Who is currently visiting the site? What makes their visit a success in their eyes? In yours?
Who else is competing for their attention?
OUTCOMES
What do you want to persuade your audience to do?
What assumptions do you make concerning your audiences? Example: do you assume your audience is of a certain socioeconomic group, or that they are familiar with certain aspects of your organization?
What drives your business, and how does your audience help achieve positive results?
What metrics do you want to keep track of?
COMPANY VOICE
What is your company’s ultimate mission? (Not a mission statement, but a more organic, real-world one-sentence answer to “Why do you do what you do?”)
What message do you need to get across?
What is the company’s voice and personality?
What has worked in the past? What hasn’t worked in the past? What were the stumbling blocks?
What attributes does your company have that helps to gather attention—i.e., “Our company is nationally known,” “Our company employs former movie stars,” “Our company is well respected in the field.”
What topics can we take advantage of? Example: if you are an automobile manufacturer, are there government rebates we can promote?
What topics are off limits?
METHODS
How do you currently communicate with your audiences? How often? (Related: can we have copies of your past materials?)
Who creates the content?
How does your audience prefer to communicate with you?
What other functionality will you need?
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
What is the current content workflow?
Who currently creates content?
Who will write it in the future?
Who approves content?
What stumbling blocks are in place that make it difficult for the content to get published?
Who in the company connects with customers most naturally?
As you push your way through a group’s initial fear of discussion, new questions will flow naturally.
The specific questions aren’t necessary, as long as you remember to:
Ask the client who their audiences are and what those audiences want.
Listen for clues that expose secondary audiences.
Dive into those clues. Make them work. Ask follow-up questions. Get people talking.
Questions
AUDIENCES
OUTCOMES
COMPANY VOICE
METHODS
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
The specific questions aren’t necessary, as long as you remember to:
Ask the client who their audiences are and what those audiences want. Listen for clues that expose secondary audiences. Dive into those clues. Make them work. Ask follow-up questions. Get people talking.
Source: https://alistapart.com/article/audiences-outcomes-and-determining-user-needs