Edelman account exec, Jeffrey Treem, left a thought-provoking comment on Amy Gahran’s Right Conversation.
While I agree with your analysis about the value of strategic commenting, I wish you would have used a different phrase other than “target audiences.”
Audiences, are a passive, static group subject to the traditional linear sender-receiver model.
I think we need to think more in terms of communities of interest. After all, we don’t want these people just to read the comments, we want them to become engaged.
Senatics? maybe. But I think we as communicators need to move away from the restrictive view of targeting audiences that was coined by advertisers.
Personally, I think the word “target” is the problem. Audience seems benign. I understand Treem does not see it that way, but not all audiences are passive, not by any stretch. Sports fans, for one, are far from passive, static bodies that exist only to be pitched by the corporate team in their city.