Knowing your audience and different writing styles
All publications should relate to their audience with an appropriate style, and they can do this effectively only if they know their audience.
Your audience is staff (professional and administrative) and management from different backgrounds, so what style is appropriate for a staff newsletter or intranet article?
Your publication should adhere to the organisation ’s own house style to ensure that it is consistent throughout.
Like all good communications, the style should be simple, clear and concise, avoiding jargon and complex technical terms, to ensure that all readers will understand it.
Gain the trust of the reader
The style should be authoritative but not patronising to gain the trust of the reader and to reflect the importance of the organisation's work. (For example, avoid: slang; sensationalism, in-jokes; use of exclamation marks – they can all make a publication look unprofessional and childish). Tell it like it is, don’t try to be clever or amusing.
This doesn’t mean that every article should be ‘heavy’ but if a subject is serious or important then your writing style should reflect this.
Write in the third person
News stories are more authoritative if they are written in the third person, reported as if the publication is slightly detached from the event (have a look at the news pages of any newspaper to see this). Use the first person only for ‘think pieces’ where the communication is a personal message to staff.
In short, try to emulate the kind of news article that you would see in a respected professional journal or a mid- market to broadsheet newspaper of record.
How to write compelling news stories
Simply, news is ‘new information’. For the purposes of internal communications such as a staff newsletter or team brief document, your news stories have two main purposes – to inform staff about important regional and organisational developments, and to reinforce key organisational messages (for example, improvement focus) by publishing stories as examples of good practice.
For a newsletter or staff magazine, articles can usually be split into the following types:
- news stories – about a person or an event (the best angles here are the unusual and interesting);
- think pieces – factual pieces, written in the first person, which give the writer’s opinion on topical items and in which they may try to change the reader’s perception of something;
- case studies – used to illustrate the point you are making in the story and to help the reader identify with your subject;
- interviews – perhaps with a senior manager on a topic of major importance or for a profile of a new member of staff;
- ‘how to’ articles – how to do something, for example, using a new e-mail or intranet system;
- diary notes/reminders – short items reminding your readers to complete something on time, for example, submit personal development plans by a certain deadline.
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