Tailoring tech content for different audiences

Over the past three weeks, I gave the following presentations:

• Debugging Angular Applications @ Angular Community Meetup (45-minute online talk, video, slides)
• Debugging React Applications @ RenderATL (2-hour in-person workshop, slides)
• Debugging Vue Applications @ VueConf (30-minute in-person talk, slides)

All three talks drew on similar concepts, but were tailored for a specific audience. Re-using content by adjusting it for different audiences has multiple benefits:

• Get more mileage from your content
• Iterate and implement learnings as you go
• Better understand communities by identifying similarities and differences
• Expand the reach of your expertise

Identifying audiences

Even the most niche content can be diversified across different audiences. Consider languages, frameworks, role types, experience level, industry segment, devtools, and more. For example, say you have expertise in Nuxt Content Module. You could tailor content based on:

• Content type (using the module for documentation, marketing, news, etc.)
• CI/CD platform (build and deployment steps for different providers)
• Role type (building as a developer, using as a content writer, testing apps with the module, etc.)

Tailoring your content

Once you've decided on the audience to target, here are some questions that can guide how you tailor your content to meet their particular needs.

What are the biggest challenges facing your audience?

While all developers struggle with debugging, there are specific challenges associated with Angular, React, and Vue. For example, the release of Vue 3 included a significant change to the API, which could lead to transition challenges and specific bugs. React developers have a larger ecosystem of meta-frameworks and tools, which could cause complexity. Identify the specific problems your audience face and ensure your content addresses a pain point.

What makes your audience different?

While a lot of debugging content overlaps across frameworks, there are key differentiators. You'll want to identify these differences and call that out to tailor your content. This doesn't just apply to technical differences -- community size, demographics, culture, these could all be incorporated.

What is redundant for your audience?

There are some problems that may not exist or be minimized for your audience. Some of your content can be removed or replaced if it doesn't apply.

How does your audience learn?

Can your audience quickly absorb code examples? Are there certain analogies or parallels that could make a topic easier to understand for your audience? Will your audience have the required tools or prerequisite context to use your content? Take all this into consideration when adjusting your content. You may need to add a quick primer on a certain topic or switch up the media used like images, code snippets, or videos.

What did I learn from the last time?

It's important to continually incorporate feedback and insights into your updated content. For example, I made my code snippets much larger for visibility, and changed to simpler examples that required less up-front context to absorb. I also reduced the amount of topics I tried to cover in a given time so people had time to process information.

Practice makes progress

Finding a process where you can identify, tailor, learn, and iterate will help you leverage your expertise across audiences and formats to make the most of your content and efforts. If you are looking for opportunities to speak, check out meetups, Twitter spaces, or try livestreaming or recording videos for YouTube. It's all an opportunity to learn and improve!