The right medium for your message/audience

Yes, this was an actual conversation.

Mediums have specific audiences and uses, or goals that can be accomplished. Since the Wired Wealthy report last week, I've been thinking a lot about the different types of users we have on our websites and how we can best meet each of their needs. There are any number of different mediums that you can use to communicate with your audience online, but as the cartoon above illustrates, not every medium is appropriate for every message. It's perfectly fine to want to communicate information to an audience but we shouldn't adopt technology purely for the sake of saying we've done it.

In my head, I've split my users into two groups:

Casual Users - come to your website every once in a while when they have a question or are bored at work but typically have a passive experience. May be engaged every now and again but need to be convinced. You need to work at it to "get" them.  

Super-Psyched Users - These are the users you have already won over. They come to your site often "just because." They are easy to engage because they are seeking it out from you and actually may become annoyed with you if you don't offer them ways to engage with your institution. If you're familiar with the term "solidifying your base" from politics, this is your base. They are yours to lose.

Evolution of users: I also think that users can also evolve (or de-evolve, as it were) from one of these categories to another. If you provide a really engaging experience on your website that is worthwhile to your users, than you can pull some casual users over to the super-psyched side of the house. On the same token, if you don't provide an engaging experience, your super-psyched users will become bored with something back to your site time and time again with nothing to do and will eventually give up altogether.

Based on these categories, I developed the chart below. I'm sure I've left some stuff out so I won't claim that it's all inclusive.





Of course your super-psyched users will also be interested in your website or your email announcements and that sort of thing. But my theory is that your primary audience for that sort of thing are your casual users because your super-psyched users are getting their information form the different types of communication they've engaged themselves with. The point of classifying those specific mediums to casual users is that you have to be careful that the content your write for those mediums is focused on the majority audience. The Wired Wealthy report clearly points out that your more casual users actually get annoyed with too much flash when they are just looking for a piece of information. If all we're doing it trying to get them to give a gift or fill out an application, then we certainly don't want to turn them off before they've completed that task.

I'll also say this: In terms of effort, your super-psyched users aren't the ones you have to put a lot of effort into recruiting to your cause.  Now, it may be more fun to deal with them but if  you've already won them over then aren't your energies better spent elsewhere?  Not 100% elsewhere of course....solidifying the base and all...but the majority of your energy should be spent on winning your casual users over.

Key Takeaways: 
1) Make sure you're picking the right medium for your message.  A one-off webpage doesn't get more exciting if you call it a blog.
2) Different audiences gravitate towards different types of communication.
3) If a user is seeking to be engaged, make sure you provide them the opportunity to do so.  
4) Put your energy where you have the most to gain.