When you sit down to write, do you have a picture or photo of your reader? Describe your reader and what your reader looks like. Is your reader a senior citizen, a senior in college, or a senior in high school? Does your reader like to read or does he have to be coaxed to read? Is your reader outgoing or does your reader tend to stay home and be an introvert?

By keeping a visual image of who you are writing for (whether real or imaginary), you will target your vocabulary, phrasing, details, examples, length, even breadth of the article to that specific reader. That's a good thing.

If you are still having trouble picturing your audience, look for photos in magazines of who you think your ideal reader is. Frame the photo or make a collage of several faces that represent who you are writing for. When writing, keep this photo collection in front of you. What will these faces gain from reading your work?

Let's say you are going to write an article about a universal subject such as exercise. You could say that your audience is everyone since everyone needs to exercise. Yet, an article that would appeal to readers of Men's Health Magazine would not be written the same as one written for AARP or Runner's World.

What about people like my brother-in-law? He's been a runner all his adult life, conscientious of how he eats, and is running a half marathon this year on his 72nd birthday. Yes, there are crossovers of people who read all three of these magazines, but your writing targets the norm for a publication's readership. My brother-in-law is not the typical reader for each of these magazines.

People who read Shape magazine may also read Good Housekeeping. Yet, you still have to learn the demographics for each publication for which you want to write and hone your writing towards those identifying markers.

Disney's Family Fun magazine might have articles about exercise, but they'll be written to entice children to want to exercise. The approach and details for each magazine mentioned is completely different.

Sometimes writers say they just want to write a nice article regardless who reads it. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you aren't thinking you will be published that way.

Sometimes writers say it intimidates their writing abilities to picture faces in a reading audience. If that smoothers your writing flexibility, then write the article however you feel it's best to write it. After you are through writing, decide what you want to do with it and tweak and edit it to fit the market you are approaching.

Don't feel bad if you have no face in mind. Writing an article with no particular market in mind is a good way to get your thoughts collected into a cohesive form so they won't be wasted. Then, find your target audiences, develop your notes towards each of those several, different publications. Instead of selling one article, you'll make many sales to different types of audiences but all interested in the same universal idea. That's a tremendous marketing tip to create more sales from the same amount of research.