The Art of Making News Relevant

The Art of Making News Relevant 

The main projects I have been working on at the Department of Sport and Recreation have been news stories, eNewsletters and Media releases. These have been about new programs and events which are on. Whilst this work sounds very routine, I have learnt something new from it. At uni we are taught about all communications material needs a message, which was easy enough as I could make up my own message. Out in the workforce, you have to capture someone else's message and aim for their program they made. Again this may not sound as hard as you may think, but because not everyone works in communications, not everyone knows how to write a message. 

This is where my learning begun. I had to learn how to read in between the lines. I get given the information, and from that I need to try to understand what it is they are really trying to say. I really learnt the importance of making something exciting to your audience. One of the stories I was working on was development programs for volunteers. This was very exciting news at the Department of Sport and Recreation, as it was another great way to support community sport. The issue was how I convince a volunteer, who already has a job, has kids and needs to do the food shopping, to give up a night to come to a development program to benefit their sports club they volunteer for on the weekends. I suddenly realised just because it is free and benefit the volunteer, I still need to convey the development programs worth. 

At first I struggled a little with wrapping my head around all the different programs, and who I should be targeting. I had to do a lot of research and really learn what the programs were about and what they were trying to achieve. Once I did this, I spoke to my boss to clarify that the aims and messaging I had come up with, matched what the intended benefits of the programs were. In the end we worked together on it for a little bit and came up with a clear message for each target group. This is a link to the general news story promoting the online page promoting the new events.

Community Volunteers Project
This has been a very valuable lesson as it is important to be able to communicate to your target market the value in your news.  

You can only please some of the people some of the time

“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” - Bill Cosby 

Stakeholder Management 

Ah, stakeholders. They don't realise how important they are to us. As we have learnt through uni and as I’m sure others have discovered firsthand, different stakeholders in an organisation require communication - not just the what or message itself, but also how the message is transmitted. 

Whilst completing my placement at Student Edge, one of the key projects I was assigned to and given complete ownership of was the corporate enewsletter (sent via email). Student Edge is very good at communicating to it's student membership, but not so consistent with communication to their clients. But clients cannot be neglected! As our lecturers say, 80% of business comes from 20% of clients, and so the relationship between a business and its clients requires nurturing. 

Primary school flashback - the 5 W’s

Image source

As my supervisor Sharyn says, do not underestimate the importance of the 5 Ws – who, what, where, when, why (and how). Before beginning any project, these 5 Ws need to be answered so both yourself and your colleagues have a clear idea of the project objectives and end result. 

So, the corporate enews – the objective behind it was to provide an update on and to present news on the happenings of Student Edge from a business to business perspective. Student Edge clients are not as interested in the latest student discounts as they are with how Student Edge fits in with their communication plan (and if they are not aware of us – how we can help!). For this newsletter, I had to think not from a student point of view but from a B2B perspective – what would a client be interested in reading about? I focused on recent success campaigns, as well as “fast facts” on the Student Edge membership demographic. Overall, I showcased what Student Edge can do for their partners. 

Based on my previous experience of working in media, my email inbox was inundated with a minimum of 50 new emails per day and often a lot of my 'newsletter' emails would be deleted – so I had to make the Student Edge corporate enewsletter short, sharp, snappy and digestible! Knowing how I used to go through my emails in the past, I had less than 15 seconds to capture the recipient's attention. 

You can only please some of the people some of the time  

I presented my first draft of the corporate enews to my supervisor Sharyn, who was overall positive but whose main piece of criticism was the enewsletter not being clear enough on who were the target stakeholder/s? My first draft of the enewletter had focused heavily on successful advertising campaigns, but she reminded me to take my ‘advertising’ hat off and put on my ‘public relations’ hat again. She said that the enewsletter had to position itself as coming from the board as opposed to business development (those in the business who are in charge of gaining new accounts). So, I had to steer away from the advertising emphasis and provide more of an general overview, but again as mentioned keep it short and sharp. 

It doesn't stop at copywriting - next steps, briefing design! 

One the copy had been finalised the next step was to brief the design team. Wouldn’t it be easier if everyone could read everyone else’s minds? That way, a designer could see exactly how I was seeing the newsletter in my mind and work their magic to create it! But alas. It was not to be. Keep an eye out for my next post, where I explain exactly what happened (or didn't happen!) with design ... 

In the meantime, PR Daily provides some further food for thought - 5 questions to ask before you write anything (and if you don't subscibe to their enewsletter already, I highly recommend it!)

Rachel