As any good writer knows, one of the most important things to remember when writing an article is this: Who is my audience? Is my audience professionals? Are they adults or children? Are they native English speakers or speakers of English as a foreign language? Are they educated or not?
Once you've narrowed down your target audience, it's important to be consistent in your writing.
One of the problems I often see in audio files that I transcribe for people is not staying on topic. This is intimately tied to who your target audience is.
Many people these days who do teleseminars or webinars tend to do things off the cuff. This makes for very annoying and tedious reading. It causes a lot of grief for transcriptionists, too--believe me!
If your audience are speakers of English as a foreign language, then it's important not to go down a bunch of rabbit trails, using English idioms that are obtuse to this target group, and confusing them by wandering from your topic at hand.
Another related concern is talking down to people or making ones readers feel like they're a bit daft. Some speakers and writers have a tendency to do this. In my personal opinion, writers should always assume their readers are intelligent, concerned about the topic, and have interesting opinions and knowledge of their own to share. This is especially true in certain venues like call-in webinars or teleseminars.
One last thing to remember is try to visualize the person you're writing the article to or doing the teleseminar for sitting there in front of you as you have a personal talk with them on your specific subject matter. That will help you remember your target audience and it will keep you from straying from your topic at hand.
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