Join Ann Wylie at PRSA 2012 International Conference in San Francisco on Monday, Oct. 15, for her breakout session, “Make Your Copy More Creative: Paint Pictures in Your Readers’ Minds.” You’ll learn how to bring your ideas to life through storytelling, metaphor and wordplay.

My husband likes to quote “anonymous”:

“If a man speaks in the forest, and no woman is there to hear him, is he still wrong?”

For communicators, the question is a little different. David Murray, editor of ContentWise, says:

“If nobody hears your strategic messaging, does it make a sound?”

The biggest risk in communications is not that we might offend someone or write something that’s eye-rollingly goofy. The biggest risk communicators face is that we never get heard at all.

One way to increase your chances of getting heard: Make Your Copy More Creative. Creative copy communicates more clearly, builds reader loyalty, creates a “buzz” for your topic — even enhances credibility.

Continue reading " Why Be Creative? Interesting Copy Helps Readers Learn "

Join Ann Wylie for her in-person training session, “Web Writing Boot Camp,” on Sept. 21, 2012 9 a.m.–4 p.m. EDT in New York, N.Y., and learn how to make your posts personable, and write dramatic, compelling status updates that draw followers and get clicks.

Are you still relying on words alone to tell your stories?

Comic by Bill Wylie

When Campus Progress published an illustrated story on education finance in April 2011, Erin Polgreen reported the following:

• The Huffington Post featured the story on its front page.
• More than 4,000 Facebook users shared and Liked the story.

Continue reading " Five Ways to Communicate Using Comics "

Join Ann Wylie for her in-person training session, “Web Writing Boot Camp,” on Sept. 21, 2012 9 a.m.–4 p.m. EDT in New York, N.Y., and learn how to make your posts personable, and write dramatic, compelling status updates that draw followers and get clicks.

In the headline for one of his articles, usability expert Jakob Nielsen asks, “How do users read on the Web?”

“They don’t,” he answers in the first sentence.

If you’re lucky, then your Web visitors may scan through your site, searching for specific facts and key ideas. But they aren’t reading. Check out these research results:

• Half of all Web users scan content instead of reading methodically, a 2007 eyetracking study by the Poynter Institute found.
• Visitors read only 20 percent of the words on a page, according to a 2008 analysis of nearly 50,000 page views by European computer scientists, psychologists, sociologists, engineers and other professionals.
• Visitors view most Web pages for 10 seconds or less, concluded four German researchers who studied those 50,000 page views.
• Fewer than one in 10 page views extend beyond two minutes, the same German researchers discovered. That included unattended browser windows that users left open in the background.

It’s enough to make a Web writer toss his or her laptop out the window.

But you can reach these online scanners if your page will pass the “skim test.”

Continue reading " Lift Your Ideas Off the Screen with Microcontent, or Online Display Copy "

Join Ann Wylie for “Anatomy of a 2.0 Release” on June 28, 3–4 p.m. EDT, and find out how to take advantage of online distribution to get your release posted on portals, help Google find your site, and reach customers, clients and other stakeholders online. This public relations writing training sesssion is free to PRSA members.

Boilerplates:  We can’t live with ’em; we can’t get a decent one through the approval process.

A boilerplate is the short “about us” paragraph at the end of each news release that describes your organization.

The boilerplate’s ubiquity makes it important.  An organization uses the copy over and over again. Depending on the scope and reach of your media relations efforts, reporters and editors might publish your boilerplate thousands of times, exposing it to thousands of consumers.

So what goes into a good boilerplate? To decide, think like your reader.

Continue reading " Three Tips for Writing a Better Boilerplate "

Join Ann Wylie for her in-person training session, “Writing That Sells — Products, Services and Ideas,” on June 22 at 9 a.m.–4 p.m. EDT in Boston, Mass.

Constant problem solving (to click or not to click?) and divided attention (you’ve got mail) lead to cognitive overload on the Web.

And according to Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain,” cognitive overload can:

• Make distractions more distracting. Some studies link attention deficit disorder to overtaxed brains.
• Cause us to overvalue the new, even when it’s trivial and irrelevant. Checking out the latest YouTube video becomes more important than analyzing the 46-screen study on illiteracy.
• Lead us to lose the ability to think and reason.

In fact, a 2005 study by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London showed that online multitasking temporarily lowers your IQ more than smoking marijuana does.

Continue reading " Writing Around the Obstacles of Reading On-Screen "