Articles
By Jens Thomsen, Impact Brussels
A clear structure is half the work when you write articles for your communications. A good structure helps your audience read and understand your messages, but it also is a great help when you prepare your articles.
In short your articles should consist of a beginning, a middle section and an ending. Contrary to academic reports articles should normally begin with the conclusion so your readers immediately know what the article is about. The beginning should answer the questions who, what, where, when and why.
If you answer these questions up front your readers will not have to guess what the article is about and you minimise the risk that they skip the article. Most readers are not very patient when they read articles. If you fail to let them know right away what they can expect chances are they will go somewhere else.
Make your beginning as appealing as possible without promising more than you are able to deliver. Catch your audience's interest with appealing headlines and follow up with a clear beginning that leads the reader into the topic. This does not mean that the beginning should not give entry to the middle. The beginning is just that… tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them.
The middle section
Use the middle section of the article to go through different aspects of the topic, starting with the most important aspect. Finish one aspect before you go on to the next. You may think of the middle section of the article as the part of the text where you underpin the statement you made in the beginning.
If your article presents a political position, which you clearly set out in the beginning, you must go through the arguments that support your position and perhaps include on or two opponents' positions that you disagree with. If on the other hand your topic is factual you present facts one by one in the middle section.
Sometimes you can make your article more convincing if you include statements of experts. Statements are effective if you want to convey opinions to your audience provided the person you quote is relevant and credible in the context. If your middle section presents the most important aspects of a topic one by one you may round off each aspect with a statement.
It is always satisfying if you are able to end your article in a clever way, but don't get hung up on your endings and save important information for the ending. Very often your readers will only read part of your article and in most cases they will read from the beginning. They stop reading when for some reason they lose interest and you want to present as much important information as possible to them before they reach that point.
The ending
This is why your ending is far less important than your beginning, and very often you don't need an ending at all. You just end your article with the least important aspect of your topic. However, don’t look for the early out. Use it as an opportunity to make sure that your readers got the message.
The best way to make sure that your readers read your articles all the way to the ending is by having a clear structure and only include important and relevant information. If your structure is not clear or if you tire your readers with information that is not relevant you effectively invite them to skip the rest of your article.