What is communication style?
We define communication style by two sets of polar dimensions: self-revealing or fact-oriented and information-seeking or action-seeking. Together with the personality traits (https://help.symanto.com/knowledge/how-to-use-the-personality-traits) they help define the consumer segment to target, develop truly resonating messaging platforms and guidelines for marcomm purposes, and more.
Communication style, once defined by the four characteristics, helps us detect the purpose of that text, which gives us a lot of valuable information about the author.
It’s important to remember that while the two sets of polar dimensions find themselves on extreme sides of the circle, it does not mean that people cannot represent a blend of both polarities. Let’s get into what each of these characteristics means:
1) Action-Seeking vs. Information-Seeking
Here we are referring to the communication details that a person uses in their communication, whether a social media post, a survey answer, a review, etc. We have seen that the communication details that a person uses in their own style of writing are often the preference for communication details that they themselves relate to best.
- Action-Seeking can be defined as writing in a manner that aims to trigger someone’s action be it by giving recommendations, giving advice, or making requests.
- Information-Seeking can be defined by someone who poses questions, who engages through questions. They communicate in a manner that actively, as the name entails, seeks information.
2) Fact-Oriented vs. Self-Revealing
When looking at this set of characteristics, fact-oriented versus self-revealing, we are looking at how a person forms their opinion and therefore expresses it. This is basically determined by what information a person chooses to describe their opinion.
- Fact-Oriented content/posts are built using facts to describe their opinion about something.
- On the other hand, Self-Revealing-driven content/posts rely heavily on personal experience and opinion.
How do these differ? To better picture how these two dimensions, here’s an example of a bar review:
Here we can see the first review text which is fact-oriented is much more based on facts whilst the self-revealing-driven review text is based upon a personal experience and opinion of the customer.