Work on a client’s new website has me thinking about navigational structure.

Whether you’re organizing a website or a magazine article, a museum exhibit or your family’s letters and memorabilia, there are only five ways to structure information. Richard Saul Wurman, author of Information Architects, uses the acronym LATCH to define them:

• Location
• Alphabet
• Time
• Category
• Hierarchy

For your website’s structure to work, each navigational component should fit one of these approaches.

Take time.

Years ago, one of my colleagues came up with a great idea for a newsletter for pregnant women based on chronological structure: Distribution would be based on subscribers’ due dates.

Each month, subscribers would get an issue telling them what to expect and do during that month of their own pregnancy. Best of all, as publisher, you’d produce just nine issues of the newsletter, cycling subscribers through the issues instead of issues through subscribers.

Now Parenting.com is going my colleague one better with its week-by-week Pregnancy Planner and daily Babygram e-zine, both tied to exactly what’s going on with your body or fetus based on your due date.

Of course, Parenting.com’s entire website is organized chronologically: fertility, pregnancy, baby, toddler, child, mom. (If I were organizing this site, I’d put recipes, activities, gear and community — four categorical buttons — into a separate nav bar, perhaps on the right side of the page. Because some of these things just don’t belong.)

Does your organization’s business suggest a chronological structure? If so, consider basing your navigation on time.

And if you’re organizing chronologically, why not make your piece a timeline?

Caveat: Make sure you’re not organizing by time when your readers are thinking in categories. Most blog archives are organized chronologically. Are your visitors more interested in your content on, say, organizing information, or do they really want to know what you were thinking on Feb. 23, 2010? If the former, you might want to consider a separate categorical index for your postings.

Ditto newsrooms.

Learn more about “when” stories.

Build a solid structure

Want to master a story structure that increases readership instead of cutting it short?

• Get it off your desk: Bring Ann’s team in to write compelling copy.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a “Go Beyond the Inverted Pyramid” workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann on developing the feature-style story structure in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next “Beyond the Inverted Pyramid” teleseminar.
• Join the club: Get dozens of tipsheets on the feature-style story structure at RevUpReadership.com.
• Learn more: Get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

by Ann Wylie, president, Wylie Communications Inc.

Most press releases are pretty easy to parody.

Just ask Benny Evangelista, a technology reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. In a Softletter survey of media professionals about the quality of public relations, Evangelista complained of an increase in the number of “boilerplate” press releases — formulaic releases that all “sound basically the same. …

“Something like: ‘XYZ Co. Inc., a leading supplier of the world’s integrated real-time advanced software-aided microchips, announced today the availability of its latest product, the XYZ 4.2, version 3, which will revolutionize the software-aided micro-technology chip industry. “This will revolutionize the software-aided micro-technology chip industry,” said Joe Blow, XYZ Co. Chief Executive Officer and Founder.’”

Why do PR professionals flock to the fill-in-the-blanks model? Certainly not because it stands out in the crowd of all the other releases a reporter is likely to get in a day.

Instead of conforming to the conventional approach — which is dated, formulaic and, let’s face it, dull — choose a better model to follow. Study the winners of PRSA’s Silver Anvil Award, the highest honor in the public relations business. Here are some great approaches I found in the latest crop:

1. Write a feature lead.

Contrary to popular opinion, reporters don’t hate feature leads. They hate crappy feature leads.

Instead of the conventional “today announced that” lead, why not make your release stand out from the crowd with a lead like this one, from Pfizer Animal Health:

“Imagine the first few hours in the recovery room following a hysterectomy or … ligament repair. Consider what post-surgical life has been like for some pets undergoing common surgical procedures; intense hours WITHOUT pain medication. …”

2. Lead with the benefits.

Many Silver Anvil winners lead with the reader benefits. This example is from UnumProvident:

“Employers now have a better way to measure, monitor and manage employee absences, thanks to UnumProvident Corporation’s expanded online Comparative Reporting & Analysis information services.”

Beats by a mile the tired traditional approach: “UnumProvident Corporation today announced the expansion of its online Comparative Reporting & Analysis information services.”

3. Try a tipsheet.

Take the benefits approach to the furthest extreme, and you wind up with a value-added, or service, piece. Explain “how to,” and watch the media pick up your release. Some Silver Anvil-winning approaches:

• “Infuse your party with style: Tips and trends for a spectacular summer soiree,” from VOX vodka
• “Interview opportunity: Tips on how people can get more use out of their health coverage,” from Cigna
• “UPS offers 10 tips for worry-free packing, shipping”

4. Drag them in with your subject line.

“With print, at least they have to pick it up to throw it away,” says Pat Jones, a communicator at TDS Telecom.

Not so when you’re sending a pitch via email. Online, you’re just one click of the delete key away from obscurity. Your only chance to get the message read: the subject line.

A provocative subject line, like this one from Enterpulse, can get your message opened:

“New survey stats for Internet ‘Death Penalty’”

This brisk pitch outlines Internet usage trends, including a “Silent Killer” that can keep people from returning to a company’s site.

5. Give great bio.

Do your executive or director bios read like a resume?

Snooze.

Wake your bios up with human-interest details and storytelling. Here’s a great example from Embassy Suites hotels:

“It all started (when) Carlton Calvin (was) reading a brief item in the Los Angeles Times about the growing popularity of push scooters in Japan. With a spark of creative thinking, Carlton, president of Razor USA LLC, spawned the ‘Razor scooter,’ one of the hottest trends to hit the United States within the last two years.”

Hint: “It all started when …” leads draw the reader in. The moment of creative inspiration is a great place to start an executive or director bio — or any story, for that matter.

Reach bloggers, journalists and readers

Want to master the art of writing successful media-relations materials?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a PR writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a PR writing workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to improve your PR writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next Anatomy of a News Release 2.0 webinar.
• Learn more: Study Ann’s Anatomy of a Release, Pitch and E-mailed Release toolkit. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Get the full story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. And find dozens of advanced PR writing tipsheets on RevUpReadership.com.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2005 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

by Ann Wylie, president, Wylie Communications Inc.

Writers say, “We use the inverted pyramid because readers stop reading after the first paragraph.”

Readers say, “We stop reading after the first paragraph because writers use the inverted pyramid.”

Before you pound out your next pyramid, check out these studies and trends:

Feature-style writing makes readers read more

Feature-style writing increases the chance that readers will spend more time with a communication, read it more completely and read it more often.

That was “one of the most thought-provoking discoveries” of “Impact,” a study by the Readership Institute. Sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Institute was created to identify ways to reverse declining trend in newspaper readership.

The study also found that feature-style writing:

• Increases reader satisfaction
• Is easier to read than the traditional inverted-pyramid news approach
• Improves a communication’s image, making it seem more honest, fun, neighborly, intelligent, in the know and in touch with the values of its readers

That’s a pretty big “impact.”

Inverted pyramids score low in readership

Traditional, inverted-pyramid stories:

• “Do not work well with readers,” and “do not justify their predominance in today’s newspapers”
• Score low in readership and understanding
• Make a mediocre showing in “involvement,” or whether the story made readers care about the news

That’s according to “Ways with Words,” a study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and The Poynter Institute.

The study tested four types of structures:

• The traditional inverted pyramid
• A narrative, or storytelling structure
• Commentary, which tells a story from a viewpoint
• Radical clarity, which gives extra background and context to “explain everything the reader might need explained”

“Ways with Words” researchers identified two inherent problems with the inverted pyramid:

• “The story gets more boring as the reader reads down.”
• “Journalists put background and context in the second half of the pyramid, so the reader who does not know that background cannot understand the top of the story. As a result, only journalists and sources can fully understand inverted-pyramid stories.”

Et tu, AP?

Even The Associated Press is rethinking its commitment to the traditional, “just the facts, ma’am” news approach of the inverted pyramid, according to a recent article in The New York Times.

The nation’s dominant news service is now sending a feature lead in addition to a news lead with its stories. The feature leads are designed to “draw in the reader through imagery, narrative devices, perspective or other creative means,” according to the wire service.

Why the change? The 156-year-old news agency is trying to reach more readers in a competitive information environment. AP leaders believe feature leads are one way to do that.

That’s a far cry from who, what, when, where, why and how.

Use features for hard news

The feature-style story structure doesn’t mean fluff. The best writers can use the feature-style format for hard business, economic, political, environmental and other news.

The feature-style structure:

• Organizes information into a beginning, middle and end
• Includes more colorful details and language
• May use human interest or narrative to illustrate the issues

Use this approach to engage readers about any topic.

Give the pyramid a break

There are still times when the inverted pyramid is the best choice for a story. But writers must also master a structure that works when the inverted pyramid doesn’t.

And that’s the feature-style structure.
Bottom line: If you’re still married to the inverted pyramid, you’re missing the mark.

Build a solid structure

Want to master a story structure that increases readership instead of cutting it short?

• Get it off your desk: Bring Ann’s team in to write compelling copy.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a “Go Beyond the Inverted Pyramid” workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann on developing the feature-style story structure in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next “Beyond the Inverted Pyramid” teleseminar.
• Join the club: Get dozens of tipsheets on the feature-style story structure at RevUpReadership.com.
• Learn more: Get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.