In 1998, I told an embarrassing story about another person in this e-zine. Even today, the details remain too painful to reveal. (Injured parties: You know who you are, and I am STILL SORRY.)

Since the incident — which is referred to as “the incident” by my friends and used as a cautionary tale for younger members of my family — my sister has held an unbending rule: I may not mention her in these pages.

So it is without Lynn’s permission and at the risk of one of my longest, closest, most important relationships that I share with you this e-mail message, which Lynn sent to me. She writes:

“Trozzollo Communications pitched us today on a promotional campaign. When they found out you were my sister, they said, ‘We think Ann is one of the best writers on the planet.’

“And I said, ‘So does she.’”

By the way, Lynn Wylie is turning 50 on May 10. If you know her, please contact her and wish her a wonderful day as she celebrates her first half-century on earth.

Just don’t tell her I sent you.

“I have never, or maybe rarely, had members send e-mails following a session expressing how much they enjoyed a session. I received at least five following this session.”

— Mary Deming Barber, APR, Fellow PRSA, PRSA Alaska
Find out what others say about Ann’s workshops

It’s the good kind of problem to have: PRSA Alaska and the Architecture/Engineering Marketing Association of Alaska both had a little extra money in the bank. Which made chapter leaders ask …

“We’re saving our money … for what?” says AEMAA program director and president-elect Leah Boltz. “We wanted to take our money and really provide a benefit for our members.”

That’s when Boltz had the brilliant idea of bringing me in for a chapter writing workshop in Anchorage. (Little did she know her chapter would wind up with even more money in the bank!)

The secret? A comprehensive PR and marketing plan, as you might expect from these two groups. Among the elements of the plan:

• Offer popular topics. “Our members were interested in writing tips, and their bosses seemed interested in paying for it,” says Mary Deming Barber, APR, Fellow PRSA, and Boltz’s partner on this project. “We positioned the event as one that appealed to anyone who writes for a living, not just public relations professionals. This meant we could reach out to people beyond our own membership and was likely a key to success.”
• Promote aggressively. The publicity team created an extensive plan, targeting people who weren’t members of PRSA or AEMAA and involving individual outreach.
  • Reach out. Publicity team members asked each board member to send the invitation to at least 10 people who were not members.
  • Make it personal. Fundraisers contacted fundraisers; journalists contacted journalists.
  • Tap other markets. Event planners distributed fliers at chapter meetings of other groups, like associations of press women and marketers.
  • Go social. Leaders also published the event on the chapters’ Facebook pages and in a series of tweets.
• Get a sponsor. The chapters secured two corporate sponsors who contributed $1,000 in exchange for logo usage and one free seat at the event. Sponsors also provided graphics for the publicity and made workbook copies.

Two weeks before the workshop, the event had sold out. Even after asking the hotel to reconfigure the room to accommodate more seats, chapter leaders had to start turning people away.

Attendance: More than 100 people — some who flew in from Fairbanks — attended the program. Still, chapter leaders had a substantial waiting list.

“If you consider our chapter has 130 members, and we had 110 at the luncheon, that’s a fairly good ratio,” Barber says. “Attendance at our monthly lunches has been between 30 and 40, down from previous years.”

Between 25 and 35 people usually attend the meetings of AEMAA, which has 50 member firms.

Member service: In a follow-up survey, 100 percent of attendees said they wanted PRSA and AEMAA to bring me back for another workshop.

“I have never, or maybe rarely, had members send e-mails following a session expressing how much they enjoyed a session,” Barber says. “I believe I received at least five following this session. There were also tweets and other discussion about how much individuals learned and requests to be part of future programs.”

Revenue: The event brought in $17,120. After expenses, the chapters split more than $7,500 in profit. Which means they now have even more money in the bank.

What will they do with the extra cash?

“Reinvest it in educational programs and more member benefits,” Boltz says. “Save it for Ann Wylie next year!”

Learn more about my chapter programs and discounts.

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.

Do you have the skills and knowledge you need to …

a

1. Write copy that gets read instead of tossed?

2. Select and use the best structure for organizing information?

3. Use creative material to engage the reader, versus a dull, just-the-facts-ma’am approach?

4. Incorporate the most powerful form of human communication — storytelling — into the piece?

5. Translate numbers and otherwise clarify complex concepts with metaphor?

6. Surprise and delight readers with wordplay?

7. Make your copy clear and easy to understand?

8. Gather the information you need to write copy that grabs and keeps reader attention?

9. Create display copy — headlines, decks, callouts, cutlines and subheads, for instance — to communicate to flippers and skimmers?

10. Work intelligently with a designer to create pieces that enhance readability as well as looking good?

11. Write quickly and well without suffering the obstacles of writer’s block or procrastination?

12. Write Web copy that overcomes the obstacles of reading on the screen?

13. Present and package information on the Web to reach readers online?

14. Write online microcontent — links, headlines, and so forth — that gets the word out on the Web?

15. Write PR pieces that are among the small percentage (3 percent to 45 percent, depending on which study you look at) that actually get used?

16. Come up with fresh ways to approach even repetitive topics and messages (as opposed to writing the same old story over and over again)?

17. Make the approval process efficient and helpful versus a time-consuming, morale-sapping procedure that reduces the effectiveness of your communications?

by Ann Wylie, president, Wylie Communications Inc.

a

I recently sent one of my pals a plea for reading recommendations.

“Read The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron,” he replied. “Read everything by William Styron. Then write like him.”

Not bad advice. After all, as communicators, we can learn a lot from the masters of our crafts — the William Styrons, the P.J. O’Rourkes, the folks who have earned Silver Anvils and other awards.

Consider this your invitation to model the masters, to learn new techniques by studying your favorite communicators’ work. It’s the best way I know to improve your skills.

Here’s a six-step process to get you started:

1. Browse the best.

If you’re going to model the masters, you need to look at the masters — the best communications being produced in any field. For me, “the best stuff” includes:

• The leads, kickers and classic feature structure of The Wall Street Journal

• Men’s Health’s tricks for packaging basic how-to information into compelling articles and departments

• Warren Buffett’s methods for bringing the driest financial formulas to life through humor, anecdote and metaphor

• Southwest Airline’s ability to make how-to-fasten-your-seatbelt information amusing enough to pay attention to

• Approaches used by other award-winning writers, editors and webmasters

So ask yourself, “What communications do I most admire?” Then add those to your regular reading and review list.

2. Forage more widely.

The next step is to forage more widely, or to make sure you’re looking at great pieces of communication — not just the ones you need to gather information and conduct transactions in your daily life.

One way I forage more widely is to look at winners of major communication competitions. For instance, I follow the winners of the National Magazine Awards — which explains why I subscribe to New York even though I live in Missouri and to Parenting even though I have no children.

3. Read like a writer.

As you study the masters, make sure you’re reading as a writer, not just as a reader. Readers read for information and entertainment. Writers read for information and entertainment, too. But they also read for something else: technique.

Another writer might introduce you to a new way of crafting a headline, constructing a metaphor or structuring a story.

As William Faulkner said, “Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.”

4. Clip it.

Next, start a clip file of the pieces you admire most.

• Rip out articles that do a stellar job of demonstrating the WIIFM to the reader.

• Bookmark Websites that allow visitors to experience a new process, service or product instead of just reading about it.

• Copy magazine articles that offer good examples of “telling and selling” the story in the headlines, subheads, callouts and captions.

One guideline to follow: Whenever you hear yourself saying, “I wish I’d created that,” “that” goes into the clip file.

5. Study it.

Now that you have a file bulging with great communication samples, go through it again. This time, take each piece apart and put it back together until you understand why you like it and what the communicator did to make it that way.

6. Steal the techniques (not the words).

Now it’s time to model the masters, or pattern your pieces after the best talent in the field.

Note: We’re not talking about plagiarism here. I once outlined this approach to a group of communicators in a seminar. At the break, one of the participants pulled me aside and proudly explained how she collected The Wall Street Journal headlines — then used them verbatim in her own newsletter.

Yikes! That’s not modeling. That’s plagiarizing.

The key to modeling the masters is to steal the techniques, not the words. Modeling the masters means getting inspiration from the very best communicators out there, then adapting their approaches — not adopting them, but adapting them — to your own work.

Try it yourself. Feel free to borrow and improve on other communicators’ methods. It’s a widely practiced form of flattery. Take whatever you can, and keep T.S. Eliot’s advice close to heart.

“Amateurs plagiarize,” he said. “Real writers steal.”

Open the Creativity Toolbox

Want to come up with fresh ways of telling the same old story?

• Bring Ann to your organization for a workshop on Opening the Creativity Toolbox.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on developing creative story approaches at RevUpReadership.com.
• Get ideas for making your own communications more creative with a communication review.

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 © 2003 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

by Ann Wylie, president, Wylie Communications Inc.

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How do your writing skills stack up?

Find out with Wylie Communications’ new writing assessment. This free yardstick will help you identify where you are and how to get to the next level. Plus, you’ll get free tips and tools for improving your skills.

In these days of enormous changes in media technology, vast increases in information overload and almost complete transformation in readership habits, monitoring and improving your writing skills is essential.

Take the next step

Not where you want to be yet? Use this tool as a professional-development yardstick. Here’s how:

• Identify your most urgent skill — something you need to do well every day, but that you couldn’t give yourself the highest marks on.

• Focus on developing that skill for the next six months. Read books and articles, attend workshops and teleseminars, or do whatever you can to master that single area of expertise.

• Retake the assessment and identify your next area for development.

• Repeat. As you continue to polish your skills, revisit this assessment every quarter or so. You’ll track your progress and identify the next area to focus on for improvement.

That’s what the best writers — the masters of their craft — do.

Good luck!

Polish your writing skills

Want to master the art of writing better, easier and faster?

• Check out Ann’s Power Pack of learning tools.
• Get more than 1,750 tipsheets for improving your writing at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming writing teleseminars and workshops.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to improve your writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips 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 © 2005 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

by Ann Wylie, president, Wylie Communications Inc.

a

“What’s worse than training your workers and losing them? Not training them and keeping them.”

— Zig Ziglar,
motivational speaker

I was having lunch with the vice president of corporate communications at a California-based Fortune 500 company when the topic of bad writing came up.

He detailed the problems his company was having because so many communicators struggled with their writing skills. Among the problems he mentioned:

• The VP spent one-quarter of his time rewriting copy instead of focusing on communication strategy.

• Employees didn’t receive and act on key messages because they didn’t read employee newsletters and intranet stories. The result: Employees didn’t support — or sometimes even know about — corporate initiatives.

• Press coverage was mediocre because press releases were mediocre.

“What’s all this costing your company?” I asked.

“Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said, “in lost productivity, lost opportunities and wasted executive time.”

A good writer is hard to find

My California client isn’t alone. Communication executives bemoan the lack of good writers:

• Senior public relations practitioners believe writing is the area where young professionals need the most improvement, according to a survey by the Public Relations Society of American’s Counselor’s Academy.

• “Our client surveys have consistently shown that good writing is one of the five top performance measures in gauging client service,” Bob Druckenmiller, CEO of Porter Novelli, tells The Strategist. “At the same time, we’ve seen a growth in concern about the quality of writing by our clients and, of course, by us.”

• “Young people don’t enter the field as skilled in writing as they once did,” Ann Barkelew, senior vice president, partner and general manager of Fleishman-Hillard, tells PR Tactics. “The overall level of proficiency has declined.”

What’s a business communicator to do? Here are five ways to improve your team’s writing skills:

1. Place a value on writing.

If you want better writing, you need to value better writers.

But in most organizations these days, managers value strategic skills far more than technical ones. No wonder your most talented communicators are writing communication plans instead of newsletters and brochures.

Instead, give your top writers a path for success.

Back to the drawing board: Hallmark Cards, the social expression giant that boasts the world’s largest creative staff, offers creative folks two career paths. One is the traditional hierarchical path, where a successful artist becomes a manager, then a director, then a vice president.

But the second path is a creative one, where a successful artist becomes an illustrator II, III, senior illustrator, master illustrator and so forth. These top artists never plan a product line or manage a staff (though they do lead by example); they climb the career ladder while staying at their drawing tables.

Distinguished tacticians: AT&T uses another approach. It designates highly successful communicators “Distinguished Members of the Public Relations Department.” The program was designed to reward communicators who weren’t eligible for promotion for one reason or another, including that their expertise was too tactical, technical or specialized.

The organization’s top leaders nominate communicators who make ongoing, significant contributions to the department and discuss the nominations until they reach consensus. In addition to the nice title, the honor also comes with a pay increase (about U.S. $10,000) and an office space and furniture upgrade.

Rewarding writing: Of course strategy is important. But it’s not enough. (After all, the best strategy combined with the worst writing will fail just as will the worst strategy paired with the best writing.)
Find a way to reward great writing in your organization, and watch the writing get better and better.

2. Don’t try to fix bad writers.

Writers are like husbands. It’s a mistake to take on terribly flawed ones with the intention of fixing them later.

The solution: Hire better writers in the first place.

Nobody’s ever accused me of being overly modest, but as a trainer, even I know I can’t transform a shaky writer into a Shakespeare during a writing workshop or two. Instead, I follow the rule of 10 percent — figure you can help your writers improve by 10 percent through training. Add another 10 percent a year if you offer consistent, ongoing, follow-up training and coaching.

That means you can help a B writer become an A writer and an A writer become a master.  But if your writers are failing, you can only hope to help them attain a low C — and that’s with your daily hard work and support.

I’ve been there, tried that and trashed the T-shirt. It’s a miserable way to live and work. Instead, consider only good and excellent writers for your writing posts.

That means you need to get better at evaluating potential writers and rewarding them.

Evaluate potential writers: Don’t even think about looking at published clips. There are a lot of great clips out there with writers’ names on them that are really the work of editors and managers. You know that. So what to do?

• Request first drafts as well as published clips.

• Talk in detail to the manager who edited the project — not just about the candidate in general, but about the piece itself. You want to learn what the candidate contributed to the piece. Be specific: Ask about particular phrases and anecdotes.

• Assign the candidate a writing project, if possible. I’m not talking about some ridiculous little writing test you give during the interview, but an actual piece for your newsletter or brochure. Plan to pay the going rate for freelance writing, and plan to use the piece. If the copy isn’t usable, the candidate probably won’t be, either.

• Develop an assessment tool for evaluating writing samples and projects. Mine includes a three-point scale (great, OK, not a clue) and covers 40 categories, from positioning the story in the readers’ best interest, to structure, to creative elements, to display copy.

Offer excellent salary and benefits: Enough said.

3. Attend your own writing workshops.

Here are three reasons to go to the writing workshops you schedule with outside trainers:

• You need to be on the same page. If you’re not there, you can’t lead folks in implementing the trainer’s ideas.

• You might learn something yourself. One of the highlights of the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University is the throng of Pulitzer Prize winners. Not just behind the microphone, but in the audience. These folks have earned the highest U.S. honor their profession bestows — but still seek ways to polish their skills. Shouldn’t you, too?

• Your writers will complain about you behind your back if you’re not there.

4. Offer ongoing coaching and training.

Writing training is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Keep up the momentum after your workshop with lunch-and-learns, coaching and assigned readings. RevUpReadership.com is a good resource for continuous learning.

5. Celebrate success.

Now that you’re seeing better writing, spread the word. Share your team members’ great work with each other to model what you’re looking for (and, frankly, to generate friendly competition).
As famous writing trainer Ann Wylie likes to say, “The behavior we celebrate is the behavior they replicate.”

How to improve your team’s writing skills

So: Recruit a good writer. Give her a career track. Pay her, train her, coach her, and show off her great work.

That should be business as usual in business communications.

Polish your writing skills

Want to master the art of writing better, easier and faster?

• Check out Ann’s Power Pack of learning tools.
• Get more than 1,750 tipsheets for improving your writing at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming writing teleseminars and workshops.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to improve your writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

Copyright © 2007 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.