Grabbing the attention of disinterested audiences

I was talking last week to our local school Principal about the difficulties that the school faces in communicating with parents The Principal often receives complaints from parents that they don't know what is happening - whether it's a special activity at the school, some type of social function, or a request for a form to be completed Parents often say that they would have been involved in an activity, if they had known it was happeningThe Principal is at a loss about what to do She works...

Read more

Success with email

This month in The Writing Circle, we've been talking about email - about our email successes and failures, and about our likes and dislikesOne theme that came through very strongly is the speed with which emails are read and acted upon, and the problems this can create for both writers and readers We talked about the way that readers often don't read an entire email message Instead, they read the first paragraph or two, jump to some conclusion about what they're meant to do, act upon that, and...

Read more

Communicating in the face of disasters

Last Saturday's 'Background Briefing' on ABC Radio National was about disasters - how to plan for them, how to manage them, and how to communicate about them The conversation about the benefits (or otherwise) of centralised control during disasters and about the benefits (or otherwise) of spreading insurance risk was fascinating But what really caught my attention was the conversation about disaster communicationFrom the perspective of clear communication, three comments stood out for me:The...

Read more