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Posts Tagged ‘writing’

The Top Misused Words in PR

11.08.12

Ragan’s PR Daily published a post yesterday listing their top 10 words often misused in press releases.

Their list:

Quality
Unique
Innovation
Official
Exclusive
Breaking
Never/ever
Revolutionary
Literally
Social

I’d have to agree with most of those. It feels like every new product that is launched claims to be “revolutionary” or “innovative”, and “social” is without doubt one of the most abused terms right now. No, adding a “share” button to your site doesn’t make your product “social.”

Why stop at ten words, though? Here are a couple more words that PR people seem to butcher on a daily basis:

Leading – It feels like every company claims to be the “leading” company in its industry. Most of the time the claim just isn’t true. Other times, they define their industry so narrowly that it’s accurate while still being meaningless. Once in a blue moon it’s realistic.I’m the leading red-haired digital PR guy sitting on my side of the Edelman Toronto office. It’s true. Also, no-one cares (sob).
Ultimate – This one’s a personal peeve. If your new product is the ultimate product for the market, that means you’ll never need to release a follow-up, right? Oh, wait, you will? Guess it’s not so “ultimate” then. Sheesh.

What would you add to the list?

Posted in: writing

Tags: news release, writing

7Comments

Book Review: Accidental Genius, by Mark Levy

10.10.26

When I first received an email from Beth Harte, asking if I’d be interested in checking out a book on writing, I have to say I hesitated. However, having now finished Mark Levy‘s Accidental Genius, I have to say it’s proven to be one of the most compelling reads so far this year.

Accidental Genius focuses on the art of free-writing – freeing your writing by letting your mind run rampant while you’re writing whatever it is you’re working on. Free-writing is effectively focused around removing the roadblocks you have to your writing by forcing you to write continuously, wherever your mind takes you.
I’m actually using a lot of the lessons from reading Levy’s book while writing this review – as I write, I’m letting my mind wander over the book, what I learned from it and the reasons you might want to check it out (of course, I’m also going back over it later – now – and editing). So, as I write this my fingers can barely keep up with my thoughts and I’m going all over the place, while Toronto’s municipal election results blare on in the background.

Levy’s book walks the reader through a series of incremental steps as it introduces you to the concept of freewriting. Each chapter is relatively short – just a few pages, and the book itself is only just over 160 pages, so it’s a relatively quick read.

The book is divided roughly into thirds in terms of content focus – the first third introduces you to the basic concept of freewriting – how to go about it, why it’s useful and what you may be able to get out of it. The middle portion of the book focuses on additional tools to help you make use of the skill – things like prompts, games to play to free your mind from barriers and so on. The final section looks more at putting the skills into practice, and helping others to benefit from them.

To my surprise, Levy’s focus isn’t just on improving your writing, although that’s certainly a large part of it. Accidental Genius also shows how you can apply this skill to reveal more creative solutions to problems, and how businesses may take advantage of freewriting exercises to reveal creative ideas.

I mentioned that this is one of the more compelling reads I’ve had recently, and it’s frankly the only one I already find myself putting into practice. Instead of censoring myself as I write, I now allow my thoughts to wander a bit and then go back and edit later. It’s made writing much less stressful for me, and has resulted in blog posts and presentations taking far less time to prepare.

I find myself consciously turning to the lessons I’ve learned from the book, and that’s something that I can’t say about many other books I’ve read this year.

(Thanks to Beth Harte for the connection, and to Mark for providing the review copy)

Posted in: books, writing

Tags: books, writing

7Comments

Writing – Critical For Communicators, But It’s Not Everything

10.07.28

Liam Fitzpatrick wrote a controversial post earlier this month, saying that he thought writing skills are over-rated for communicators:

“To be honest I don’t think being a good writer matters – I’ve met plenty of great comms people who couldn’t write to save their lives and I know a few fantastic writers who I’d never trust to give communications advice.”

Shel Holtz, David Murray and Reuben Bronee took Fitzpatrick to task, leading to two follow-up posts where he clarified and reasserted his view that other skills are more important for professional communicators. As Shel wrote:

I would never hire someone to manage communication who can’t write, nor would I hire anyone into a front-line communication job who couldn’t tell a story in words.”

This back-and-forth (which continued in the comments on those posts) got me thinking over the last few days.

So, what’s my take?

Writing is CRITICAL

Writing is an absolutely central skill for communicators. From my perspective, this applies from entry-level communicators right through to senior, experienced professionals. Frankly, it’s an important skill in many jobs - many people outside the communications function need to communicate their ideas simply and persuasively – but for communicators, it’s critical.

At the entry level, there are few skill deficiencies that will hold you back more surely than good writing. Later on, while the type of writing you undertake may change as you rise through the ranks (more reports and proposals, and fewer news releases, for example), the importance remains throughout. What’s more, at a senior level you need to be able to review other peoples’ writing and help them to improve. That’s hard to do if your own writing skills are lacking.

Other skills are critical, too

If you’ve ever studied management theory, you may be familiar with Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory – essentially, it states that certain factors (“hygiene factors”) need to be present in jobs for people to be motivated, without actually motivating people themselves. So, without a good salary (for example) people will be de-motivated; however a good salary won’t actually motivate people more – it just needs to be present to allow other motivators to work.

Good writing skills are the equivalent of a “hygiene factor” in communicators’ careers. Without them, people are much less likely to succeed. However, they don’t make a successful communicator by themselves – there are many other important skills that are required – strategic planning, time management, inter-personal communications, math (sorry – it’s true), media relations and others come to mind, for example.

So, my perspective can be boiled down to this:

Writing is an essential skill for communicators. However, they also require skills far above and beyond this to be truly successful in the long term.

What do you think? Where does writing rank on your list of communications skills?

Posted in: pr, public relations, writing

Tags: communications, writing

16Comments

13 Ways Social Media Can Improve Your Career

08.11.19

I write a lot about how social media can help companies to engage better with their customers. Today, though, I’m taking a different tack and thinking about how social media can improve your career.

Here are ~~twelve~~ thirteen ways that I can certainly say social media has helped my career already, and can help yours too:

Job hunting

1. Expand your network - Social networks like LinkedIN, Facebook and even Twitter are a fantastic way to get to ‘know’ people in your industry but it goes beyond that. Search out their blogs. Find relevant forums. Comment on their work and get to know them. Create your own high-quality, regular content and they will come to you, too.

2. Obtain references - More and more companies nowadays look online when recruiting. If your co-workers, clients or partners are on LinkedIN, ask them to write a recommendation for you. It reflects well on you and, if the recommendation matches the person, it reflects well on them too.

3. Own your online brand – Your homepage may be what Google says it is, and so is your personal brand. I went as far as re-locating this site from a different URL in order to reclaim the top spot when you search for “dave fleet.” What does that matter? Well, when a client recently Googled me when we proposed some social media work for them, they came back saying “you know your stuff” rather than “what do you know?”

4. Find jobs - Most jobs aren’t advertised – they’re filled through networking and recommendations. My job certainly wasn’t advertised – I got to know the team here at Thornley Fallis through social media tools and related events. When the time came for me to move, I already had that connection. Without that, I would likely not be in this job now.

5. Build thought leadership – By creating your own content, you can (over time) develop yourself as a thought leader in your space. (This one could fall under ‘job hunting’ or ‘job performance)

Job Performance

6. Stay on top of industry trends - If you haven’t already, get yourself a Google Reader account and search out the places where people are discussing your industry online. Subscribe to them and read voraciously. My number one tip for agency newbies was to “be a sponge” but that really applies to everyone.

7. Stay on top of breaking news – You can do more than just stay on top of your own job or industry through social media. Pretty much all of the major news outlets have RSS feeds; subscribe to them and set aside time to skim through the latest news each day. Read what’s relevant; discard the rest – the ability to filter out the noise is one of social media’s big benefits. On Twitter, subscribe to feeds like @breakingnewson and any media feeds that you like to stay on top of news by the minute

8. Demonstrate you’re on the leading edge – Whether it’s internally with your boss, co-workers and internal clients, or externally with suppliers, clients and stakeholders, knowing what’s going on will go a long way to improving your reputation. Staying plugged-in helps you get there.

9. Improve your productivity - I subscribe to a couple of hundred sites; I read about 40 on a daily basis (although a couple of them are aggregators). To go to each site individually and search for new content would take most of my day, and catching new posts as they come up throughout the day would be impossible. My RSS reader lets me get through it in a few minutes before work, during the day and in the evening. It’s a huge productivity boost for me.

10. Learn from others – One of the best parts of writing this blog, posting on Twitter, listening to podcasts and all of the other tools out there is that I get to benefit from other peoples’ experience and knowledge. If I’m not sure of an idea I’ll throw it out there for input. When I have an opinion, I let other people challenge it. In the end, I’m that much more sure of what I do and think because of the input of the social media community

11. Improve your writing – When it comes to writing, practice makes perfect. I’m told my writing has improved immeasurably since I started this site (although I still have a way to go). You simply can’t beat the benefit you get from editing your thoughts down to 140 characters for Twitter, or constantly structuring and re-structuring your thoughts as you write blog posts.

12. Become a better editor – In order to have good writing you generally require good editing. With social media, you rarely have someone else to do that for you so you’re forced to teach yourself.

13. Clarify your thoughts – Putting my thoughts, opinions and approaches to problems down on ‘paper,’ as it were, forces you to get your head around them. As a result, you’re more effective when confronted by those issues in your work.

These are just a few of the ways that social media can help you along in your career. What would you add to the list?

Posted in: social media, social networks

Tags: blogging, career, Google Reader, job, Linkedin, performance, Twitter, writing

36Comments

What PR Pros Can Learn From Gamers

08.02.12

Can we get communications pointers from computer games?

Crysis features life-like graphics, but gamers want more than just realism The New York Times recently featured an article looking at how there’s a growing trend in computer gaming away from intensive graphics, complex storylines and immersive dialogue and towards simple games that allow people to interact with each other.

“Paradoxically, at a moment when technology allows designers to create ever more complex and realistic single-player fantasies, the growth in the now $18 billion gaming market is in simple, user-friendly experiences that families and friends can enjoy together.”

So what parallels can we draw between this and our communications?

Keep it simple

Gamers are shifting away from complex games like Crysis (pictured above, which I love by the way) and Bioshock and towards those with simple concepts like Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Halo 3.

From complex to simple. We need to remember that when we write for people. The general public isn’t interested in the minutiae of your product, service or policy. They’re interested in the simple story. What’s happening? How does it affect them?

Make it about the people

Only one of the top ten selling games last year was single player only. All the rest included extensive multiplayer features. World of Warcraft, the king of multiplayer games, has over 10 million paying subscribers.

We need to move from targeting individuals and towards letting our communities interact. By letting people share content, helping them to bookmark it, making it more accessible by removing layers of spin and even allowing comments on our announcements we can enable more social interaction around our stories. By moving away from venues that we control (our own websites) and towards those where users feel comfortable (social networks, for example), we can lower the barriers further.

Guitar Hero 3 We also need to move from one-way to two-way interaction with our communities. We can help members interact with each other, but it’s only when we also start to interact with them that we can realize the benefits of all this new technology.

Keep it interesting

This relates closely to my first point. Many of today’s new games place immense demands on your computer hardware. Games like Crysis require people to upgrade to the latest hardware just to play them. Meanwhile, the trend is moving towards games that focus on fun rather than perfection.

That’s key for communicators. Sure, a government can throw $100 million at something or an organization can release a technologically game-changing product. Unless you can make it interesting, though, no-one will care. $100 million is an abstract figure. I can picture $1,000 or maybe $10,000. Once you’re into the millions, you’re beyond what I’m likely to ever encounter in my life. I have no way to relate to it, so why should I care? A thousand more heart transplants, though (pulling the example randomly out of the air), is on the way there. Or producing enough power to light a city. I can relate to those things. It has to be relevant and interesting or people will switch off and move on.

Get the basics right

(Updated) You can have all the high-tech wizardry in the world, but if the fundamentals of a game aren’t right it will all be for nothing.

The same applies to communications initiatives. Before you worry about web 2.0 gizmos and whatever the new wonder app of the day is, make sure you get the fundamentals of your announcement right. You know, the old fashioned stuff. Things like well planned, written and executed tactics. If you don’t get that right, all the shiny stuff you layer on top won’t help.