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 "

Join Ann Wylie for her online training session, “Anatomy of a 2.0 Release: Write Releases That Get Posted on Portals, Help Google Find Your Site, Reach Readers Online and More,” on June 28, at 3–4 p.m. This public relations writing training sesssion is free to PRSA members.

Today’s online releases serve several functions: They drive traffic to your site through search engine optimization, inform your readers and spread your message via journalists and bloggers.

To make your 21st-century release most effective:

Keep the headline short. Aim for 65 to 70 characters if you want your release to show up on Google News, according to a 2010 study by Schwartz Communications. Still, despite Google’s preferences, the average headline in Schwartz’s study was 123 characters long, and the longest more than 1,000 characters.

Get to the point quickly. Keep your lead to around 25 words. If it’s longer, then it starts looking too thick to invite readers. If it’s shorter, then news portals might not recognize it as a paragraph. Google News, for instance, rejects releases that are only bullet points and one-sentence paragraphs.

Tighten the release. The best length for a news release: 250 words. If your release is:

• Longer than 700 words, then Google News may reject it for being too long.
• Longer than 500 words, then portals may cut it off in the middle.
• Shorter than 125 words, then Google News may reject it for being too short.

Plus, reading online is onerous. Releases of about 250 words are easier on people’s eyes.

Cut the fluff. Nobody searches for “world-class,” “cutting-edge” or “next-generation.” Hype not only clutters your copy, but it also dilutes your keywords. And that makes it harder for Google and other search engines to find your site.

Instead of piling on the jargon, write about what your product, service or idea will do for your clients and customers.

Write for people. Today’s releases serve two audiences: search engines and people. In the rush to optimize for the former, we sometimes forget the latter.

Sure, you’re going to place keywords and phrases in the page title tag, headline and maybe a few more places. But don’t “optimize” your release until you’ve rendered it unreadable to your intended audience — the people you hope will find your information through a search in the first place.

Copyright © 2012 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

Continue reading " Five Tips to Bring Your Online Releases into the 21st Century "

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.

Writers usually say that they use the inverted pyramid because readers stop reading after the first paragraph.

Meanwhile, readers typically say that they stop reading after the first paragraph because writers use the inverted pyramid.

Before you pound out your next pyramid, check out the following three trends in story structure:

Continue reading " Three Trends in Story Structure: Beyond the Inverted Pyramid "

Join Ann Wylie for her online training session, “Anatomy of a 2.0 Release: Write Releases That Get Posted on Portals, Help Google Find Your Site, Reach Readers Online and More,” on June 28, 2012 3–4 p.m. This public relations writing training sesssion is free to PRSA members.

Fourteen percent of Americans can’t read well enough to search for programs in a TV guide, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL).

Meanwhile, more than four out of 10 Americans have basic or below-basic prose skills, according to the study. That means they can sign forms or compare ticket prices for two events. However, they have trouble finding places on a map or calculating the cost of office supplies from a catalog.

So how well are they reading your blog post, Web page or news release?

Continue reading " To Reach Real Readers, Write Copy that Connects "

Join Ann Wylie for her online training session, “Writing for Social Media: How to Write Blog Postings, Tweets and Other Status Updates,” on April 24, 2012, 3–4 p.m. EDT. This public relations writing training sesssion is free to PRSA members.

“A story should be a verb, not a noun,” Byron Dobell, a former editor of Esquire, once said.

And when it comes to your headline, the verb is the story. The sexier the verb, the sexier the story.

Here are five ways to verbify your own headlines to make them stronger and more stimulating:

Continue reading " Five Ways to “Verbify” Your Headlines and Make Them Stronger "