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Previous topic: What personality?
Next topic: The reader relationship
Very often you'll find that the issue of "which personality?" is a very simple one. In many cases, whoever's producing the content and newsletter simply writes as themselves. Each author or contributor or editor injects his or her own personality to the publication.
This is often the case when your personality satisfies the above criteria by definition, for example when:
- a newsletter is produced by a one-person organization, or by an organization focused around an individual.
- when the contributors come from the same background as the readers: "written by X's for X's".
The obvious advantage of this approach is that it's relatively easy. A (consistent) personality comes automatically, since contributors are just being themselves.
There are however advantages to using an invented personality. By invented personality, I mean contributors do not write as themselves, but according to some defined guidelines regarding style, tone, humor etc.
Of course, there is a full spectrum of possibilities between the two. Contributors might be themselves, with just one or two constraints imposed on them by a pre-determined newsletter style. Alternatively, you might actually invent a completely new persona for your publication.
The advantages of an invented personality are:
- you can design a personality to better fit the criteria given in the previous section. This way you can have a personality that exactly matches your needs, audience, content, website etc.
- it ensures continuity and redundancy in newsletter production. If writers move on, they don't take the newsletter's personality with them.
Invented personalities show particular promise, for example, where:
- the publisher's website, organization, product or service is itself associated with a strong personality (think Mickey Mouse, Ronald McDonald, Tony the Tiger...)
- there are numerous anonymous contributors to a publication, or the production team changes constantly.
If you do choose an invented personality for your newsletter, then it's important to define that personality as closely as possible. And appoint someone as the final arbiter of personality. Before you publish an issue, get this person to read it and judge whether it's "in character".
Remember, of course, that any individual is multi-facetted, by which I mean we all have various sides to our personalities. So you can write as yourself, but draw on those aspects of your personality best suited to the needs of your newsletter.
Most of my online business writing, for example, reflects the more staid nature of my personality, as it's intended to give simple, straightforward, no frills advice to newcomers to the Internet.
But I also used to write a spoof agony aunt column for celebrities, under the pseudonym Dr. Pop (happy days!). There I could let out the dark, discernibly British humor normally kept safely under lock and key.
It is difficult, however, to build a newsletter personality without giving people a reference point. If your brand or image is strong enough, you can carry a personality without reference to a particular human identity. But otherwise, personality needs the support of names and faces, even invented ones.
Sign your editorials, give authors a byline, and add the odd snippet of personal information to reinforce the human element a little more (see also the next section).
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