Writing tips: How to shift from traditional press release to social media news release

Executive Summary:

PR teams are having to adjust the style and tone of social media press releases (also called Smart News Release or Rich Media Release). This article offers granular how-to advice.

Key Points:

1. Think "info-snacking." Today's readers want visually appealing information broken into smaller bits, including visuals like photos, videos and infographics.
2. Shorten words, sentences and paragraphs. Use more subheads with verbs in them. Picture sentences as pullout boxes floating in an inviting sea of white space.

Sound Bite:

"Plunk down the snacks as if you're arranging carrot sticks, dip and whatnot on a tray for guests. Journalists and bloggers can nibble as they like, clicking and lifting up whatever bits they think they can use in their online story."

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Read the whole article:

Going from a traditional press release to a social media news release requires three big shifts:

• Length
• Visuals
• SEO

I'd say there's a fourth category -- tone -- but the changes you make in length (and SEO) will give you the changes you need in tone. And since this post will focus on "how," I'd rather keep it simple, so you can be like Nike and just do it. No need to impress you with my erudition on the whole enchilada. ;-)

Having said that, though, let me address tone for just a quick minute. You'll see how it leads into length.
Imagine yourself writing website copy, which is a little closer to ad copy. But don't go so far as to write like it's a blog post, which usually includes idioms and strong opinions.

SMNR tone usually isn't as direct as ad copy, which uses second-person "you" instead of third-person "he/she/it/they." Nor is it like broadcast copy because you still have to write for the eye, not the ear, which means catching skimmers with a strong "first three words," not letting the punch fall at the end of the sentence.

But the words and sentences in an SMNR are shorter and plainer (not boring, just simpler), as you usually see in all of the forms mentioned above (Web, ad, blog, broadcast). So if you've got sentences with introductory clauses ("Blah blah blah -- comma -- blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."), break them in half. Often you can delete the first part of the sentence altogether.

Likewise, streamline the vocabulary by using more Anglo-Saxon words than Latinate (next, not adjacent; set, not establish; start, not initiate; build, not construct). And take verbs in noun's clothing, and turn them back into verbs (the deployment of, deploy; the provision of, provide; the implementation of, implement). In other words, shorten everything.
The vast majority of traditional press releases are done poorly, in my opinion. And if you are in PR, you know what I'm talking about. You're sort of forced into a bizarre straightjacket of formality and distance from the customer, which seems contrary to the goal of a press release, but who am I to question decades of entrenched custom?

My advice here is directed at what I know your reality is, not what I think a good press release of either kind (trad'l or social) should look like. So, back to that ...
You've shortened your sentences and words, which has also changed tone. You need to continue deleting or ignoring content that would normally appear in a traditional press release. Most of this will be intuitive. I think you'll choose well, once you know that 50 percent to 85 percent of the words will have to go away. Usually, people I have worked with do this easily, once given permission to cut-cut-cut. So I won't dwell on that here.
Now for visuals. Imagine that you are designing layout not writing copy. Pretend you work for a fashion magazine in New York or you're in the art department at Fortune magazine.

This is really the essence of an SMNR. It's a visual jumping-off point, much the way a resume is a visual jumping-off point in a job interview. People spend time making a resume look pretty at a glance, and it's meant to be glanced at, not really read. It's meant to give the gist, then trigger questions and conversation.

But in the case of an SMNR, it's not questions and oral conversation we're after; it's clicking. You want to give the essence of your announcement, and then let the rest be "snacks" for the new style of reading, which has been called "info-snacking."
Standard "snacks" in this new world are photos, videos, info-graphics and links.

More and more, I'm also seeing slide shows on the top-tier news sites, and I'm liking that trend, by the way. But that's a bigger time investment, and your client may not be able to deliver.

Usually, the PR person doesn't create this kind of content on the spot in response to being assigned a press release. So you need to negotiate for it. You need to ask your client early on for photos, demos and links. Increasingly, clients know they must produce this stuff, so that's no longer as hard as it used to be. But the switch for you is that you must add this conversation to your standard process, and add it early.

Nowadays, the quest for creating visual content should be ongoing, so it's not necessarily related to writing a press release of any kind. The press release is just one more vehicle for delivering what has been produced. This gets into the larger issue of "public engagement" versus one-way communication, but for the purpose of this post, I'm focusing on the needs of a PR person who has been asked for the first time to switch to SMNRs.
Usually, there's a template you can use. BusinessWire has one (called a Smart News Release), and others are also available elsewhere. Edelman calls it a Rich Media Release and uses Adobe software called Contribute (discosure: Adobe is a client).

Just plunk down the snacks as if you're arranging carrot sticks, dip and whatnot on a tray for guests. Journalists and bloggers can nibble as they like, clicking and lifting up whatever bits they think they can use in their online story.

So, going back to content for a moment, remember we talked about deleting a lot?
The words you kept will go into little boxes or box-like chunks floating in white space.

There might be a general intro, then another box for details (perhaps in very short bullet points but no more than four -- three is ideal), then another box for a quote (or an entire section of quotes strung all together like beads on a string rather than interspersed throughout the text as in a news story), all of which should be shorter than what you're used to.

You might even have a box for customer quotes that link to case studies on a website, for example. Or you might link to a Facebook page.
The Karcher Group puts it this way. I'm quoting from its website here:

- Content separated into different sections, such as Key Information, Facts, Quotes, Links, etc.
- Use of popular social media tools, such as RSS feeds and tagging
- Ability to share content on social networking sites like del.icio.us, Facebook, Stumbleupon, LinkedIn, etc.
- Ability to view/download items such as logos, banners, audio promos
- Include links to blogs and other resources
- Embed multimedia elements like video, photos, and audio

Your links, video, info-graphics and photos will tell some of the story that your now-missing words would have told, only better.
More visuals: subheads and headlines. Just as a resume uses boldface to divide up and call out different kinds of content, your SMNR needs boldface subheads. And just as you did for the body of the text, you'll need to tighten the words and content in the headline.

Your SMNR should be an invitation to delve further by clicking on electronic story elements.

I call this "pogo-sticking." The reader isn't meant to glide smoothly from the first word to the last but to hop around, almost at random.

If you're good at helping your client understand what will have traction with the news media and bloggers, those very same storytelling elements are what should be in your SMNR. If you or your client instead prefer company-centric bragging, those will be your elements.
An SMNR is *not* likely to be any more successful than a traditional news release. Format isn't the point. If you have material that will surprise or delight a reader or help him make a decision about something coming up soon in his own life, you will get pickup. If you don't, you won't. You're either useful to readers or you're not. Format seldom improves relevance.
Which brings us to SEO. I have long advocated what the SEO people are now telling everyone these days: Write in the language of the audience. Please, please, please stop trying to coin new words or market categories, without at least also using the vocabulary already in use among prospective customers.

The SEO people will also tell you that this natural language needs to be in key places (headline, subheads, first paragraph, captions, video description). But I have been fighting that battle and losing it for nearly 10 years now, so good luck with that. I'm hoping that this new SEO/Google world we live in will shake clients up a bit and get them out of their self-absorbed marketing bubbles.

For more on that, check out this post by Maddie Grant on SocialMediaToday. Her post also links to the now-famous diatribe by Tom Foremski ("Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!").

I recommend going to Business Wire for advice on all of the above. In my dealings, this company has been ahead of trends while well-grounded in ethics and principles that never go out of style.

When "cheaper & better" carries you across the chasm

My colleague @allenbush offered an excellent asterisk to my post on making the leap from trade press to business press. It's so well put and so right on that I'm sharing it with you, with his permission, of course. I added the subheads.

Here are relevant excerpts from his e-mail to me:

I found one exception (perhaps not an exception but an asterisk) to a rule you mentioned in your post - that reporters are not interested in better/cheaper - actually two on that same note. The big one is disruption.

Technology that removes a barrier

Disruptive products are interesting specifically because they remove a major price or complexity barrier and take something from niche into the mainstream in doing so. Reporters are very interested in this.

The key is that it's not just the "cheaper and better" that you lean on, but that it's moving a product across the proverbial chasm and creating or expanding on a market in doing so.

But it's in fact the "cheaper and better" part (when dramatic enough and in the right product spot) that can start a disruption. Unfortunately, truly disruptive products are few and far between!

Affordability as a timely topic

The second one is simply that there are opportunities for affordability stories out there as long as the economy continues to suck. So again, couching a significant price differentiator in the right terms can generate coverage.

How to get business press

To hit a home run with the business press, you need to answer this question: "Who will make money from it?"

If you merely describe your product, its benefits and the problem it solves, you're going to strike out. If you offer an industry analyst's forecast about the size of the market in the coming year, you're still out. If you add a happy customer, you're still out.

Pick up a Fortune magazine and thumb through it. Look for an article that doesn't answer the magical question. You won't find one.

Tech PR newbies don't know this. They generally have more success with trade press, who ask, "How does it work?" Technology clients happily provide that info, so it's an easy pitch. [Mainstream press answer the question "What's in it for the reader" and look for quirkiness.]

PR veterans always do a competitive analysis before putting together a business pitch. In particular, they look for a new or changing answer to the magical question. If they're really on top of their game, they pull out the unconventional wisdom, counter-intuitive lesson, or otherwise unexpected tidbit, and lead with that.

Your pitch doesn't have to be an explicit answer to the magical question. But the answer needs to be an underlying element within the larger body of info.

• Should you mention competitors in your pitch? Yes.
• Should you mention peripherally involved industries? Yes.
• Do you have to include data and dollars? Not always, but that adds credibility, and helps nail down in specifics a trend that may be vaguely felt but not clearly understood.
• Do you need a crystal ball? No. In fact, uncertainty of outcome increases your chance of success. Think of a suspenseful book or novel. Not knowing how it ends is a plus. That's what makes people lean in and begin listening for more info.

What if you don't have "news"? No problem.

Journalists define news differently than most clients do. Most clients mistake an announcement as news. The announcement may be a new product, an industry award or survey results. But none of those are news in the mind of a journalist. Why? Because those are expected outcomes. Companies make products, win awards and publicize data -- that's business as usual.

Journalists look for:

• Info readers need for decision-making about their own lives or businesses
• A break in the normal flow of events, an interruption in the expected

So anything that makes a moderately informed person say, "Huh, no kidding!" is news.

I recommend doing a competitive analysis with your head first, then scanning it with your gut second. Any mild sense of surprise will do; pluck that detail up and make it the first line.

If one pitch needs to work for all three genres of press -- business, trade and mainstream -- then make sure you have implied answers to all three questions:

1. Who will make money from it?
2. How does it work?
3. What's in if for the reader?

Listen for these moments to find client content that you can pitch

You can’t count on your client or your client’s customer to give you the storytelling fodder needed to catch a news reporter’s interest.

So you need to listen.

And ask questions, but at the right moments.

The following moments are storytelling gold mines. Listen for:

• surprise
• emotion
• lesson learned
• obstacle overcome
• counter-intuitive decision
• point where no one knew what would happen next

These are the places in a conversation where it pays to tune in extra carefully and ask “micro-questions.” By that I mean highly detailed questions that you normally wouldn’t pose elsewhere in the conversation.

Sample micro-questions:

1. What color was the cap?
2. Do you remember his exact words?
3. What was the first thing that he did next?
4. It sounds like that upset you. Why did it hit a nerve? Did it remind you of something? What?
5. What else was happening at the time? Who was doing that? Why?
6. What do you mean by “tough”? What problems were you having? Why was that such a problem?
7. What were you doing in the moment when you changed your mind?
8. What do you think would have happened if you’d done it the other way?
9. What made you think it could work? Why didn’t you quit? What were others saying?
10. Hindsight’s 20-20. Is there something you’d do differently if starting from scratch today?

Here’s the rub. Most PR people I know will hear the right moments and instinctually fall silent. Reporters, on the other hand, hear those same moments and ask more questions. My personal impression is that most of the PR people I know well are talented at putting people at ease. One way they do this, I believe, is to give people plenty of personal and emotional space when the conversation veers toward the possibility of pain or embarrassment. This is nice, kind, gentle, thoughtful, etc. I appreciate this in them.

But I also believe that these innately diplomatic people would also be good at asking tough questions gently. If they instead fall silent, no story will appear.

As a journalist, I learned this from experience. I was embarrassed many times when I was new because I often had to call sources back to ask for extra detail after I’d returned to the office. In time, I learned that the detail I needed always seemed to center around one of these turning points.

Storytelling is different from exposition (explaining) in that it involves personal transformation. Think of the last novel you read or movie you saw. A character for whom you felt sympathy overcame obstacles in pursuit of something he wanted, and learned something along the way.

This isn’t artifice. It’s really how human beings live their lives.

To make a technology story palatable to a mainstream audience, you may need to locate characters that the audience can care about and reveal some of the trials and errors they encountered along their road to success. Here’s an example of a software story that became a human interest story. It ran in Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle. When you read it, see if you can find any of the above “moments.”

Stories create community when they’re about real people we can care about and learn from. So if you find yourself feeling nosy and inappropriate, remember that if you’re nosy in the right way, you can create bridges among members of the human family who previously didn’t realize how much they had in common. Plus, your client’s name and contribution will get some good digital ink.

Become a verb warrior. Try this writer's resolution for the new year

Key points:

- Find out whether you're verb-impaired.

- Fix wimpy, vague writing that induces the MEGO effect. (MEGO = My Eyes Glaze Over)

- Use this list while in recovery.

***

The one way to most immediately see the biggest possible improvement in your writing is to choose higher quality verbs. For this reason, I’m suggesting this as your New Year’s writing resolution.

First, self-diagnose to find out whether you're verb-impaired. Then set out to become verb-talented.

Self-diagnosis

Print a hard copy of a document you wrote and circle all the verbs. Read them aloud as a list. You may realize without prompting that they're generic or repetitive. But even worse, your verb choices may be alienating readers. To objectively evaluate the strength of your verbs, ask yourself the following questions and compare with the following lists.

1. Are your verbs so precise that they aren't easily interchangeable with their neighbors?
2. Do they evoke one of the five senses? Can you picture, feel or hear them?
3. Do they have motion?
4. Are they …

… wimpy ?

§ Do
§ Have
§ Is, was, be, been
§ Serves to (another verb)

… vague?

§ Address
§ Affect
§ Impact
§ Enhance
§ Expand

… overused tech verbs? (fine to use, but other verbs may be more descriptive and precise)

§ Implement
§ Provide
§ Deliver
§ Deploy
§ Establish
§ Enable

Multi-syllable for no good reason?

Initiate (start), utilize (use), facilitate (help), educate (teach), designate (name)

Or are they active and precise?

Before ending this post with a list of super-hero verbs suitable for business writing, may I suggest that you begin harvesting your own favorites from an article or book that you recently enjoyed. My fave verb source is National Geographic magazine.

Secondly, I suggest you develop your ability to capture verbs in the moment of activity, rather than conjure them after you’ve returned to your desk. More on that in a future post.

And if I haven’t convinced you yet that college verbs (often derived from Latin) aren’t as good as plainer verbs (often derived from Anglo-Saxon), ask yourself whether this time-honored saying would still be with us today had it been stated less plainly.

Memorable and to the point: “A stitch in time saves nine.”
Not: “A sufficiently early suture eliminates the necessity for subsequent multiple interventions.”

Ring in the new year by becoming a verb warrior. Challenge yourself to choose verbs well.

Strong one- syllable verbs

SEND, MATCH, BUILD, RAISE, LOCK, FIND, BLUR, FRET, WIN, EARN, GAIN, SHOW, SOLVE, BLOCK, LOOK , STEM, POST, PACK, TALK, SAIL, FLIP, PUSH, CARE, TEACH, SACK, STRIP, BET, PLAY, END, HIDE, SWAY, STAND, LAG, SCRUB, CUT, FORM, BIND, LEAK, BELCH, SPEW, CRACK, HEAR, MEET, NEED, TURN, BUZZ, VIEW, SPEAK, FIT, STORE , MATCH , BREATHE, HOP, SQUELCH, PUT , FLY, RAISE, CHECK, GRADE , SCARE, RACE, FUME,WEIGH, FUEL, BUY, STOP, HOP, SPARK, FLOW, TRUST, WANE, LAND, ROLL, CHOKE, JOIN, CLEAN, SMOKE, CAKE, EDGE, SPEND, RATE, SAVE, STITCH, TRIM, SWIM, FEAR, DIG, ADD, SING, BOOK, BLEND, STIR, MIX, SHARE, DULL, SMOOTH, SLICE, RUN, HOLD, CLIMB …

Also OK

PROTECT, MEASURE, LEAPFROG, DOUBLE, TRIPLE, STUMBLE, COLLIDE, MANAGE, ABSORB, DICTATE, COLLECT, COMPLETE, SUFFER, QUESTION, ADVANCE, REPEAT, BOTHER, REVEAL, FORESEE, TOPPLE, WELCOME, BEFRIEND, COMPLETE, INDICT, PREFER, DECIDE, EVOLVE, LISTEN, REFLECT, CONSTRAIN, TIDY, PRACTICE, WONDER, WORRY, DONATE, EXTRACT, REPLACE, RESCUE, EXCEL, RELEASE, CENTER, PRE-EMPT, HURRY, COLLATE, REPEL, OFFER, INSPIRE, ATTRACT, STUDY, RETURN …

For Christmas, my interview with Maya Angelou: "All Human Beings Try to be Beautiful"

Key points:

- Teach tolerance
- Examine other cultures without fear
- Give every newborn a membership card to the UN

"Just let them know they’re born a member, and that they have all the privileges and responsibilities thereto appertaining."

- Maya Angelou

I wrote this article while working at The Associated Press in San Francisco. It moved on the national wire on Sept. 13, 1995. I tweaked the version below just a teeny bit.

At the time, Angelou was promoting a new book of poems called "PHENOMENAL WOMAN” and had just read “A Brave and Startling Truth” at the United Nation’s 50th anniversary celebration.

This story was the second of two. The first I wrote on deadline about what I thought I was supposed to write about. This second I wrote between assignments later about a question close to my heart:

"What advice can you offer a mixed-race child struggling with his identity?" I was asking about my nephew, then 12.

Guess which story got more pickup. Yep, this one.

Lesson learned: Questions close to your heart yield the best stories. Sometimes what you’re “supposed” to do is wrong.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – If Maya Angelou could give children a single luminous insight to help them do their growing, she would deliver it gift-wrapped in poetry and wait for the children to fold back the words to reveal tolerance.

A sampling from Japanese haiku to American inner-city rap could show that “everybody loves flowers or everybody has some fear of the dark,” Angelou said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I would encourage the child to look at her/his world, at the people in their world, and to try to examine the cultures in their world without fear,” the poet said. “I would try to lead the children into seeing that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.”

Author of 12 best-selling books, Angelou has consummated her reputation for wisdom, particularly regarding a child's emerging sense of identity in a fractious world. Now 66 [now 81], she wrote “I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings” about her childhood self-revulsion as a black girl growing up in 1930s Arkansas. By contrast, her newest book, “PHENOMENAL WOMAN, celebrates self-possessed women in maturity.

Her life speaks well to the history of racial tension in America. She protested alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, prospered on her own merits during the shift from Jim Crow laws to affirmative action, and journeyed to Africa and back only to discover that a person’s search for roots may have little to do with race after all.

“It’s the striving in itself that is delicious,” Angelou said, explaining her buoyancy amid adversity and pain.

It’s hard to decide if she thinks people survive and forge ahead because they are courageous, inspired or just downright bullheaded.

“We have to kill to eat, and eat to live – and yet we want it,” she said. “If we dare to love, we might be devastated – and yet we want it.”

“The contradiction is so intriguing that very few of us willingly give it up,” she said.

When Angelou speaks, one gets the sense that more of her attention goes into hearing her words than speaking them. She’s alert and listening as she produces the sounds. She enunciates slowly. Her facial expression subtly registers expectation, uncertainty and then something like satisfaction.

Her life story offers hope that even down-and-out youth can pick themselves up and realize dreams of their own making.

Angelou was 16, pregnant and unmarried when she watched ambassadors and diplomats file by on the sidewalk on their way into a San Francisco hotel 50 years ago to sign the United Nations charter. She remembers feeling too black, too female, too tall and too alone to think about following them inside.

But she was invited inside this summer for the anniversary celebration of the charter’s signing. Angelou read her poem “A Brave and Startling Truth” on the same stage with U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

A few days before the event, Angelou reflected on how far the “united nations” have come and how far they still have to go. She said children’s singing star Barney and Sesame Street’s Big Bird give her hope.

“I mean, look at today’s children loving a purple dinosaur who doesn’t look like anything raised in their homes. And a bird that is 10 feet tall and speaks with a very strange voice,” Angelou said.

"It’s rather natural to fear those things we don’t understand and those people who might look different from us,” she said. “On the other hand, it’s very easy for people to overcome.”

She suggested promoting world peace by giving every newborn a membership card to the United Nations.

“Just let them know they’re born a member, and that they have all the privileges and responsibilities thereto appertaining,” Angelou said.

Her solution includes showing children pictures of the human family’s varying forms of ornamentation: intricately scarred torsos in Central Africa, bamboo-pierced noses in the Amazon, tattooed biceps in San Francisco and diamond-studded earlobes in Paris.

“Let the child see that all human beings try to be beautiful,” Angelou said.

Advice menu: Which situation is yours?

What kind of writing and editing help do you need? Check out this menu of constructive tips to see if any of these situations apply:

(1) You're distraught over a supervisor's consistently voracious re-writing of your work. This post suggests alternatives that he/she might go for.

(2) You need to evaluate team members' writing and hold them accountable for improvement. This post includes a chart and recounts our success using it.

(3) You want to give feedback that supports writing growth. This real-life example demonstrates an alternative to tracking changes. (Also see No. 1 above and No. 6 below.)

(4) You're a solitary, introverted writer or editor coping with grief and could use a little understanding and even a bit of advice on managing the winter holidays.

(5) You get dinged for grammar, usage and style errors. This post describes how we trained a super-star proofreading team that finds mistakes most people miss.

(6) You want to step back from overly reactive small edits and keep the big picture in mind. This post lists eight questions that help you keep your eye on the ball.

(7) You want to start off a new account on a good writing foot or need to find out why a client appears to be irrationally unhappy with your team's writing. This post helps you begin creating a cheat sheet on your client's unconscious writing preferences.

(8) Your press release approval process takes too long and results in jargony mush. This post offers guidelines for assigning roles and responsibilities. Or check out Ragan.com's nicely abridged version, minus questions for writes/mediators.

(9) You sometimes freeze and can't get get anything good onto a blank page. This post suggests that you break a rule to break through the gridlock.

(10) You wonder why I agreed to blog, even though for years I said, "Nooooo."

News releases: Fix your broken approval process

The worst thing about news releases is the approval process. Too many cooks, as the saying goes, right? After too many iterations, what comes out in the end often looks like something that's been through a trash compactor.

Does it have to be so painful and unproductive? Can we fix the broken process?

The solution, my friends, is discipline. Or baseball, if you prefer. By that I mean each player needs to play his assigned position in accordance with his strengths -- and no one else's. You can't have the shortstop sprinting to first base or the pitcher standing in center field.

Here are some guidelines to help each approver play to his strengths:

(1) Choose one person to write. Everyone else should be hands-off. Hands-off people should comment and give direction but not write, re-write or edit.

(2) Set parameters for each approver's contribution. Here are the roles I suggest for marketing managers, product managers and lawyers.

Marketing managers should ask, "Does it support the brand and long-term business objectives?" They should comment on messaging and emphasis.

Common overstep by marketing managers: Reciting messaging verbatim in the headline, subhead, lead or quotes. Instead, consider messaging an indirect takeaway.

Some explicit recitation of messaging may be OK, but only if blended with vocabulary and scenarios that are familiar and compelling to the audience. Try to balance messaging with empathy and authenticity, as seen through the audience's eyes. Otherwise, you lose credibility and induce the MEGO effect (My Eyes Glaze Over).

Product managers should ask, "Is it accurate?" They should comment on the technology, features and benefits.

Common overstep by marketing managers: Deleting or moving down social context. Instead, let the top half of the press release answer "why" and the bottom half answer "how." In other words, first establish relevance in the lives of the audience, then explain how it works.

Lawyers should ask, "Could we be sued or penalized?" They should comment on potentially negative consequences related to the SEC and other regulators, intellectual property (trademarks, patents, copyrights) and whether the company can deliver on promises.

Common overstep by lawyers: Changing punctuation and capitalization to meet style standards for legal contracts, and deleting social context for the announcement. Instead, let internal experts use AP style, the industry standard for news media and PR. Look for compromises that prevent legal problems while allowing social context.

The best way to avoid problems is to pay more attention to the pre-writing process. There should be substantive input before creating a first rough draft.

Don't even bother to write a "shell." It's a futile time-waster that creates needless frustration for all.

Instead, ask the approvers to do these tasks in advance:

Marketing managers should:
-prioritize target audiences and messaging
-weigh in on correct emphasis
-explicitly state what long-term business objectives are being served

Product managers should:
-demo the technology for the writer
-provide detail on specs, features and benefits
-weigh in on correct emphasis

A VP- or higher-level PR person on the agency side should "frontload" the writer. By that I mean provide context for the assignment. This should take less than 10 minutes and cover:

-news release's role in overall strategy
-detailed description of intended audiences and problems the product or service solves
-intended effect on audience (including actions to be invoked)
-competitive differentiators and indirect takeaways about the industry or audience, not just the product/service or company
-desired emphasis

Who writes? Usually a mid-level PR person, often an AE or SAE, who understands the task is to balance competing interests while appealing to external audiences. This person is more of a relationship broker than a writer because he won't be using his own voice or acting on his own priorities. The writer is really a mediator.

The writer/mediator does the following:
-receives content and other inputs
-looks for holes and asks questions
-consults with PR team members for frontloading, to find out what's been done in the past and for a mid-point check-in on content and structure (but not wordsmithing)

Ideally, the writer/mediator has access to:
-the sales department’s internal PowerPoints on customers and competitors to better understand the overall business and how to dovetail with parallel campaigns
-internal company and agency research, including Search Engine Optimization, aka SEO, and key initial findings that informed the PR plan in the first place

In many cases, the writer/mediator must develop the context that hooks the immediate announcement into the ongoing conversations of key influencers (while remaining within the parameters of branding and business objectives). A good way to do this is an audience analysis technique I call PDAs (Problems, Decisions and Actions). More on that in a future post.

Why add context? That's what makes it a "news" release. News is info that surprises people or helps them make decisions.

News = announcement + context

If you want to write solely about your product, that's OK, too, but -- technically speaking -- that's more of a backgrounder or fact sheet. Journalists do appreciate those and the SEC may require them, so have at it. You don't have to include context if you are talking primarily to beat reporters who already know your company well.

Throw out 95%

Now the writer has a big pile of inputs and must select the most compelling and relevant 5%, looking for intersections between disparate topics and resources.

Notice I said 5%. Writing is really a matter of deciding what to leave out. The writer should plan on deleting 95% or more of his source material.

Sometimes people ask me if it isn't more efficient to just collect only what matters in the first place. The answer is no because your final product will be shallow if you do. It will lack resonance. It won't have a shelf-life. And it will falter in the approval process.

Good writing comes from good content. First get the best ideas, then simplify and package them for easy absorption by strangers.

OK, getting back to process ...

The writer's unique contribution (separate from that of the others who gave early input) includes appropriate vocabulary and scenarios that will be familiar to audiences.

This last part -- audience vocabulary and scenarios -- is extraneous to what the marketing and product team may have had in mind. It also might feel superfluous and imprecise to lawyers.

However, it's the link to the audience, so please let the PR person proceed with this small contribution. When approving these few phrases, keep in mind your position and expertise. If you're the first baseman, stick to playing first base. Comment and compromise, but don't delete and re-write.

Ideal situation: Get PR, marketing, product and legal to agree in advance on appropriate vocabulary and scenarios. Key point: Look for language your audience really uses and delve into problems they actually talk about among themselves.

This is the same logic behind search engine optimization. But it has always been true, even before there were search engines. Know your audience and speak their language. Be useful to them, from their perspective.

Does the writer have to work alone? No, preferably not. Others on the PR team can help by providing:

-a speedy midpoint check-in to approve content and structure (not wordsmithing, which can still be rough and wrong at this stage) Time: 5 minutes
-a hands-off look by someone who didn’t draft the release and can provide outside eyes as to whether the information is clear to outsiders and mechanically sound (grammar, etc.), and to say what indirect takeaways they picked up on
-a hands-on look by a senior person who can finesse the small stuff while keeping in mind the big stuff (but please read my other blog posts for advice on this)
-proofreading
-submission to the person who will oversee the approval process, perhaps with a note explaining reasons for certain decisions and listing possible alternatives

Questions the writer should ask:
1. What are my client’s hot buttons, preferred vocabulary and customs?
2. What approved language from previous releases should be included to provide continuity and help beat reporters and analysts distinguish new info from background?
3. Have I added context that connects the client to the outside world without becoming distracting or irrelevant (and while remaining within parameters of brand and business objectives)?
4. Is the “why” at the top and the “how” at the bottom of the release?
5. Will the first paragraph appeal to relevant outsiders and make them lean in to listen?
6. Have I blended messaging with news value?
7. Have I met both the client’s and audience’s needs?
8. Are customer types specifically named in the release and generally in the fronts rather than middles or backs of sentences? (not users; instead educators, physicians, Web designers, network architects, business professionals, families …)
9. If I delete the quote, will I have to rewrite the release to fill in the missing content? (If not, then rewrite the quote. The speaker should add substance or remain silent.)
10. Have I added white space through effective use of subheads, bullets and short paragraphs? (White space is inviting.)
11. Do my subheads have verbs in them? (If not, consider rewriting. Drill down deeper. Be more specific.)
12. What is my gut saying that I’m ignoring? (Don’t ignore it. Honor your instincts.)

Discipline and self-restraint are make-or-break factors in fixing your broken approval process. Everyone needs to know their position and respect their teammates.

How to figure out your client's writing preferences

Of course, this has never happened to you, but it might have happened to someone you know:

A hard-to-please client is re-writing your team’s work in the wee hours. Team morale is sliding because new quality control measures haven't helped. Baffled junior staff wonder if they chose the wrong career, and senior staff schedule extra client meetings to get to the bottom of things, to no effect.

In case you ever land in this situation -- or better still, if you want to pre-empt it -- here's what you can do to figure out a challenging client's writing preferences.

(1) Find out who your client admires -- Ask for writing samples from third-party or internal sources that the client likes. These may be from a company the client admires or the work of a favorite internal writer. Most people can’t articulate their preferences, but they know what they like when they see it.

(2) Study a body of tracked changes -- Gather three to five samples of this person’s tracked changes and look for patterns.

(3) Analyze in three specific categories: (a) discretionary vocabulary, (b) sentence structure and (c) content decisions. (That’s for starters. When I dive into these, I tend to find more categories specific to the client.)

(a) Discretionary vocabulary –
Does your client prefer international, global or worldwide? They all mean the same thing, right? Does he like meet, need and look better than assemble, require and appear? Again, same meaning, different words.

But to him, one set sounds right and the other doesn't. He can't tell you why. For most of us, it's a natural inclination to want writing that we are editing to sound similar to the syntax and connotation that matches the voice we hear in our head when we read. Most of us don't realize that we have these personal biases.

Does your client choose customer retention over customer loyalty, dramatically over highly, and stimulate over fuel?

Make a list of words that potentially could have been interchangeable with other words of similar meaning. Analyze them.

Some people have biases for particular sounds – like the “uhl” sounds in loyal, highly and fuel. I can't tell you why, just that I've observed it.

Some insist on generic college words (Latinate) like establish, initiate, consolidate and examine, while others prefer plain words (Anglo-Saxon) like set up, start, join and find. I know of one individual who likes Latinate verbs but poetic Anglo-Saxon kicks at the ends of sentences: “….consolidate ….initiate… cash in on the car’s cachet.”

If you detect an underlying core image, it may be easier to guess which discretionary words will be the best fit. Your client won’t realize how deliberately you made your choice; he’ll just feel comfortable reading what you wrote and won’t know why.

One company’s preferred vocabulary reminds me of music from the 1968 sci-fi classic “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It’s transcendent and expansive – freed from the limitations of, future generations, legendary.

Another emphasizes comparison (double the capacity, aggressive development milestones, outperform, minimal) and perspective (in a roundup of five, range from, longstanding, latest).

One reminds me of a race car: speed, accelerate, perform, grab, win, spin, stop.

(b) Sentence structure –
I know of at least one individual who systematically deletes all introductory clauses without fail. Meanwhile, others insist on them: “At a time when people are traveling more than ever (comma)” or “Demonstrating the popularity of mobile devices (comma).”

One company likes a rhythm of fours instead of the usual rhythm of threes, as in “apples, oranges, bananas and pears” versus “apples, oranges and bananas.”

I know of a company that deletes adjectives, except for certain ones immediately in front of product names – and nowhere else. This company mostly writes with strong verbs highly recommended). Many people do just the opposite. They mostly write with jazzy nouns (and quiet verbs like is, has, do), and love adjectives everywhere.

I know of a veteran professional communicator with an engineer’s love for efficiency but none for colloquialisms. So it’s “enables remote PC access” not “so users can connect to their PC while away from the office.” Another company with similar products prefers just the opposite.

(c) Content choices –
Some companies like to make explicit statements about business strategy in product announcements. Others stick to specs and features. A few (the ones that win awards and get talked about) emphasize social context. (Everyone agrees on emphasizing benefits.)

Once you’ve got these kinds of lists in front of you, the problem is no longer mysterious. You can create a cheat sheet for everyone on the team to use.

Don't channel your inner Henry Higgins while editing business documents

Skilled editors and mentors recognize individuality, respect deadlines, and know where a document lives in the big picture of the organization's reasons for being.

Arbitrary editors impose their own syntax and biases onto others, turning dashes into semicolons, replacing "seems" with "resembles," replacing "stemmed" with "originated," inserting a comma where they want to hear a pause, adding "transitions," and committing other crimes against nature.

Unfortunately, we are all arbitrary editors at heart. It takes professional restraint to keep oneself from transforming other people's writing into what "sounds right" to us.

But remember: What they told you in kindergarten is schmaltzy but true. People are like snowflakes, each one beautiful and like no other.

Yes, even if your team aims to write in a particular client's voice, you still need to give writers some elbow room.

Here are ways you can become a more productive editor.

On your first read, use the blue highlighter in Word to mark any phrasing, punctuation or content that hits you funny. Don't stop to fix it. Just highlight it.

On your second read, look only at the blue and ask yourself questions like these:

- Are there recurring patterns in what bothers me?

- Is a key perspective missing?

- Have the audience's needs been met?

- Are proof points missing?

- What long-term business objectives do we need to serve?

- Does this document dovetail with related efforts and campaigns?

- What indirect takeaways do we need readers to catch?

- Are the content and tone credible? Persuasive? Authentic?

- Is the hook, decision, recommendation, surprise or change at the top (where it belongs), with back story, rationale, alternatives, "the how," archival record-keeping details or chronology pulling up the rear?

Create three to five bullet points & ask for speedy tweaks

Next, compose an e-mail (that you may or may not send), articulating three to five points that can be expressed as questions or how-to suggestions.

Then, send the blue-highlighted version with your questions in an e-mail to the writer, asking for the fixes within 20 minutes. Or speak by phone or face-to-face.

When you get the document back, read it afresh, again with the blue highlighter. (You'll be delighted by the changes, believe me, and you'll have saved yourself time by doing something else on your to-do list while the writer made the improvements.)

Then read the blue and begin editing, consciously treading lightly, trying to make as few marks as possible on the page.

Better still, call the writer over and have him sit beside you at the keyboard. This results in a dialog that makes the edits go faster. When you voice a concern, the writer will probably have an idea for addressing it.

Avoid changing something for a vague reason such as "it sounds/flows better that way." Don't impose your values, standards or prejudices on the document, even if yours are better than the writer's, even if you are the mentor and he is the mentee. Let other people's work be different from yours.

Focus on business outcomes and decisions.

Try it. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

Or continue as you are, Arbitrary Editor, so that you can alienate your team members, keep working into the wee hours, and feeling as frustrated as the pompous Henry Higgins of "My Fair Lady," who asked, "Why can't ________ be more like me?"

QT No. 1 -- Don't Write in Full Sentences

Quick Tip No. 1: If you tend to become paralyzed in front of a blank screen, write lists rather than full sentences.

By lists I mean things like this:

- 238.8 miles in 48 hrs on road
- how far she's gone, w/ peaks & valleys
- started small, but it was a start

Key point: Keep typing. Don't worry about structure, tone, vocabulary, spelling or audience. Just get your content down. Fragments? Good! Mispellings? Great. Typos? Bring 'em on! It's all good. In fact, the messier the better.

Only let yourself write lists. Don't slip into full sentences. Go, go, go, as if the higher crime is letting your fingers stop, not writing poorly.

Once your ideas are there, you can move them around. And later, after moving them around, you can begin to finesse the structure and vocabulary. Make corrections afterward. Don't start with "good writing."

This is called "free-writing." If you've done a good job of pre-writing, then your free-writing will be productive.

Some people become mentally constipated because (1) they haven't asked enough questions from the audience's perspective, which is part of pre-writing, or (2) because they jumped too fast into the mental mode associated with the final phase, which is re-writing.

Pre-writing means brainstorming, research, analysis, collecting questions and jotting down gut instincts. You can also call it critical thinking. In tech PR, we mine from three specific categories for effective pre-writing: (1) news value, (2) business value, (3) secret sauce. (I teach this in my workshops.)

Re-writing means editing for grammar, voice, impact on reader, etc. It's inherently judgmental. But if you *start* in this judgmental mode, you get stuck.

So, don't put the cart before the horse. First, search & find. Second, throw words at screen as fast as you can. Lastly, tidy up.

In "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott, you'll find explicit permission to write crap. (In my workshops I delicately spell it in make-believe French -- crappe.) In writing, crap is good. It's fertilizer for the pretty flowers that come later.

Editors, build a powerful writer through self-restraint; don't track changes

Here’s another way to help a new writer grow without resorting to tracked changes. Try highlights.

On Oct. 8, I riffed about bad editors being bad for business. For the purposes of this blog, “bad editors” means “people who re-write the work of others.” Let me say it again: Re-writing is not editing.

Today, I’ll show you an example of a new employee’s work and what I said to influence her second draft. I didn’t touch a hair on her document’s head. She wrote every word of both versions herself.

From: Edwards, Lauren

Sent: Thursday, [Month XX], 2009 11:54 AM

To: [Name Removed – I’ll call her Sarah]

Subject: suggestions here FW: Draft Pitch on Acme SmartTech

Hi again, Sarah. If you have time before we meet, try restructuring this slightly so that the yellow is the first line of the pitch and the green comes soon after that, and then the blue. (See below.)

Also consider writing as if to a blogger. Did you take the class on writing for social media? Write to a person, not so much “about” something.

Talk to you later.

Lauren

The "after" version is concise, newsy & to the point

Here’s the first line of her original:

For years, families with autistic children lived with frustration, despair, and little chance of any substantial treatment.

Here’s the first line of her second (and much improved) draft:

Non-verbal autistic children no longer have to suffer in silence.

I like Draft 2 better because it’s shorter, shows a break in the normal flow of events (“news”), and gets right to the point without wasting words on setting up what she’ll say before she says it.

Here’s her second sentence:

Original: New technology from Acme is offering hope for these families and empowering autistic kids to communicate in ways once never thought possible.

You don’t care, right? I mean, you’d like to think you are a caring person and all, but really …do you care while reading that sentence? Her writing mechanics are fine, but this is not compelling.

Here’s her second draft’s second sentence: For the first time, they can tell their teachers, “My head hurts,” or communicate that they are hungry or tired, thanks to technology from Acme being used at the Ryde Technology School in San Francisco.

I’d include video links to the broadcast hits that resulted from this pitch, but in this blog I’m deliberately masking identities to preserve confidentiality. In these excerpts, I’ve changed the names of the city, school, client, technology and writer. I’ve also left out the exact date.

Aside: [I can't resist, however, sharing one line of a particular broadcast story about an autistic teen who had never been able to speak until he began using this new technology. He said, "I'm funny, but nobody knows it." He gave a wry smile. My heart broke open and I said, "Awww."

Can you imagine these kids going through life fluent and with things to say but unable to say them!! This is why I love my job. Our clients really do make the world a better place.]

"Sarah" is now powerful, successful & motivated

From my perspective as writing coach, the best outcome is not the hits. It’s that “Sarah” is now powerful. She’s stoked, successful and knows how to do better from the start next time. She feels ownership, pride and hope -- all of which are energizing and motivating.

If her work had been re-written, or if she’d been told to “make it more compelling” or some such vague advice, she’d be some combination of confused and demoralized, whether she fully realized it or not.

If you want to see the yellow, green and blue highlights referenced in my e-mail, here they are. You’ll see that she grasps the point of my highlights, but provides her own words, pacing and content decisions for the re-write.

Original w/ highlights (but not tracked changes!):

For years, families with autistic children lived with frustration, despair, and little chance of any substantial treatment. New technology from Acme is offering hope for these families and empowering autistic kids to communicate in ways once never thought possible.

The Ryde Technology School in San Francisco is now using the Acme SmartTech device with voice recording technology to make progress in teaching non-verbal autistic children to speak. By using the SmartTech, students who have never verbalized their thoughts are finally given a voice. For the first time, they can tell their parents “I love you” or communicate to their teachers that they are hungry or tired.

This is a testament to the amazing potential of technology to help people overcome special needs and improve lives. For years, Acme has been committed to developing products and services that are accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities and age-related impairments. …

It goes on, but that’s enough to show you what I mean about using highlights. Amazing what a great substitute they can be for tracked changes.

It’s also worth noting that her first version was an overly long 312 words; her second, 186 words. And I didn't even have to ask her to "be more concise," which is another thing bad editors often say. (If writers knew *how* to be concise, they already would have done that. Be more specific.)

Anyway, atta girl, “Sarah”!

Editors, try this yourself and please let me know how it goes.

How to Evaluate PR Writers -- Five Criteria

"Is So-and-So a good writer?"

Early on, my response to this question was a paragraph in an e-mail. But we eventually came up with a chart for evaluating everyone in the agency (director/VP and below) once a year as part of their annual review. Here it is below.

In this blog, it's a list. But in practice, it's an Excel spreadsheet with ratings on a horizontal axis: excellent, exceeds expectations, meets expectations, needs improvement. It's not a report card.

This is a business, not a school, so we don't grade on a curve or "reward" people with A's. The excellent category is reserved for "go to" people who are agency icons of that particular skill. The good place to be is "meets" and the good place to work toward is "exceeds."

Critical thinking trumps artistry

The most important category is "critical thinking." The least important is "artistry." In winning the attention of the traditional news media, truly useful insights written in crayon on the back of a crumpled napkin will always beat pretty words on pretty paper.

The chart originated from my sitting down with myself and asking, "What are the hoops that my thoughts jump through when I write these e-mails to executives? How am I assessing skill? What skills am I assessing?"

Having been a news reporter for 10 years, I had the news media part down pat. But I needed marketing insight, too. So I started the list, and agency executives added to it. What you see here is a consensus that I truly and proudly stand by, in every detail.

Emerged from downturn with profit & awards

Our CEO at the time, agency founder Bob Angus, made "writer profile charts" mandatory, and I literally shut down for business during the entire month of October so I could churn out a chart like this for nearly 50 people.

It was 2002, the dot-com bubble had burst and Bob had made an unusual decision. He allowed attrition but didn't lay anyone off; if account teams had extra time on their hands, they'd spend it in training. Our writer profile chart was integral to that process. We set standards, measured people, demanded improvement, and got it.

Thanks to Bob's counter-intuitive management style, we emerged from the economic downturn with profits and awards, even as our competitors lost half their staffs or went out of business.

Agency gained a forward-leaning ethic of improvement

After a few years of this, we reduced the number of people we evaluated. New employees or employees who needed attention were the only the ones who got them. Everyone else had clarity about their strengths and knew how to keep improving.

After a couple of years, people came to me for coaching in anticipation of having their chart done, and their first charts reflected progress from the get-go. That was the most fun.

An awesome benefit of this system was our new ability to pair people with complementary strengths. I told them, "You're good at this, and she's good at that, so when you find yourselves in disagreement, make sure you each win in the area of your strengths and acquiesce in the area of the other person's strengths."

This immediately produced high-quality work and the two people unofficially mentored each other. Organically, both became strong.

I suggest you find a writing guru in your office and ask this one person to assess staff on these criteria. Individual supervisors can't do it because they aren't necessarily good at this kind of thing -- that's why they ask me. Choosing just one person provides consistency.

In a "comments" section below the chart, I always copied examples of the writer's work and offered detailed "next steps" for improving.

In this list below, I've called out one item in blue type. It's the most common and most damaging problem among bad editors. I plan to go into more detail about it in an upcoming blog.

As a writing coach, of course, I continue to hate this question. I couldn't do my job well if I really thought there were only two kinds of writers: good and bad. To me, everyone is where they are, and my job is to help them move up.

Not what executives want to hear, I know. So here's the chart:

(1) Mechanics
-AP style
-Punctuation
-Grammar & usage
-Active voice

(2) Discipline
-Digs below surface for "meat," insights
-Terseness (no padding, brisk pace)
-Structure (gives order to chaos)
-Client-ready, carefully copyread

(3) Critical thinking
-Considers audience point of view
-Foresees audience reactions
-Drives clients' long-range objectives
-Balances media and client needs
-Asks, researches, finds what matters
-Offers context, perspective
-Sees new wrinkles in familiar situations
-Breaks rules effectively

(4) News judgment (See detail toward end of list)
-Satisfies journalistic definition of news
-Effectively uses "news elements"

(5) Artistry
-Flow
-Liveliness, flair, spark
-Engages as well as informs
-Advocacy, subtle “salesmanship”

News is…
(1) ... a break in the normal flow of events, an interruption in the expected.
and/or
(2) ... information people need to make sound decisions about their lives and businesses.

News elements: Change, timeliness, impact, names, numbers, nearness, unusualness, currency/topicality, life & death, health, human interest, conflict, biggest/smallest, animals, first/unique, sex, sports, weather, scandal, suspense, discovery, humor

For Senior Staff: Editing Skills
-Elevates messaging, objectives, strategy
-Checks/adjusts for correct emphasis
-Strengthens unity, coherence
-Troubleshoots as needed

-Refrains from arbitrary changes (ear, style)

-Avoids introducing new errors
-Cultivates writers' growth