Today for the first time, I fall into the second category.

Tomorrow we are going to a forest zoo with @smallsteps and I want a proper camera so will have to find a card from somewhere. At the moment we are in the middle of nowhere with no shops around but hopefully I can find a store closer to the zoo to pick up a card.

This is where we are, my in-laws' cottage and it is hotter than the devil's balls here.

But hot balls is not what I was going to talk about. Actually, there are another four types of people that should be considered by anyone developing some content for anyone anywhere at all. This is important because understanding the audience helps connect with them and this is a way to give at least something for everyone.

The four types are, Why, what, how and what if people

Why - are those who need the reason before they do something and we all fall into this often enough. Communicating the why is very important to draw the audience in to find out more.

What - these are the detail orientated people, the ones that like to know the definitions of things, the labels and names.

How - covers the processes involved and the people here like the workflows and cause and effect type of situations, the turning cogs.

What if - are the future thinkers, the application of where it could go and how it could be applied, even if not set in stone.

Now, what someone needs is dependent on the topic itself and of course what background one might have but, if you are presenting to an unknown audience, it is a wise decision to hit all points. This communication style works in many ways and if you use this in business, you will find you will get faster and better results and if presenting, an audience that engages more deeply with what you deliver.

I have been meaning to write something about this for awhile and again after a comment I made the other day, but I thought I would quickly look over it now because I believe that when people think about the way they absorb information themselves, they might better consider the way they present information.

Now, for a good example that covers these points, here is the latest post from @theycallmedan that is about Steem but is outward facing. This means that to be as inclusive as possible for an audience that might not know much about blockchain, steem, crypto or what all of it could mean, hitting the why, what, how and what if points will be the best approach.

What @theycallmedan does is weave these points throughout the piece by defining aspects, telling how they work, why they are important and how they could be applied. For a newbie, this is a good introduction of terms that can be pegged to concepts and create the imagery needed for a future position. For those on other platforms, I recommend sharing this article on to spread Steem further.

When it comes to outward facing content, we need to remember that a lot of the terms that we might use are jargon for most people and specialized in a way that they will not intuitively understand them. this makes building the conceptual framework knowledge of Steem difficult for many people - even for those who have been here a while.

We definitely need more outward facing content and I am going to start producing more. I am not active on other platforms however so I hope that you will help spread it onward. I will get to more on this later because, my battery in the laptop is dying - which is probably because it is sitting on the devil's balls.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]