Membership Body Trustee Reports, white papers, committee presentations, annual reports, member toolkits… the world is full of them. However, quality can often be a vulnerability and we’ve all spotted obvious mistakes or clunky artwork that turns a presentation into a punchline. At best, it’s merely embarrassing; at worst, it can undermine all your hard work.
It’s always possible to make improvements so, if you’re having a hard time with getting your work to have the desired effect, perhaps some of these ideas can help:
- Writing in a different tone or style. Something serious and formal can be heavy going. Perhaps a more relaxed, conversational approach will be easier to follow?
- Add subheadings and section titles. Breaking huge documents into bite-size chunks can be a better fit with a reader’s attention span.
- Use charts, diagrams and graphs sparingly. A little goes a long way with lots of information concentrated into something dense, so try not to overuse them.
- Break it up with pictures. Could this help you save space by showing instead of telling? A picture is worth a thousand words, after all.
- Consider changing the format. Switching from print to digital might create new opportunities, while the reverse can make offline use much more practical.
These are all reliable options and, at a more advanced level, you can also bring in professional editorial and design support. Whether you’re working with interactive digital options or the timeless classic that is print, this can make a major difference and the benefits for both you and your audience can be compelling.
How editors can help you
Mistakes are a fact of life, but typos don’t have to be. An independent professional editor can provide a fresh pair of eyes for quality control, and those little errors – or big ones – that somehow got past everyone can be found and fixed.
Going further, a skilled editor can also suggest improvements. They can make recommendations about improving the pace, structure and clarity, technical tips on digital fundamentals like Search Engine Optimisation or advice about tried-and-tested communication techniques such as storytelling that can help your work stick in the memory.
It might feel strange at first to trust your work to somebody else, but think of it like this: there’s a difference between polishing a car until it gleams and modifying it for an extra hundred horsepower as well. By the way, that’s exactly the kind of metaphor an editor might suggest to help make a complex concept easier to understand.
How designers can help you
There’s nothing truly wrong with simple text, but block after block of it can be a tedious trial. Along with breaking everything up and adding a welcome touch of variety, photography, illustrations and other artwork – which can be arranged more easily than you might think – can really reinforce a message and straightforward colour-coding or even an internally hyperlinked structure can make navigation a breeze.
Better yet, ingenious infographics can provide an outstanding way to present information that could otherwise be rather dry in an engaging way that can improve learning by up to 400%. Furthermore, visual information can be a more comfortable experience than plain text for the 65% of people who are visual learners and infographics also lend themselves well to sharing on social media channels.
A professional designer can help you with accessibility considerations too. Even something as simple as which font to use can have an enormous effect on how kind text is on the reader’s eye, and making your audience’s lives easier is always a good thing.
Suggestions, support and success
So there we have it. If you’re struggling to get a project to work, perhaps some of the solutions here are what you’re looking for. If extra support is called for, that option is within your reach too.
That last one might sound like a lot of trouble and expense, but the truth is that bringing in the professionals can be an intelligent investment with great returns. After all, you’ve put a lot of effort in already, so it makes sense to go the extra mile and give people something special that informs, educates and perhaps even entertains them too.
As a final thought, there’s more to life than the same old boring templates. Whether your audience is the general public, your colleagues or a more select group of stakeholders or shareholders, the experts can help your work rise above the rest and help you achieve so much more.
Dialogue Content Marketing is an award-winning full-service content marketing agency that creates engaging visual and written content across all channels.
Contact us to find out more.
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