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Copy toolkit

When you speak about the Learn Local brand, it is important to do so in a clear and consistent manner.

Talking to our community

Our tone of voice reflects our brand personality and your role as registered Learn Local providers. Communications should be clear, to the point and reflect a confident, respectful, intelligent, friendly and approachable character.

What’s our personality?

Committed, approachable, trusted, pathways focused, valued, credible, practical, supportive, helpful and familiar.

We are not:

Arrogant, snobby, condescending, patronising or pushy.

Tone of voice

When a learner comes through your door, it’s likely they are familiar with and trust your organisation’s brand, due to your standing in their local community. Because of this, your brand’s tone of voice is likely to speak with more of an emotive or softer tone. Learn Local in contrast speaks with a tone of voice that is outcomes focused.

When talking about a Learn Local course, we try to speak with the following tones to show authenticity and to draw a larger pool of learners to both your organisation and the Learn Local sector.

Clear

Our audience relies on us for support and information – everything we communicate should provide value and clarity. Avoid euphemisms, clichés, vague quantifiers, repetition, unnecessary detail, heavy punctuation and complicated constructions.

Think through what you want to say, plan a structure, then say it as simply as possible.

Accessible

Avoid jargon or explain it when you must use it. Use familiar, everyday words that learners will understand. We are approachable and speak with a positive, conversational tone. We are down-to-earth, but without being casual – we maintain a professional undertone.

Natural

Trust, integrity and transparency are key to building relationships in our community. Avoid pomposity. Write for an individual, not an audience; many may read a text, but they usually do so separately. Consider how your writing would sound if you read it aloud to a colleague.

Active and simple

Use the active rather than the passive voice. Let’s inspire our audience with positive and imaginative language. Cut out anything superfluous. Split text into small sections, using short words, sentences and paragraphs, and bullets and numbered points.

Who do we speak to and how do we do it?

One of our challenges is that we mean many different things to many different people.

Let’s start by looking at some of the audiences the Learn Local sector interacts with and then we can explore how we might tailor our communications to each to ensure clarity and consistency.

The key messages in this section can be used to help communicate the value of endorsed Learn Local courses and projects.

This has been created to support your existing messaging – we recognise that you understand how best to talk to your community and we encourage you to continue building this rapport by using the messaging that you have tried and tested.

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