2.7Ideal audience

An ideal audience is a rhetor's imagined, intended audience. In creating a rhetorical text, a rhetor imagines a target audience, a group of individuals that will be addressed, persuaded, or affected by the speech or rhetorical text. This type of audience is not necessarily imagined as the most receptive audience, but as the future particular audience that the rhetor will engage with. Imagining such an audience allows a rhetor to formulate appeals that will grant success in engaging with the future particular audience. In considering an ideal audience, a rhetor can imagine future conditions of mediation, size, demographics, and shared beliefs among the audience to be persuaded.

2.8Implied audience

An implied audience is an imaginary audience determined by an auditor or reader as the text's constructed audience. The implied audience is not the actual audience, but the one that can be inferred by reading or analyzing the text. Communications scholar Edwin Black, in his essay, The Second Persona, presents the theoretical concept of the implied audience using the idea of two personae. The first persona is the implied rhetoric (the idea of the speaker formed by the audience) and the second persona is the implied audience (the idea of the audience formed by and utilized for persuasion in the speech situation). A critic could also determine what the text wants that audience to become or do after the rhetorical situation.

3.Techniques

3.1Asking a question.

You can ask a rhetorical question or something that involves everyone by getting him or her to think about the topic.

• How many of you in this room have hated filling up tax returns?

• How many of you drive a German car?

• Are our competitors driving us out of the market?

You can wait a short time after the question to get some information about your audience, but don't wait too long as members of the audience feel stupid if no one knows the answer. Avoid open-ended questions and ask only questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no unless you are confident in skillfully using such questions. If you ask too general questions like "What is the purpose of life?" people might form an impression that your presentation is very general.

3.2State an impressive face

Begin with a shocking, unusual or impressive fact connected to the theme of your presentation.

• We are going to be out of business in six months if we allow our competitors to outrun us like this.

• The demand in the market has doubled in the last three years and our market share has risen by only 1%.

3.3Be mindful of 10 minutes rule

It is a well-known fact that attention wanes after about 10 minutes. However, most presenters seem to forget this and continue to drone on for an hour or more; they move from mind-numbing slide to slide, unaware of the painful effect on the audience. When you create your presentation, plan to have a strategic change every 10 minutes. A change can be as simple as asking a good question that can stimulate some audience interaction. It can be showing a pertinent video clip, telling a relevant story or getting the audience to do something, such as analyzing a diagram. You can also press "B" on your keyboard to blacken your screen. Then switch to presenting the next segment in your presentation using a different medium, such as writing on a flipchart or whiteboard. Sameness generates boredom; a change, even minor, recaptures attention.