Clearly defining your audience is a key to success with your persuading essay. Remember, your audience for this essay will almost certainly be different than your audience for your convincing essay.

Who do you want to persuade? It's easiest to persuade readers who mostly agree with you, but who aren't yet committed to action, or to readers who are neutral or uninformed about the importance of taking action. It's almost impossible to persuade readers who disagree violently with your position because first you have to convince those readers to agree with you and then you have to persuade them to act with you.