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Previous topic: Where to feature personality?
Next topic: Own and invented personalities
By now, it will come as no surprise to you to learn that the type of personality you inject into a publication must follow...
Your audience
If your newsletter's personality is going to have a net positive effect, then it must do one of two things:
- Reflect the typical reader's personality, so that this reader automatically connects to this personality at an instinctive level, or...
- Appeal to the reader at another level, i.e. be a personality the reader can both recognize and accept within the context of the newsletter.
In other words, speak to people with their own language, style, tone, and humor, or come at them as another personality they also respect.
Let me give you an example.
Suppose you're a sports equipment supplier writing a newsletter for soccer moms. You might write the newsletter as if it was coming from a "typical" soccer mom, or a soccer coach, or a health and fitness expert. But you (probably) wouldn't write it as if it was coming from a male soccer fan, for example.
Your image
The personality should reflect the image and impression that you're trying to generate for yourself, your website, product, service or organization. A conflict between the two will jar with readers. If the two complement each other then they also reinforce each other.
Taking the soccer mom example. Suppose you're trying to establish your company as a health-aware supplier, where your equipment is as much about ensuring foot health and development as performance. You might then choose to take the health expert approach, rather than the soccer coach one.
Your content
The type of content you feature in your newsletter also helps determine the personality. Given our objective, our soccer mom newsletter probably contains general child health tips, as well as soccer-specific advice. So, again, we'd lean more toward the "knowledgeable health expert" personality.
Your newsletter design
Your personality also has to match your newsletter design and everything else related to your newsletter.
For example, a bright, graphics-filled, pop art newsletter sits uneasily with a staid, respectable writing personality. Also ensure that your list messages, web text, and customer (reader) service complement, rather than contradict, your newsletter's personality.
Your creative resources
Finally, perhaps the most overlooked factor to consider is your creative resources. A personality has to be credible, which takes skill and creativity.
What personalities are you or your editors/writers capable of projecting consistently across the life of a publication? If you're not going to write as yourself, can you succeed in making your invented personality work?
If you consider all these factors for your newsletter, then you'll end up with a set of personality guidelines, which will point you towards a particular style, tone, language and humor etc.
Don't forget that the relationship between personality and the above criteria is a two-way one. You can match the content or newsletter design to fit your desired personality, for example. Once again, it's important to consider all the factors that go into a newsletter together, and not look at them in isolation.
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