If you work in a government department or large commercial organisation, the use of features can be very effective in communicating your message.
Features – think of them like magazine articles – can be used on your website, in pamphlets and in glossy promotional magazines.
So why use features to promote your organisation? Here are four reasons.
1. Readability
The use of a feature format encourages readability – more people are more likely to absorb your message.
Features use a chatty, engaging writing style that is accessible to a wide variety of people. Readers do not have to be experts in the area and they don’t have to be an existing clients or customers – so instead of preaching to the converted, you’re more likely to embrace people who don’t already know about you.
Another reason that the readability of features is high is that the format encourages the use of visuals. Whether those visuals are photographs, diagrams, graphs, maps or cartoons, the visual element can be used to both lighten the apparent depth of the material and also make it more welcoming.
2. Integration of Message
A feature allows you to appropriately and subtly incorporate your message.
If you are promoting the research abilities of your organisation, a feature allows you to do it by interviewing researchers and showcasing your latest developments.
If you are implementing a new government policy, a feature allows you to discuss the policy and its implications in a chatty, friendly and informative way.
You can ‘tune’ the degree to which your push your message easily and over a wide continuum – from an overt ‘here is what we want you to know about us’ feature story, to a more subtle feature story that is about building long-term brand awareness. Both approaches – and everything in between – are quite valid and work well.
3. Humanising
Because o f the way that people can be integrated into a feature story, using features is especially important in humanising your organisation. (And why is that vital? Well, would you want to have anything to do with an organisation not run by real people?)
People can be introduced by the use of photos and by direct quotations.
Depending on the purpose of the feature, people can be shown in photographs in quite different ways. You might have a picture of a serious white-coated lab researcher at work (the message: this is a respectable organisation that does important stuff) or you might have a happy, smiling and attractive person pictured answering the phone (message: call us, we’re here to help you!).
It’s also easy to integrate quotes into feature articles – that is, real people speaking directly to the reader. Compared with other approaches that convey direct, spoken messages (think press releases and question-and-answer interviews), a feature article looks much less contrived and allows the quotes to be shown in a broader context.
4. Versatility
Feature articles can be used as promotional tools by literally any organisation or department. It doesn’t matter what the organisation is involved in, feature articles can be written about it. So once you start using features, you’ll never run out of raw material.
If the notion that you’ll never run out of material sounds like a big statement (and you’re thinking to yourself – I bet I’d pretty quickly run out of ideas!), here’s a trick to generate ideas for new material. Look at your organisation and decide on four or five major categories of feature articles. For example, these might be: newsworthy items, our people, educating the reader in what we do, our record of achievement, and our plans for the future. If you can come up with one idea per category per month, you’ve just generated 60 ideas a year!
Conclusion
The use of feature articles is a brilliantly effective way of communicating your organisation’s message to new audiences.
A one-day course by Julian in Preparing Feature Articles is available through Acorn Training and Consulting.
Filed under: Articles on writing
