Tip No. 5: Viewing Readers as Clients

This is a necessity if you want to be a writer in the corporate world, for writing there is always done to a specific purpose for a specific population. If you want to do the project properly, it’s necessary that you understand not only your subject and the project manager’s goal in relation to it, but also as much as possible about those who will be the recipients for the communication on which you are working. As you begin to learn the characteristics of that population, as a body it becomes your client as much as is the project manager.

Implications of Treating the Corporate Population as a Client
The most basic implication relates to vocabulary. Can you use the specialist vocabulary that the subject matter expert (SME) assigned you is almost certain to use in his or her explanation of the topic, or is at least some translation necessary?

Another consideration has to do with the attitude of the intended readers. Are they resistant to the topic for some reason? Do they view it as the “thin edge of the wedge” in some sort of information campaign introducing a business rationalization that may ultimately cost them their jobs? Have they already been inundated with information on the topic that confused, bored or angered them?

Yet another consideration relates to the mood of the workplace. Are they undergoing performance challenges, even if unrelated to the topic on which you’re working, that have them so distracted that they’re unlikely to pay much attention to anything the organization has to say to them?

These are just some of the issues that, writing for corporate purposes, you must consider.

Full of Surprises
What works in the corporate world? As part of my corporate work, I’ve researched some of the largest corporate populations as to the effectiveness of both various communications techniques and also specific communications campaigns, as well as the effectiveness of individual communications pieces – reports, white papers, brochures, videos, magazines, webzines, newsletters, etc.

The research was conducted by several methods: focus groups; multiple-choice surveys; open-end surveys; telephone interviews; and one-on-one in-person interviews. Here are some of the basic findings that will give us a basis for transferring the corporate-workplace attitudes to a non-corporate environment:

• Readers and viewers in the corporate world (let’s call them corporate clients from now on) expect to get certain kinds of information in a certain way and are more likely to pay attention when it arrives in the expected format and size. In fact, if it does not, many recipients will not even realize that it is the kind of information that it is.
• Corporate clients notice details, especially the wrong ones. Even those who admit they only scan anything they’re given have a tendency to pick up on misspellings, wrong word usage, grammatical errors, and printing mistakes. When they notice something wrong, two things happen: (1) the credibility of the piece suffers; and (2) recipients tend to see only the mistakes and to look for others rather than focusing on the content of the material.
• Corporate clients never gossip about what the producer of the communications piece got right, but can’t wait to hit the water-cooler circuit to broadcast far and wide any mistakes they or others have noticed.
• Corporate clients are very unforgiving of imprecise, poorly organized information. When it appears, they assume it’s meant to confuse them in order to cover up something bad that the organization is doing. They view it as proof that those issuing the communication don’t know their jobs.
• Corporate clients are easily intimidated by large chunks of information in any form, but if you break it into more-digestible segments, they’ll happily plow through it.
• Corporate clients have excellent bullshit detectors, and the second they suspect that they’re in the presence of the fragrant variety, they turn the whole experience into a joke.
• Corporate clients do not always recognize the importance of what they are seeing or hearing in relation to their particular situation within the organization, and it’s necessary for the communicator to be very specific about what the recipient of the communication is supposed to get from it.
• Corporate clients will take ownership of, and help to disseminate, a communication that makes sense to them.

There are many other findings (I’ve researched a lot of people for some very esoteric purposes), but the above is enough to give you an idea of the challenges that corporate communicators regularly encounter and must surmount in order to do their jobs properly.

How This Transfers into Writing for the Non-corporate World
But what if you write novels? Or book-length nonfiction? Or magazine or web stories or articles? Obviously, your challenge is somewhat different.

In those situations, the population, admittedly, is more amorphous than you’ll find in the corporate world. In this broader environment, you’ll usually have only a general idea of the knowledge and interest level or of existing attitudes toward the topic on which you’re working.

Even in this more-complicated setting, however, there are certain things you can do to show consideration for your “clients.”

• If you’re writing to order for a publication, ‘zine, or broadcast, ask the media outlet for which you’re writing to provide you with any demographic info they have on their subscribers’ list, such as age by segment, education levels, occupation classification, geographic breakdown, reason for subscription, etc.
• Ask the media outlet also if there is a precedent for a certain kind of delivery or approach for your topic.
• The answers to the above two questions will give you a better idea of who’ll be receiving your communication and any special expectations they may have for your output, all of which you can take into account as you structure your piece and begin to fill in the content.
• If you’re writing a book, over which you usually have more control and also less input from the publisher, your best tool in producing a book that will do what you want in relation to its readers is what I think of as “backing out” of the project. This works for both fiction and nonfiction.
• If you’re writing nonfiction, ask yourself what conclusion you want the reader to have reached by the end of the book, and what knowledge s/he must possess and attitude s/he must hold in order to be where you want them to be. Incorporate those factors into your outline, and make sure those elements are particularly clear.
• If you’re writing fiction, ask yourself how much your readers need to know about the people, the setting, and the issues in order to (1) remain interested to the end; and (2) when they’ve finished, be satisfied that the work has reached the “right” climax. Make sure that, whatever other information you provide, you incorporate at least that much.
• As you write, unless you deliberately intend to produce a specifically atmospheric (in the case of fiction) or dense (in nonfiction) effect, keep the puncutation precise and the paragraphs and chapters short.
• Unless your purpose calls for you to be deliberately ambiguous or obscure, avoid confusion. Make sure the language and sentence structure are easily understood by the known or likely recipients.
• Provide enough information (nonfiction) or atmosphere (fiction) to help readers follow your intent, but don’t bury them in detail. If you don’t exercise restraint in this regard, they’ll become distracted and perhaps even antagonistic, viewing this kind of overkill as either (1) suspicious or (2) aimed at showing your superior knowledge rather than forwarding the purpose of the book.
• Help readers wherever possible. If the story’s complicated, use some of the old tricks – mini-summaries of “plot to this point” at the heads of chapters; a list of what the chapter includes at its head; pullouts of key quotes at the side; illustrations (at least in nonfiction), etc. In nonfiction, particularly of the fact-heavy or how-to-do-it kind, break up text paragraphs with bulleted or numbered lists and boxed tips.
• Provide some sort of discussion guide at the end of the book. This is, I think, especially important for nonfiction involving major issues and topics.
• In nonfiction works, always incorporate a bibliography or at least chapter notes relating to sources. Do this also for fiction works that use a lot of historical sources. Readers are surprisingly interested knowing the kind of background research you did.
• Provide an author mini-biography that relates to the work at hand. Readers are more interested in a writer’s qualifications to handle the topic than purely personal details about unrelated hobbies or pastimes. The latter kind of writer information is OK, but it doesn’t add to credibility. And credibility helps readers to take you seriously.
• Remember that – whatever the kind of project on which you’re working – the details matter. When you’re done, spell check and then, in addition, proof very carefully, paying close attention not only to spelling, but to grammar, punctuation, spacing. If the writing’s on the web, click any links to make sure they’re accurate and live.

As you work, ask yourself if there’s any special consideration relating to your particular topic that you must take into account. Are the readers you want likely to have an automatic interest, for example, or do you need to incorporate a “hook” of some kind to get them involved so that they can discover your book’s merits?

In Summary
The more you think about the needs of your “clients” up front, the more likely they are to respond to your work in exactly the way that you hope and intend.

© 2009, Gail Hewitt. All rights reserved.

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