It’s satisfying to fill in the list of “Key Audiences” in a PR plan. They’re pretty obvious and easy to prioritize. When well defined, the list serves as a north star for the rest of the document, guiding everything that comes next.

It’s such a big help because the term “audience” captures the power structure you’ll deploy. The company speaks and the audience listens. Oh sure, audiences sometimes talk back, but through customer service or letters. Not with a megaphone loud enough to think of them as anything but an audience.
By now you’re probably hearing alarm bells go off with this pre-social media mode of thinking. And yet many 2011 PR plans being drawn up now will include a section on “Audience” out of habit,  warping the company’s ability to see threats and opportunities.

Try this thought experiment:
1. Write “Key Audiences” and list them. Then jot down notes on all the things you want to do to that audience. Raise visibility, differentiate from peers, convince them to buy your stuff, apply to HR…that sort of thing.

2. Now write “Our Communities” and list them. Assemble a quick list of all the things you could do with them.

Do terms like “collaborate,” “cooperate,” “join with,” “ask,” and “build” come to mind?  Were those terms on the list in #1?   The frame difference between Audience and Community profoundly affects thinking and expectations.  (Clay Shirky famously explained this change by calling the audience “the former audience” in his book, Here Comes Everybody.)

Notice how you do things “to” audiences. But you do things “with” communities.

Prefacing “communities” with “our” is also important. It gets you in the right mindset for goal-setting, it’s a catalyst for changing the company’s culture and attitudes towards stakeholders, and it informs the instincts you’ll need to be authentic — not just appear authentic — in your engagements with them.

Which begs another question and change in thinking.  If they’re the former audience, what does that make us?