Who do you Write for? Should you Care?

I was having a conversation at work recently about the age to which we cater our writing on the web site. 

What that means for us is that we write the content for someone with a 9th grade reading level.

My question for you all is this.  When you write your WordPress blog do you give any thought to the reading level of your content? Should you? Do you even care?

Part of me (a very small part) says that I should not care at all and just write what I want without worrying if I am writing over the readers’ head. That said, the reason I write this blog is to help you all to make your WordPress blog  have the best Findability it can.

With that in mind, part of good Findability is to have the content of the site  be as accessible to the largest audience as it can be. I think you should write your content in a way that allows everyone to understand and use the information you are writing about. This is easier said then done.

My plan? Just write what I know in the way that I would  explain it to my Mother. She is a smart woman but does not know much about my topic.  Therefore,  if I can get her to understand what I am writing about then there is a good chance that the people that I am writing for will understand it also.

But it needs to be said that unless the subject matter you are writing about is geared to an entry level group, you need to be careful to not dumb it down so much that the more advanced users will feel insulted and walk away from your blog and then you have lost a reader.

So the question is does the readers’ reading level matter at all? Do you even think about it at all? Drop me a comment and let me know your thoughts on all of this.