How to grab your reader’s attention—and keep it!

One of the most common laments of the internal communicator is how to engage employees. Yet, read some of the content employees are continually force-fed—content created by the very people who fret that no one’s paying attention—and it’s no wonder employees have lost their appetite.

Too often, messages are boring, repetitive, vague and wordy. Worse, they’re impersonal. Talk about a turn-off.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Try this: Picture your potential audience as a school of fish. Now picture yourself as the angler. What do you have to do to reel those fishies in?

First, you have to hook them. And to do so, you need really fresh bait.

For communicators, your writing style is your bait. How well you craft a headline, for instance, will determine how many readers you attract. If your writing consistently delivers freshness and informational nourishment, your readers will indeed be hooked.

Let’s look at a couple of angles you can use to make employees snap up your bait: