As CSA’s Marketing Communications Manager, I’ve interviewed storytelling gurus and profiled presentation wizards. And I’ve worked beside Australia’s leading business writer for four years.
So what can you steal learn from how we craft communications at CSA?
Simply: Care deeply about the words you publish, but don’t be precious about sounding clever. Home in on what your audience cares about – and exile your ego. Test ideas. Then change course when the results and responses tell you to.
Often, the best communications are remarkably unremarkable. They disappear into the outcome: someone grasps a complex point faster or completes the task they’ve been putting off.
Here’s how to make your message easier to understand – and harder to ignore.
1. Craft the right message for the right reader
Earlier this year, AI fever reached a boiling point. We were bombarded with questions on it in our writing workshops. We saw the same clichés and tired tropes flood our LinkedIn feeds.
Professionals were curious, but uneasy, about what AI-generated writing meant for them.
So we responded by hosting CSA’s first free webinar. We led with a strong hook without straying into hype: The Dark Side of AI Writing: 7 credibility killers and how to fix them fast.
We designed helpful tools people could download. We published quirky blog posts. We built email sequences that addressed common concerns.
Then the results rolled in: 450 registrations, 150 new email subscribers – and a new course on responsible AI writing that sold out in record time.
The lesson: Listen closely to your audience. Search for patterns and problems. Then shape timely communications around the signals your people are already sending – not around the stale strategy that was locked in six months ago.
2. Leave your expertise (and ego) at the door
Working around subject-matter experts teaches you something quickly: Deep knowledge rarely produces clear communication. (Often, it impedes it.)
The people who know a subject inside out reach for shorthand terms that need decoding. They begin halfway through the problem – because the first half feels obvious.
While technical language feels precise among peers, it creates fog for everyone else.
A phrase like ‘strengthen communication capability’ may be common internal language. But ‘help people write clearer emails and run shorter meetings’ tells your reader what will change.
To simplify, go back and ask basic questions like:
- What am I assuming my reader already knows?
- What’s the one thing my reader needs to remember?
- Which details are essential – and which merely prove we know a lot?
The lesson: Cut the jargon, translate technical terms and put your reader’s question ahead of your expertise. When clever ideas compete with clear ones? Choose clarity.
3. Trust what works – and make room to test
Effective communication is 80% recipe and 20% alchemy. Some principles work across almost every channel, scenario and sector – such as:
- Lead with what your reader needs to know or do
- Use plain English language
- Keep sentences short and love white space
- Make headlines and sub-headlines specific
- Give your reader a clear next step
These tactics make messages simpler to grasp and harder to misunderstand. But while they provide a solid starting point… they don’t remove the need to test.
A subject line that looks excellent in a planning document can fall flat in your reader’s inbox. A selfie shared on LinkedIn may outperform the highly polished video.
How each communication lands depends on timing, context, channel and audience mood.
The lesson: Treat each piece of communication as a working hypothesis. Make an informed choice and publish it. Then review what happened and tweak the next version accordingly.
4. Know how good planning shapes great communication
All too often, communication challenges begin before anyone writes a word.
Fuzzy thinking and non-existent briefs lead to friction (and frustration) downstream – showing up as conflicting comments, vague feedback and messages trying to do five jobs at once.
That’s why fifteen focused minutes to plan can save you hours of rewriting later – especially when several people review the message.
Get clear on the foundations: Who is this for? What do they already know and need? What do we want them to think or do afterwards? Which example will make the message more credible?
A clear plan gives creative thinking a useful boundary. And it sharpens the feedback that follows. Instead of debating whether a senior leader ‘likes’ the tone, you can judge whether the work achieves the agreed purpose.
The lesson: Don’t use your first draft to work out what you’re trying to say. Instead, begin by outlining your audience’s needs and your objectives in plain English – a few short sentences are fine.
5. Harness storytelling – while staying human and humble
The most memorable communications weave in a relatable person or a challenge to make the situation specific and real. They’re narratives disguised as memos, proposals and project reports.
When I spoke with CSA’s storytelling specialist, she shared a meta-analysis showing that information presented as a story is remembered and understood 50% more effectively than when given as plain facts.
Why? Story threads set the stakes, give ideas structure and create meaning. They also create moments of surprise and delight that linger: the failed attempt, the surprising response, the assumption that turned out to be wrong.
Second-person language helps too. Use pronouns like ‘you’ to pull your reader into the message and make next steps easier for them to follow.
A note of caution: resist the urge to inflate results. Not every project is life-changing. Not every framework is revolutionary. Your reader can tell when your communications are trying too hard to sound important.
The lesson: Share your mistakes and milestones. Include specific details that add texture. And trust that useful ideas don’t need theatrics around them.
6. Strengthen your tone and credibility in the edit
When many people write for your brand, a sloppy style or inconsistent tone will kill your credibility.
You can pack your brand voice guide with abstract adjectives like ‘we are warm, confident experts’. But those words only earn their place when they create consistency across the messages you and your team produce.
At CSA, the tone of each message settles during the editing stage. It’s a collaborative process between several writers who all know our product offering and positioning.
In the edit, we:
- Replace grand, vague promises with concrete, confident outcomes
- Retain or inject fresh phrases (the fingerprints of real writers, not robots)
- Cull clichés from our ever-growing list of banned words
In your final message, your readers should be able to feel the human judgement that underpins the writing. That care builds credibility and deepens trust.
The lesson: Don’t stop editing when the writing is error-free. Keep sharpening the language to make your message memorable – and your brand unmistakable.