Sue Long, Content Design Manager at Transport for London, checks in with us to share her top three tips for achieving success in the digital communications sphere. Read on to learn more about the importance of being empathetic, using data and working collaboratively.
Why did you choose to pursue a role in digital communications? For example, has it always been your passion or was it pure happenstance?
I’ve always been interested in how people behave (I studied psychology at university!) and working in digital allowed me to see how people behave online and understand the data behind it - which is fascinating. Like a lot of content people, I started out working in a press office writing press releases so I got a good understanding of how to write for an online audience. I then moved more into digital channels such as web and apps and adapted my writing style. I’ve always been interested in technology and digital - I like that with digital communications, you can measure behaviour and success more easily than other mediums such as print so you can get a better idea of whether you’re meeting user needs.
What personal skills or attributes do you think are most important in the digital communications sphere? Why these skills/attributes in particular?
My top ones:
- Be empathetic. This is a key skill in digital communications. You need to be able to empathise with your users to understand what they need and where their pain points are. This means you’ll write better content that focuses on them, not just internal business needs. You also need to be able to empathise with stakeholders and understand their way of seeing things when it comes to content. Not everyone understands what content design is and how accessibility works with digital content, so you need to be able to explain it to them in a way they understand.
- Use data. Having good data gives you strong evidence to back up your content decisions. That could be quantitative and qualitative, especially user research data - always make sure you’re backing up your points with evidence and not just guessing. You’ll get more support when you show you’re making data-based decisions.
- Work together. Be collaborative, you can’t write content without subject matter experts or other key stakeholders. I’ve found pair writing to be the best technique for building their trust in your expertise and for building a strong working relationship. If you and the stakeholder both take the time to explain your thoughts, you’ll understand what’s important to each of you. This approach takes time and effort at the start but it really pays off in the long run.
What sort of challenges do you face in your role? Is there a particular challenge that you experienced in the past that stood out?
A lot of time is spent negotiating on what content should say. Everyone can take changes to their writing personally but you have to keep focused on the goal – providing users with the information they need, in the easiest and quickest way. Having lots of really complicated content will make it harder for users. Having minimal content that doesn’t explain something clearly will also make it harder for users. We need to strike a balance and only provide the information that’s needed and present it in a way that’s easy to understand (always using plain English). This is a regular challenge that can be overcome by using empathy, good data and by being collaborative.
How is the role of digital communications perceived in your organisation?
It’s a vital part of our customer communications. We have a digital channel strategy that we’re always referring to when we receive any content request for our digital channels. We share the strategy with everyone and we’re constantly embedding best practice across teams. We’re always keeping up to date on best practice and trends so we can keep innovating.
At React & Share, we’re obsessed with measuring our efforts to prove our worth to internal stakeholders - what measurements do you think digital comms teams should be presenting to their board?
It really depends on the digital channel you use but a key measurement will always be feedback from your users - both good and bad. It’s really important to listen to both so you can iterate your content.
Having both qualitative and quantitative measurements gives you better insights - for example on social, it’s not just about hard numbers such as likes, it’s also the sentiment in the comments that will be informative.
With web, some metrics are not clear-cut (such as time spent on page) as you can’t tell whether the user has found the information they needed quickly and left, or if they’ve landed on the wrong page. So you have to do more digging to find out what’s really going on and use a range of measurements.
What advice would you give to those at the start of their career in comms?
Don’t be too precious about your writing when you start. It’s very subjective and people will always change it. Stick to using plain English and following best practice. Work closely with colleagues who have been writing for a long time and ask lots of questions. You’ll learn a lot about their thought processes and reasoning - you can take this forwards in your career.
What do you think the secret of success is when working in digital communications?
Understanding, knowing and always focusing on your audience (your users). If you can do that, you can write better content that helps users and doesn’t hinder them.
