audience-research

# Audience Research Knowing the audience deeply is the highest-leverage input to good content. You can have perfect voice and clean mechanics and still get ignored if the content doesn't speak to what the audience actually wants, in words they actually use. This skill builds that understanding — and writes it down so every other skill can use it. It goes deeper than the audience sketch in `brand-profile`. Two ideas drive it: 1. **Jobs-to-be-done beat demographics.** "35-year-old marketing manager, urban, likes coffee" tells you nothing about what to post. "Wants to stop feeling stupid in budget meetings" tells you everything. Capture what the audience is *trying to do*, not what census box they tick. 2. **Mirror their language, not your jargon.** The single biggest lever in copy is using the audience's own words for their problem. So this skill collects the **voice of the customer** — real phrases from real sources — and builds a language bank the content skills draw from. ## When to use this - After `brand-profile`, when content needs to land harder and the audience sketch isn't enough. - Before `content-pillars` or a big `batch-content-plan` (audience pains feed both). - When the user isn't sure who they're really talking to, or content keeps missing. **When NOT to use it:** if a current `audience.md` exists, load it, summarize it, and move on unless the user wants to revisit. ## Step 0 — Read the foundation first Load `brand-profile.md`. It has the posi...