The Power of a Before & After in Internal Communication
Audiences love a before and after. Think about it. An Instagram post, a TV series, a magazine article. If there’s a reveal where you can “see the difference,” it’s hard to resist. I learned this lesson early in my career working for the kitchen and bath magazines of a publishing company. Every issue with a before and after on the cover practically flew off the shelves.
A before and after also plays well in the internal communication (IC) space. One of the fastest ways to win over a skeptic is to show them a before and after. Picture this. Someone from IT sends you a draft of a communication they’d like to go out to all employees. It’s a highly technical message packed with jargon and acronyms. It’s close to 1,000 words long. The key takeaways are buried hundreds of words in. They’re asking you to copy-paste-send as is because everyone can “do comms.” Ooof.
I highly respect IT professionals. They’re brilliant in their areas of expertise. What they’re often not brilliant at is effectively communicating. That’s where we, the IC pros, come in.
Let’s take that example of the long-winded jargony message. We put our editing hats on. We go to town on it. We edit by:
First reading for understanding
Answering the 5W questions (who, what, when, where, why)
Answering “So what? And now what?”
Following the inverted pyramid guide
Structuring for skimmers
Aligning with our internal style guide
Ensuring all links and supplementary content are accurate and confirmed
Then it’s time for the reveal. We set up a time to discuss our edits with IT. We talk them through our approach and why we did what we did. Then, we present IT with their original version (shock, horror) and our edited version (ah, bliss). Seeing the distinct difference between a version with and without an IC pro’s expertise gradually helps convert the skeptics into advocates.
