Improving communication skills

Writing tips and guidelines to improve communication skills within your organisation and nurture relationships with outside organisations and key audiences.

It is not rare for organisations with limited capacity to overlook the need for a clearly identified internal process for communication. There are many things to consider at the start of a project that involves external communication and the CI guide Production checklist for press releases provides a detailed checklist.

Writing for online

It would also be foolish to adopt the same style for all types of communication. Writing for the web explains why writing for online readers has its own rules, different from writing a policy paper or a formal letter to a minister. Language should be sharp, clear and snappy with introductory paragraphs providing a concise summary of the main point of the text that follows. Long sentences using over-elaborate construction with several sub-clauses and over-technical terms should be avoided for shorter, simpler sentences written in plain English. Paragraphs more than three sentences, or a quarter of a page long should be split into shorter ones.

Media strategy

CI's guide Building a media strategy is all about helping your organisation ensure that there is a consistent, systematic approach to communication and that relations are initiated in a strategic and planned manner to convey well-defined and clear key messages.

Contacts

Having regular contact and sharing of information with other organisations and key stakeholders including journalists is also vital for NGOs of any size. For example, maintaining a list of key media contacts will go a long way to ensuring that your organisation is not cut off from influential opinion-shaping actors. Consumer organisations must be able to advocate for changes based on sound research if they want to be seen as a respected source of information and act as a news outlet for consumer stories in their country or their community. Who, why, how, what, when? Is a CI guide that provides a checklist of the key aspects involved in a media campaign.

For more on media strategies, you can also read CI's Powerpoint presentation Use the media.