“Many content strategists today use the three persuasive appeals from Aristotle’s Rhetoric: logos (reasoning), ethos (ethic), and pathos (emotion) as a framework. These modes are a good starting place to help people learn how to persuade on the web, but another aspect of Aristotle’s Rhetoric is even more elemental: the notion of learning your audience and using this knowledge to craft more effective, persuasive messages.

This doesn’t just affect how you write and which types of logos, ethos, and pathos you use. Perhaps more importantly, it defines what you write. When you learn what your audience needs to know, it simplifies the problem of what content to create and when to create it.”