What are you trying to do?

Information initiatives will have a range of objectives and outcomes. Some try to raise awareness or increase understanding, others try to get people to take a particular action, or guide people though a process, etc.

Be clear what your objectives and outcomes are.

Keep them firmly in mind, from the planning stages right through the production process.

Information with only one objective is often the most effective.

However, much of the time you will have more than one objective. For example, you might be trying to raise awareness of a change at the same time as meeting your legal requirements, or trying to get people to take a particular action at the same time as meeting the needs of your organisation.

Where you have more than one objective, decide which is the most important and rank them in order.

There may be times when the needs of each purpose will conflict, and you will need to put the most important one first.

Once you know what you are trying to achieve, you can begin to work out what the information will look like, what format you should use, the length and level of detail, the structure, and what the information actually needs to say. These things should also be influenced by the needs of your audience.

Definitions of the most common objectives follow, with an overview of successful techniques you can use to achieve them.