|
PR Leads Publicity Articles
7 Tips For Building a Solid Writing Foundation
By Dan Janal
Your Fearless PR Leader
PR Leads
www.prleads.com
Papa Hemingway once said, "Prose is architecture, it is not interior design." How, then, can writers build a solid structure-a good foundation-for their stories. Here are 10 quick tips for organizing your next marketing and/or publicity piece:
Don't Forget Features-Go Beyond the Inverted Pyramid:
Many public relations and marketing practitioners still heavily believe in the inverted pyramid method for writing. As times have changes, so have various techniques. If you are married to the inverted pyramid, you may be missing the mark. Feature style writing should be incorporated into everyday use as it can:
- Increase reader satisfaction
- Boost the attention span of readers and increase their time spent reading an article
- Help readers understand information more easily
- Influence the opinions, attitudes and actions of your publics
- Take time to organize
Quite often, public relations practitioners are often asked to produce written information quickly in order to meet a journalist's tight deadline. Many times, these writers believe they do not have the time to outline their press releases, letters to the editor, pitch letters, stories, and other publicity pieces. However, the fact is you are more likely to waste necessary time, if you do not take the time to organize and develop a solid structure.
Think of your material as buckets of information:
This will help you avoid the "muddle in the middle", which occurs when a writer crafts a respectable beginning and ending, and dumps everything else in between.
The middle of your story, or publicity material also needs structure. Putting your information in buckets of like material can help increase fluidity within your writing, which in turn can maintain your readers' interest.
Choose an appropriate organizing approach
Do not overcomplicate matters. There are only 5 ways to organize information:
- Thematically
- Chronologically
- Hierarchically
- Geographically
- Alphabetically
Invest time on the lead
Spice up your headlines, leads and sound bytes with etymological research. By exploring the meanings behind and the origins of key words, you the writer can add layers of meaning to your topic and make your copy enticing to your targeted audiences. To perform an etymology study:
- Google "etymology" to obtain a list a etymological dictionaries and resources
- Look up the root words and the history and evolution of key words related to your topic
- Work with those phrases to develop more sophisticated wordplay.
Write a short walk away sentence
You should be able to tell the subject of your speech or written information in one sentence. Your short walk-away sentence is the one idea you want your audience to walk away with and store in their long-term memory.
Fill in the background
There are too many times in which public relations writers have omitted vital company or organization background information, apparently assuming their readers will remember it from previous work.
Perform the heavy lifting
If you as the writer do not take the time to analyze and organize your written information, your readers will have to figure the story out for themselves. Many readers, especially editors and reporters, have better uses of their time than attempting to unbury your organization's key messages. Your written information should be organized in a way that leads readers through a coherent argument to a logical conclusion.
This article can be reprinted if the following information is printed:
By Daniel Janal, dan@prleads.com, http://www.prleads.com
PR Leads founder Daniel Janal is the author of numerous books, including "Dan Janal’s Guide to Marketing on the Internet.”
|
