Psst, this is for you, graduates of my workshops

If you’ve taken my classes or had one-on-one sessions with me at your office, you’ve probably heard me talk about “the best use of best real estate” and “the kicker.”

Here’s a fantastic example in action, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, still my favorite icon of clear, relevant, audience-centric writing after 25 years of almost daily reading.

My detailed notes are below, starting with the words "two things."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324867904578592180482641220.html 

July 7, 2013 

Why the San Francisco Plane Crash Wasn't More Deadly

Quick-Thinking Heroics, Air-Safety Gains Kept Death Toll Low 

By REBECCA SMITH, JON OSTROWER, ANDY PASZTOR

Two things:

1. Best real estate

Notice that you can read just the first six words of each paragraph – which I’ve listed for you just below -- and know what the story is about. 

You can also skim this article productively based on the “sign posts” that let you skip directly to details about, for example, how regulatory changes helped save lives, how the captain reacted, or how this crash compares with others in recent history – or whatever else you want to find.

If you take it down to just the first three words, most of the “fast starts” still meet the criteria I’ve given you in my class called “Creating Compelling Content.”

Here’s the list of the first six words of each paragraph. Below that you’ll find my observations about “the kicker.”

1.     A diminutive flight attendant carried injured …

2.     Such quick-thinking heroics in the …

3.     The crash left pieces of the …

4.     The crash occurred with little warning …

5.     "We hit hard and bounced up. …

6.     Mr. Rah noticed that an evacuation …

7.     The captain soon started screaming on …

8.     "She was a hero," he said. …

9.     Meanwhile, San Francisco police officers at …

10.  Aviation-safety experts said the human …

11.  The Asiana crash "is the culmination …

12.  Regulators in the late 1980s mandated …

13.  Before the advent of such stronger …

14.  Mr. Hiatt also said improved fire-…

15.  Enhanced crew training also has made …

16.  Other factors helped limit the toll …

17.  Other high-profile crashes in recent …

18.  In San Francisco, "everyone was fortunate …

19.  "I'm just grateful I survived," said …

2. The kicker

The first person we hear from in the story is Eugene Anthony Rah, an eyewitness of people’s reactions during the crash.

He is also the last person we hear from. And that’s my point.

"The kicker" is a resonant last line in a story that circles back to the top of the story. The kicker is usually emotional, visual, catchy, repeatable, parallel in structure or involving a sharply juxtaposed contrast – usually one or more of these.

This WSJ story comes full circle by reaching back to Mr. Rah for its ending. 

Journalists sometimes debate whether their best quote for a long feature article should be the first quote or the last quote.

First human voice in the story:

The crash occurred with little warning for passengers. Eugene Anthony Rah, a frequent flier on Asiana who was sitting in business class, said he noticed the plane was approaching too low over San Francisco Bay, then he heard an engine noise that made him think the pilot was trying to gain elevation.

"We hit hard and bounced up. People were screaming," he recalled. The plane seemed to careen out of control, skidding sideways, before stopping. Then there was "total silence," he said.

Last paragraph in the story:

"I'm just grateful I survived," said Mr. Rah, the passenger. "I was 99.9% sure I was going to die. I was hoping for a 0.1% miracle, and I got it."

In PR, your contributed article doesn’t need to end in a quote, but the advice is the same: Reach to the top of your story for a main point, make it image-rich or otherwise punchy and memorable, and let that be the ending for your article.

Four more (quick) things:

Sentence length: The sentences in the quotations are five or fewer words in most cases. The longest is 11 words. The longest full quotation (the kicker, in this case) is just 25 words in total, taking up less than two lines across the page.

Contrast that with most press releases, Quotes are usually 80 words long, and each sentence alone often takes up two lines across the page.

Why: The central premise of the story answers the question “why,” which you’ve heard me say is the most important question of all questions (why, why it matters, why care, why now, so what) -- certainly leaps and bounds more important than who, what, where, when and how.

Starts in the middle: The first line is a hook (see just below) that meets almost all of the criteria in the Compelling Content class. It starts in the middle of the action, not with the chronological beginning, an introduction or background.

In the first three words, bam! You are already smack-dab in the heart of the story before you’ve even finished reading the first line across the page.

“Nut graf”: The second paragraph wraps everything up in a nut shell and answers the question: “Why read this story and why read it now?” 

You could stop after the second graf, walk away without finishing, accurately know the gist and purpose of the article, and be well enough informed to join the conversation when the topic comes up during your lunch break.

A diminutive flight attendant carried injured passengers piggyback to safety while two passengers worked to free another flight attendant pinned by an inflated emergency slide, all racing to escape Asiana Airlines Flight 214 minutes before it burst into flames.

Such quick-thinking heroics in the minutes after the plane's spectacular crash at San Francisco International Airport, combined with technological enhancements in recent years that have made jetliner accidents more survivable, likely prevented Saturday's disaster from being far more deadly, experts said.

The full article is below for your convenience. Or click on this link to read it at WSJ.

****

 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324867904578592180482641220.html

July 7, 2013

Why the San Francisco Plane Crash Wasn't More Deadly

Quick-Thinking Heroics, Air-Safety Gains Kept Death Toll Low

By REBECCA SMITH, JON OSTROWER, ANDY PASZTOR

A diminutive flight attendant carried injured passengers piggyback to safety while two passengers worked to free another flight attendant pinned by an inflated emergency slide, all racing to escape Asiana Airlines Flight 214 minutes before it burst into flames.

Such quick-thinking heroics in the minutes after the plane's spectacular crash at San Francisco International Airport, combined with technological enhancements in recent years that have made jetliner accidents more survivable, likely prevented Saturday's disaster from being far more deadly, experts said.

Broken Landing

The crash left pieces of the BoeingBA +0.23% 777 strewn about the airfield and triggered a fire that burned away much of the plane's roof. Of the 307 passengers and crew aboard the flight from Seoul, two died, both 16-year-old girls from among a Chinese group of students and teachers headed to the U.S. for precollege exchange programs. More than 180 others were taken to hospitals with injuries. Two local hospitals listed 30 people still admitted as of Sunday afternoon, eight of which were in critical condition and two paralyzed.

The crash occurred with little warning for passengers. Eugene Anthony Rah, a frequent flier on Asiana who was sitting in business class, said he noticed the plane was approaching too low over San Francisco Bay, then he heard an engine noise that made him think the pilot was trying to gain elevation.

"We hit hard and bounced up. People were screaming," he recalled. The plane seemed to careen out of control, skidding sideways, before stopping. Then there was "total silence," he said.

Mr. Rah noticed that an evacuation slide had inflated inside the plane, pinning a flight attendant against the interior cabin wall. He and another passenger tried to free the attendant, looking for something sharp with which to puncture the slide. Another passenger eventually found a way to let the air out of the slide. Mr. Rah said he has been in touch with the flight attendant's husband, who said she sustained serious injuries but is improving.

The captain soon started screaming on the loudspeaker for everyone to evacuate. As other passengers began exiting the plane and emergency crews arrived, Mr. Rah saw another flight attendant, whose name he gave as Jiyeon Kim, carrying injured passengers down the aisle to get them off the plane.

"She was a hero," he said. "This tiny, little girl was carrying people piggyback, running everywhere, with tears running down her face. She was crying, but she was still so calm and helping people."

Meanwhile, San Francisco police officers at the scene had entered the plane from near the back and made their way to the front, amid worsening smoke, said Lyn Tomioka, deputy chief at the San Francisco Police Department. When they got to the front, male crew members trying to help passengers called out for knives, and the officers tossed their own knives to the men to help them cut seat belts off passengers who were struggling to get out, Ms. Tomioka said.

Aviation-safety experts said the human toll of the crash was almost certainly reduced by efforts of jet makers, airlines and regulators to reduce the deadliness of air accidents—from the use of flame-retardant materials and new seats designed to withstand tremendous force, to changes in areas such as crew training.

The Asiana crash "is the culmination of what has been done over more than 20 years to help more and more passengers survive crashes," according to Kevin Hiatt, president and chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group in Alexandria, Va., that advocates for safety improvements world-wide.

Regulators in the late 1980s mandated all-new passenger planes must have seats able to withstand stronger impacts than in the past—practices that the Federal Aviation Administration ordered in 2005 be applied to nearly all passenger planes by October 2009. As part of those rules, seats on jetliners must be able in tests to survive collisions that slam them forward at 16 times the force of gravity, or 16g, to ensure the seats don't collapse or detach from the floor. A Boeing spokesman said the company has been delivering all its jets with 16g-rated seats since 2009.

Before the advent of such stronger seats, Mr. Hiatt said, the intense vertical and horizontal force generated by a crash like Saturday's "would have caused many more seats to break free and pancake into each other, probably blocking exit paths."

Mr. Hiatt also said improved fire-resistant materials used on seats and other parts of the cabin "likely helped the fire from intensifying so quickly."

Enhanced crew training also has made a significant difference. Cabin crews train to evacuate passengers in chaotic and unpredictable circumstances, including being unsure which exits are safe to use. Airplanes are designed to be evacuated in just 90 seconds, even when half the doors and escape slides are inoperative or unavailable.

Other factors helped limit the toll of Saturday's accident. Because the plane was landing, its speed was relatively slow, reducing the force with which it crashed. Rescue crews used cutting-edge nozzles, equipped with cameras, attached to the end of hoses. Firefighters were able to maneuver those nozzles directly inside the cabin and aim the spray at the most dangerous hot spots. In addition, some crews had equipment able to pierce the plane's aluminum fuselage to gain better access to the fire.

Other high-profile crashes in recent years have also seen many passengers escape alive. Everyone survived a 2008 Continental Airlines flight that veered off a Denver runway in high winds, splitting the body of the jet in two. Two passengers died in August 2010 when an Aires Boeing 737 landed short in bad weather at a Caribbean island, also splitting the passenger cabin into pieces. In April, a newly delivered Lion Air Boeing 737 crashed in poor visibility short of a runway in Bali, Indonesia; all 108 people aboard survived.

In San Francisco, "everyone was fortunate that the fire didn't start immediately, so it gave passengers time to scramble out of the plane," said Michael Barr, who teaches air-safety courses at the University of Southern California.

"I'm just grateful I survived," said Mr. Rah, the passenger. "I was 99.9% sure I was going to die. I was hoping for a 0.1% miracle, and I got it."

—Vauhini Vara, Daniel Michaels, Ben Kesling and William Harless contributed to this article.

Write to Rebecca Smith at rebecca.smith@wsj.com, Jon Ostrower atjon.ostrower@wsj.com and Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared July 8, 2013, on page A6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Heroics and Air-Safety Gains Kept Toll Low.

How to use a trademark symbol in a press release

If your client is asking for guidance on the use of the trademark symbol in a press release, you are in a gray area where there's no definitive answer. 

The compromise that I like is the one recommended in this blog by Pete Codella, a PR consultant from Salt Lake City whose post I happened upon during an open-ended Google search. 

Pete cites this passage from the International Trademark Association: 

"The ™, SM or ® symbol need only appear in the first or most prominent mention of the mark. Omission of the ™, SM or ® symbol does not invalidate or compromise a trademark owner’s rights in a trademark. Its purpose is to alert the public to the ownership of the mark, and it is one of the primary ways to affirmatively protect a mark."

In my reading of this guidance, the important part is "or most prominent mention," which is open to interpretation. Is the most prominent mention the headline? Or should the symbol wait for the body of the release where details are explained? You get to choose. There's no rule. Personally, I like headlines that are short and clutter-free, so I'd refrain from using the symbol there, but that's just my personal preference. 

Note that you don't need the symbol at all, anywhere: 

"Omission ... does not invalidate ... rights," says the ITA.

Does the trademark symbol interfere with SEO? In an open-ended Google search, I couldn't find any evidence that it does, and I found a lot of anecdotal evidence that it doesn't.

I encourage you to read the rest of Pete's 2009 post, which includes his informal survey of PR pros via Twitter, a conversation he had with a lawyer and what the AP Stylebook says, as well as the ITA citation above.

From personal experience as a reporter with The Associated Press, I know that in AP style (the PR industry's adopted style), you capitalize a trademarked name without a TM, SM or R symbol. For example, if the word "Kleenex" was used to mean "facial tissue" in a quote, it would be capitalized, even if the speaker wasn't talking about a Kleenex brand tissue. 

Likewise, you Google something (with a capital G) even though you aren't talking about the company but the act of searching. In some parts of the country, people say Coke instead of soda or pop, and the term is capitalized because it's trademarked, even if they are referring to generic soda. 

Those two iconic brands -- Kleenex and Coke -- don't use TM or R symbols in their press releases, by the way. I just checked a variety of releases on Business Wire and PR Newswire. However, you will find the R symbol on commercial websites that sell Kleenex and Coke.

Here's what the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office's website says about the benefits of having a registered trademark. It doesn't say how or when to use the symbols, just that they "put people on notice" that you are claiming rights.

"What are the benefits of federal trademark registration?

Owning a federal trademark registration on the Principal Register provides several advantages, including:

• Public notice of your claim of ownership of the mark;
• A legal presumption of your ownership of the mark and your exclusive right to use the mark nationwide on or in connection with the goods/services listed in the registration;
• The ability to bring an action concerning the mark in federal court;
• The use of the U.S. registration as a basis to obtain registration in foreign countries;
• The ability to record the U.S. registration with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Service to prevent importation of infringing foreign goods;
• The right to use the federal registration symbol ®; and
• Listing in the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s online databases."

Speaking for myself only, I can add another thought related to the nuanced difference between marketing and PR. It borders on the philosophical, so most of you will want to stop reading here.

***

The delineation between marketing communications and PR is debatable. 

But I think of PR as an effort to generate third-party conversation among people who filter information through their own lenses, thereby lending credibility to information in a way that advertising and brochures cannot. 

Credibility comes from the fact that these third parties don't stand to profit or otherwise benefit from an endorsement. No vested interest. I think people tend to listen with their guards down when listening to third parties, whereas they may be more guarded with a speaker who stands to profit from the outcome.

In marketing communications (ads, brochures, company Twitter streams, etc.), it's known that the profiting party is also the source of the information, so "buyer beware." Do I expect a company to volunteer information about a product feature it doesn't offer? No. Brag about bad customer service? No. Reveal hefty repair costs? No.

A TM symbol, in my mind, is the mark of a profiting party. Journalist don't use it. Friends writing to friends don't use it. Only a company with a legal interest in protecting turf uses it. 

So you might leave it out of communications where you are encouraging a guards-down conversation.

Press releases fall into the category of marketing communications, not PR, even though it's usually the PR team that drafts and circulates them. A press release goes directly from the company to the public, without first being filtered by a third party. It's like an ad, brochure or company Twitter stream, so "buyer beware." 

If I see a TM symbol, my "buyer beware" warning light comes on, even if it was previously off.

My question is this: If a company wants to use a press release to build its relationships with customers and prospective customers, is there any benefit to including the TM symbol? Readers don't find it elucidating or comforting; rather, it may be an annoyance or serve to remind them of the company's self-interest -- guards up!

However, if the press release is meant to be a formal stake in the ground, designating legal territory and excluding competitors, I see the benefit to including a TM symbol. It puts people on notice, as the ITA says. In this case, the primary audience would appear to be competitors and channel or retail partners, not customers.

If the decision were mine, I'd leave trademark symbols out of press releases. But I'm a former journalist, and my opinion may not be representative of the general public's. Maybe people regard the symbol as a mark of authority that boosts their faith in the product -- I don't know. 

Either way, I'm comfortable with the ITA's "first or most prominent mention" compromise.

PR Workshop: Creating Compelling Content

Here's one of the two half-day workshops I often recommend to companies and agencies hiring me for the first time. The other of the two is called "Being Your Own Best Editor."

“Create Compelling Content” 

This class comes in three parts, with each part spiraling up to fuel the next, resulting in a powerful new point of view that makes it easier to find the best content and present it in the most compelling way.

1. How to be newsworthy

Two hours including 15-minute break

What to bring

Bring your own team’s collateral, no matter who wrote it. We’ll use it as source material during the workshop. Each person should bring different information, but it’s also OK if there’s some overlap. Best choices: PR pitches, speaker abstracts, case studies, contributed articles, press releases, executive memos and fact sheets.

Biggest takeaway

What’s the internal landscape of a journalist’s mind when he or she is assessing a situation and choosing which information to lead with? How does that same framework apply to an executive's decision-making process?Participants will learn to package information for greater usefulness and higher appeal, even when a first glance suggests it might be bit of a yawner.

In this session, we'll:

· Process information the way an experienced journalist does on deadline

· Make faster decisions about what nuggets to move up and which to bump down or leave out altogether

· Recognize hidden opportunities 

2. How to be compelling

90 minutes including a 10-minute break

What to bring

Similar to the recommendations above in that you don't have to be the author (though that's often best, when possible). But in this case, it's best to bring somewhat longer, more complex PR documents. Best choices: award entries, contributed articles, NAPS releases, blog posts, op-eds and pitches.

Biggest Takeaway

What are the seven elements that glue a reader’s eyes to the page? How can they help you radically reduce word count while boosting appeal?

In this session, we'll:

· Objectively identify the seven elements

· Discover what’s missing and how to go get it

· Rearrange information for higher impact

3. How to be relevant
Half hour

What five questions will keep you on track and help you gain traction?

In this session, we'll discuss:

· Turning excessive background into as-needed backstory

· Balancing your agenda with readers’ “north star”

· Breaking old habits and using new tools in future work

Workshop: Being Your Own Best Editor

Here's one of the two half-day workshops I often recommend to companies and agencies hiring me for the first time. The other of the two is called "Creating Compelling Content."

"Be Your Own Best Editor"

Writers learn to clean, tighten and brighten their own copy and reduce the need for further editing. They develop the self-awareness needed to diagnose their own challenges and make their own choices about how to improve. 

The emphasis is on process. Participants find out why they sometimes write for an hour and still have nothing on the page, why proofreading is even harder than they realized, and ways to prevent those and other problems in the future.

Best to bring: early drafts of contributed articles, speaker abstracts, award submissions, media pitches, press releases, blog posts and case studies.

Part 1: Self-diagnosis – 2 hours, includes 10-minute break

Rewrites with feedback are part of the self-discovery process.

Assessment covers: 

• construction (verb quality, sentence shape, etc.)

• energy (news value, subtle tension, relevance) – See also CCC class

• structure (skimmers v. listeners, use of best “real estate”) – See also CCC class

• voice (tone, vocabulary, gatekeeper preferences) 

Part 2: Mechanics – 1 hour, includes 5-minute break

Find out the most common grammar and usage mistakes unknowingly committed by experienced business professionals, with emphasis on clearing up confusion.

Topics include: • Commas are not pauses • The two – Count ‘em! Only two! – rules of capitalization • Semicolons: Don’t use them unless you have a license issued by Lauren ;-) • Home v. hone, flesh v. flush, pique v. peak, which v. that, etc. • British v. American English

Part 3: Process – 1 hour, includes 5-minute break

Learn to be both messy and tidy, as needed, in the right places at the right times. For best results, writers and editors need a keen awareness of “who’s driving” during specific phases of the process – their inner creator or their inner censor.

Topics include:

• Why humans are bad proofreaders and what to do about it 

• When to apply voice preferences 

• Tightening tips 

• How to bust through writer’s block 

• What steps to emphasize when the deadline is near

Tell the story out of order -- here's why & how

Here's an oldie but goodie -- a page from one of my earliest workshop handouts.

I heard from someone today who had taken a class from me in the early- to mid-2000s. He said he kept some of my handout pages pinned up for regular inspiration but now can't find them.

I rummaged a bit in my digital archives and uncovered this advice for telling stories out of order. Move up what's compelling, and bump down the backstory and introduction.

For PR pros: How to read a journalist

Occasionally yelled at and hung up on by journalists on deadline, PR professionals know there are right and wrong ways to persist in pursuit of a news reporter’s attention.

Most mentors tell you to read several of a reporter’s previous articles before making contact. But they rarely tell you what, in particular, to look for while reading. 

I suggest you ask these questions while doing your research.

(1)  How many sources did the reporter use?

(2)  What’s in motion?

(3)  What remains to be seen?

(4)  What kinds of words did the reporter choose?

1. How many sources did the reporter use?

This question helps you determine whether the reporter poured his (or her) heart into a story. If not, don’t spend a lot of time studying it. Reporters quickly tap out some stories just to get them out of the way. Signs of this:

• cites just one or two sources (compared to six or so for a good story)
• lists but doesn't interpret statistics
• fails to add colorful or emotive language, instead offering facts without anecdote or narrative

Advice: Pay less attention to stories that the reporter himself paid less attention to.

2. What's in motion?

Look for words like "on the rise," “becoming _____er” and “shifting.” Look for depictions of anything that is changing character, shape or approach, or getting bigger or smaller.

For example, an article on phishing (luring Internet users to bogus websites where they will give up passwords) noted that big banks have long been top targets, but lately smaller banks are being targeted, too. Another article said phishers were becoming harder to detect. Another said the approach was shifting from scattershot to precisely targeted.

Advice: Pay closer attention to whatever is changing – the topics that are in motion – than to static factoids. Change is inherently more newsy and likely to remain of interest in the future.

3. What remains to be seen? (This is the really important one.)

Pay extra attention to where the reporter has raised questions, identified obstacles or said something like “only time will tell,” “no one knows if …” or “it remains to be seen whether …”

Look for the edge of the cliff, so to speak, the place where the reporter can no longer acquire more knowledge because there isn’t any, or so he thinks.

For example, one article said IM and peer-to-peer networks might supplant email as the next major vehicles for phishers. Another said efforts to fold phishing security into spam security might not work because spam filters mostly look for previously blacklisted URLs, and phishers dismantle bogus sites within hours or days of putting them up.

When these articles were published (a while ago, I confess), the reporter didn’t know for sure whether there’d be an explosion of phishing via IM and peer-to-peer networks – that remained to be seen. The reporter didn’t know whether new security efforts would work.

Addendum (12/13/12): Here's more recent example from a WSJ story. 

What happens next remains unclear. Some of the industry's top bankers, executives and analysts are puzzling over Mr. Ergen's next move. Dish said Tuesday it will "consider its strategic options and the optimal approach to put this spectrum to use.

Mr. Ergen's next move will be closely watched by the reporters who wrote this story. This is the edge of their cliff. They don't know what will happen next, but the moment they do, they will write about it.

Similarly, keep your eye out for what is anecdotally becoming evident but is not yet backed by a body of supporting statistics or expert confirmation. Look for what's still fuzzy.

Does your client have anything that could help a reporter connect these fuzzy dots?

For example, if your client is an authority on digital signatures and if the "how" behind that technology is an answer to the security shortcomings of simply blacklisting URLs (as in the previous example above), then these details might be a good hook for the first line of your pitch.

Advice: Start your conversation in the middle. The first line of your pitch can pick up where the reporter left off.

4. What kinds of words did the reporter choose?

Look for discretionary vocabulary that reveals the writer's "ear," or literary and syntactic preferences. Jot down examples and listen to how they sound.

For example, one reporter liked bogus, dump, lure and dupe. He could just as easily have written false or counterfeit instead of bogus, jettison or dispose in place of dump, attract or entice in place of lure, or mislead or deceive instead of dupe. But he didn’t -- this writer liked the style and sound of the first list.

Listing these preferred words when you notice them helps you see similarities and patterns that can help you adopt a comparable voice.

Caveat: It's always best to be yourself and write in a style you can consistently maintain throughout your dialogue. Genuine is better than clever, but if you can be both, go for it.

Advice: Notice how his words sound and, when sensible, use words with a similar tone.

What next? How to use what you discovered

The first question (“number of sources/poured heart out”) helps you filter out stories less helpful to your research on a particular reporter. Skip over those.

The second and third questions (“motion” and “unknown”) show you the reporter’s own agenda, the places where he may appreciate your client’s help moving a story forward. Start your email abruptly with those specifics. No need for background or chit-chat. Hook him first with data or observations you retrieved from what he thought was the gulf beyond the edge of the cliff.

The fourth question helps you in the final stage of polishing your email and, to a lesser degree, in the early draft phase. Appealing to a reporter’s own ear may help put him at ease, leaving him slightly more receptive to your thoughtful assistance.

You still need to meet all the usual criteria for a good pitch. But you’re more likely to entice a reporter if you’ve mapped yourself to his agenda, rather than dumped information helter-skelter onto his desk in hopes he will sift through and recognize something of value.

Peek Behind Curtain at Workshop in Session

Lively and hands-on, my writing and editing workshops for PR writers, engineers and others in the high-technology industry involve very little lecture.

There's no critiquing; I don't even own a red pen. I've got something more effective: tools that I created, refined and updated over 12 years to help already-capable business professionals break old habits and speed their creation of anything from blogs to reports for executives.

Your work, not "make-work"

The focus is on process, yours. Attendees bring in their own source material -- usually PR pitches, online news articles, award submissions, case studies or reports. This means you are doing work that is practical and relevant, not "taking a class."

People hire me so their agency or company can make more money or promote a cause. My workshops help you advance your own business goals, gain traction with customers and save time.

By Popular Demand

The outline below describes what has emerged as my most popular four-hour workshop. I cut and pasted it from a document that I sent to a new client just this afternoon. 

I pride myself on customizing classes to suit your team's specific challenges, but this particular class has turned out to be universally effective. 

The emphasis is on identifying the best content and moving it to the right place in your document, or recognizing what "compelling" is so that you can go get the right stuff in the first place. But the techniques also dramatically reduce word count, so they are excellent editing tools as well.

Check me out on LinkedIn to see some of the other classes I created, all in response to actual business problems.

*******************

“Creating Compelling Content” – detailed workshop outline

All three of the workshop sections described below are interactive and include examples. Each builds upon the next; that is, the newsworthiness section is required for the compelling content section, and both are required for the final section on relevance. Similarly, the second section is not complete until the third section has been completed.

In each section, writers will use the tools and criteria described below to arrive at better decisions in their own writing process, while using agency and client documents as source material. Each person will write several times throughout the workshop and receive feedback. The emphasis is on striving for new standards and breaking old habits, not critiques of past work or make-work.

1. How to be newsworthy: Use “binoculars” and “PDAs”

9 a.m. to 10:45 a.m., including a 10-minute break after the first hour

What to bring

Attendees should bring their own team’s collateral with them, no matter who wrote it. We’ll use it as source material. Each person can bring different information, but it’s OK if there’s some overlap. Best choices: PR pitches, speaker abstracts, case studies, contributed articles, press releases, executive memos and fact sheets.

Biggest takeaway

What’s the internal landscape of a journalist’s mind when he or she is assessing a situation and choosing which information to lead with? What can we borrow from that kind of thinking to better promote our own causes in writing? How can we package information for high appeal, even if at first glance it doesn’t look compelling or like “news,” without resorting to hype or giving a false impression?

In this session, attendees will learn and practice:

· Processing information the way an experienced journalist does

· Making faster decisions about what nuggets to move up and which to bump down or leave out altogether

· Recognizing hidden opportunities in your material

2. How to be compelling: Use seven criteria to “pan for gold”

10:55 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., including a 10-minute break

What to bring

Attendees should bring their own team’s collateral with them, no matter who wrote it. We’ll use it as source material. Each person can bring different information, but it’s OK if there’s some overlap. Best choices: award entries, contributed articles, NAPS releases, blog posts, op-eds and pitches.

Biggest Takeaway

What are the seven elements that glue a reader’s eyes to the page? How can they help us radically reduce word count while boosting appeal?

In this session, attendees will learn and practice:

· Objectively identifying the seven elements

· Discovering what’s missing and how to go get it

· Rearranging information for higher impact

3. How to be relevant: Five questions home in on your audience

12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m.

What five questions will keep you on track and help you gain traction?

In this session, attendees will practice:

· Turning excessive background into as-needed backstory

· Balancing your agenda with readers’ “north star”

· Breaking old habits and using new tools in future work