Think of your callout as a movie trailer for your story.

Movie trailers give the best stuff away for free to entice moviegoers to buy a ticket. Callouts — aka pull quotes — give the best stuff away for free to entice readers to read your story.

So go ahead: Find the most provocative point in the story — the more specific, the better — and give it away in your callout.

Here are three types of callouts to consider:

1. A dramatic moment

Choose the most dramatic moment in the story — the time when everything started going awry. If the callout is powerful enough, readers will read the story to find out what happened. That’s the technique we use for callouts like these for Saint Luke’s Health:

“Where my right elbow had been, I felt this hole.”

— Linda Thomssen, symphony violinist who smashed her upper arm

2. A provocative detail

Present a provocative detail that makes readers ask, “Am I ready for that?” This callout, from a conference brochure we wrote for the Public Relations Society of America, uses the same approach:

Nine out of 10 journalists use search engines to do their jobs. Do you know how to help Google find your release?

3. A fascinating specific

Entertainment is the No. 2 reward of reading. Call out details that demonstrate that your piece is interesting read. The New York Times Book Review does that in these callouts, which promote not only the review, but the book as well:

Instead of chanting “air ball,” basketball fans in the Chinese interior employ the Sichuan word for “impotent.”

— from a review of The Only Game in Town

Call to action

Take time to choose and craft compelling callouts. Research shows that callouts attract attention, draw readers into your copy, make your messages more memorable and more. Get more tips for writing callouts.

Plus, a short, carefully crafted callout might also make the perfect tweet.

Rev Up Readership

Want to reach more readers by revitalizing your publication, Website or blog?

• Bring Ann to your organization for a Rev Up Readership workshop.
• Ask Ann to help revamp your publication, website or blog.
• Get ideas for improving your own publication, website or blog with a communication review.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on planning powerful publications at RevUpReadership.com.
• Read Ann’s Plan Powerful Publications learning tools.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich wants prosecutors in his federal corruption trial to play all 500 hours of the FBI’s secretly recorded tapes of his conversations.

“Of course,” I thought when I heard the news. “He’s practicing AKK.”

AKK is The New York Times’ acronym for “all known knowledge.” That’s where — instead of carefully sifting through the information on your topic and building a cogent argument out of it — you dump all that information on your audience members and let them sort it out.

AKK doesn’t inform people; it just numbs them.

And that’s what Blagojevich’s defense team is counting on: burying jurors under so much information that they can’t think. (This is also known as the “That document you requested is somewhere in this semi truck filled with paper” defense.)

Unlike Blagojevich, you actually want to help your audience members understand your topic. So your job isn’t to forward AKK; your job is to find a tight story angle on the topic and communicate it efficiently.

Except when you don’t want them to understand. And then, by all means, drown your audience members in data.

Cut Through the Clutter

Want to master the art of making all your copy clearer and more concise?

• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing or editing project.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Cut Through the Clutter” workshop.
• Work with Ann to Cut Through the Clutter in your own copy in one-on-one writing coaching.
• Get dozens of “Cut Through the Clutter” tipsheets on RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Cut Through the Clutter” teleseminar.
• Read Ann’s “Cut Through the Clutter” manual.
• Get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.

A few years ago, my nephew Evan — aka one of the five most adorable boys in the world — was attending Catholic preschool.

BLAH BLAH BLAH: "Clichés are a sign of a mind at rest," says author Sol Stein. Wake up your writing — and your reader — by reinventing clichés.

It was his introduction to Jesus and heaven, and he’d been busy processing how all of this applied to his own life. When his uncle died, he wondered aloud when Jesus was going to finish fixing Uncle Carl and send him home.

When he and I sat down for a visit a few months after school started, he asked, “Aunt Ann, why is your hair white?”I answered the way I answer all the 4-year-olds who ask that question: “I don’t know, Evan. Why do you think my hair is white?”

“Because you’re going to visit Jesus?”
he ventured.

Thankfully, Evan’s guestimate has been wrong to date. But it’s not the first interesting response I’ve received about my loopy hair since it started turning white when I was 16. And since I belatedly made rock star stylist Mary Jane Van de Castle CEO of my head, may hair has been getting longer and kookier.

My sister, Lynn — the one who inherited all the good judgment in my family — has started urgently counseling headbands. Then last month, at a spa, a woman asked a question similar to my nephew’s, though less gracious:

“What’s that on your head?” she asked.
“A Chia Pet?”

Though I couldn’t take that as a compliment, I did appreciate her excellent use of analogy.

It goes without saying that my next stop was the headband store. When I showed my husband my new purchases, he said: “How nice. A Chia-management solution.”

“Darling,” I said, lovingly, “I believe you’ve just resurrected a cliché.”

What’s your least favorite cliché or buzz phrase? How can you revive that cliché to turn it into wordplay? Try:

• Reversing, combining or flipping overused expressions
• Riffing off of worn-out sayings
• Twisting tired turns of phrase

Play with your words

Want to master the art of making your copy more creative and engaging through wordplay?

• Invite Ann’s team to handle a special writing project.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to make your copy more creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on playing with your words at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next creative writing teleseminar.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

An old friend was kvetching recently about his lousy job. After working for a series of magazines, he’d landed at the metro daily, where he was editing a daily page of tips and tricks for the lifestyle section.

“My passion is for the long-form narrative,” he said, sniffing at the prospect of being reduced to writing nibbles and bits of information.

Oh, b-rother!

Hey, I love writing narratives, too. But narrative isn’t the only form, and it’s not always the right form for the job. In fact, sometimes fill-in-the-blanks templates actually serve your readers better.

Save reading — and writing — time

Consistent, standard templates work because once they’re familiar with the template, readers spend less time learning a story’s structure, write Martin J. Eppler and Jeanne Mengis in “Preparing Messages for Information Overload Environments (PDF),” an IABC Research Foundation report.

That reduces processing time and effort. Which explains why companies like Procter & Gamble use standardized one-page memo templates to improve productivity.

Standard templates also save communicators writing time. That makes templates perfect for hacking out B projects in communication triage.

So you might consider standardizing press releases, web pages, proposals, case studies — even your personality profiles. The secret is to develop standard structures that are flexible enough to cover a variety of subjects and to make sure everyone uses the templates.

Here are 10 templates to consider:

1. Story grids

Are you comparing X number of items by Y number of characteristics? Make your story a table or grid.

Meeting stories are tough. Too often, communicators blah-blah on about who said what in chronological order. “When it’s just a meeting where some things were approved and some action was taken, wouldn’t this information better benefit readers as a grid?” Scanlan asks. I think it would.

2. Case studies, testimonials and mini narratives

For case studies, testimonials — even mini narratives — try this simple structure:

• Problem
• Solution
• Results

3. Web pages

In a recent project, we created templates for for some sections of  Saint Luke’s Health System’s new website. Department pages, for instance, included:

• Highlights: A bulleted list of our three most compelling differentiators — firsts, mosts, bests, biggests and onlies
• Nut graph: A one-paragraph summary of the department
• The team: Notable players
• Services: A bulleted list
• Learn more: Contacts and links
• Testimonial: A callout from a patient

Write by number

Words like “template,” “formula” and “recipe” are sometimes seen as profanities in a creative field like writing. But good writing is at least as much science as art. And you can’t argue with results like “easier to read” and “easier to write.”

No doubt about it: “T-e-m-p-l-a-t-e” is not a four-letter word.

Build a solid structure

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

• Bring Ann’s team in to write compelling copy.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Go Beyond the Inverted Pyramid” workshop.
• Work with Ann on developing the feature-style story structure in one-on-one writing coaching.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Beyond the Inverted Pyramid” teleseminar.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on the feature-style story structure at RevUpReadership.com.
• Get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.

___

Sources: Martin J. Eppler and Jeanne Mengis, “Preparing Messages for Information Overload Environments” (PDF), IABC Research Foundation, 2009

Chip Scanlan, “Nonlinear Narratives,” The Poynter Institute, Oct. 16, 2003

Josh Awtry, “Grid Tips,” The Poynter Institute, Oct. 15, 2003

Josh Awtry, “‘There just isn’t a story here,’” The Poynter Institute, Oct. 15, 2003

The more you talk about yourself on Twitter, the fewer followers you’re likely to have.

Or so says viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella.

Using TweetPsyche data on more than 60,000 Twitter users, he looked at self-reference on Twitter. He found that Twitter users who don’t talk about themselves much tend to have more users.

“Want more followers?” Zarrella asks. “Stop talking about yourself.”

In other TweetPsyche research, Zarrella found that Mom was right about social media as well as so many other things. To get more followers on Twitter, Zarrella writes, you should:

• Be positive. Writing about sadness, aggression, morbid thoughts and negative emotions and feelings correlates with fewer followers. (What a shock!) So if you want more followers, cheer up.
• Be sociable. Social language correlates with more followers, Zarrella found. So use words like “you” and “we” and write more about relationships and communication.

And remember: “You” is the most retweeted word in the English language.

So on Twitter as in so much else in life, better “you” than “me.”

Get the word out on the Web

Want to master the art of reaching readers online?

• Read Ann’s Web writing learning tools.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming teleseminars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a Web writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your Web writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

I remember the good old days at Hallmark Cards, when I was responsible for the company’s gorgeous, glossy employee magazine.

Period.

Yup, I wrote and managed one quarterly publication.

Occasionally I’d pitch in to help a colleague who produced the daily employee newsletter. I’d write a book chapter or brochure now and again. I believe I remember making a horrible video once.

But the gist of my job was to produce four magazines a year. That came out to about 20 publications over the course of my five-year career at Hallmark.

I know folks now who produce that many pieces a week.

Overwhelmed by assignments

And that’s one of the problems with communication today. (Oh, my A-Rod, did I just type that? What am I, 90?)

But it’s true: One of the problems with communication today is that communicators have far, far too much work to do to do anything well. That leaves us with two options:

• Resign ourselves to lives of mediocrity. Oh, we’ll get everything done, all right. But none of it will be very good. And that will make us very, very sad. (Not to mention exhausted and cranky.)
• Perform communication triage.

(Here’s a tip: Choose No. 2.)

Communication triage is actually pretty easy to perform. Conveniently, it takes three steps:

• Prioritize. Sort projects into A, B and C pieces — or essential, nice to have and frankly, doesn’t deliver much value.
• Allocate resources. Invest in A projects, develop templates and other tools to streamline B projects and let C projects die (or kill them).
• Sell your plan. Planning and metrics are excellent alternatives to your third option, which is doing daily battle over priorities and resources.

Improve approvals

Want to master the art of managing the approval process?

• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing or editing project.
• Work with Ann to polish your writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on managing the approval process at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Develop an Approval Process That Doesn’t Drive You Nuts” teleseminar.
• Read Ann’s “Develop an Approval Process That Doesn’t Drive You Nuts” handbook.

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.

My friends at TELLABS write brisk, interesting message statements — in 23 words or less.

Using message map guidelines from Tripp Frohlichstein, president of MediaMasters, they write one key message and three supporting points, like this:

“Tellabs innovates to help customers succeed — by cutting costs, generating revenue and improving the user experience.”

The resulting 23-words-or-less message translates into about seven seconds when spoken, says George Stenitzer, vice president of Corporate Communications for TELLABS. That’s the length of an average sound bite in the news media.

I thought of this formula when I read an airline’s 27-word strategy and core business message:

“AIR FRANCE KLM’s strategy can be expressed as: one Group, two Airlines, and three Core Businesses. KLM’s core businesses are passenger transport, cargo shipment, and aircraft maintenance.”

Short. Sweet. Neat.

How could you improve your message statements by adhering to a tight word count?

Cut Through the Clutter resources

Want to master the art of making all your copy clearer and more concise?

• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing or editing project.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Cut Through the Clutter” workshop.
• Work with Ann to Cut Through the Clutter in your own copy in one-on-one writing coaching.
• Get dozens of “Cut Through the Clutter” tipsheets on RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Cut Through the Clutter” teleseminar.
• Read Ann’s “Cut Through the Clutter” manual.
• 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.

Three scientific ways to get your fans to spread the word

Dan Zarrella does it again.

The social and viral marketing scientist who brought you the science of retweets has turned his attention to what makes blog postings and articles go viral on Facebook.

Here’s what he’s learned:

1. Keep it simple.

The lower the reading grade level of the article headline, the more likely it is to get shared on Facebook, Zarrella’s research shows. For instance, headlines written at the:

• Fifth-grade level got shared 15 percent more often than average
• Ninth-grade level got shared 10 percent more often than average
• 15th-grade level got shared nearly 20 percent less often than average

2. Numbers count.

Publication headlines with numbers sell stories. That’s because they promise quantity and value. (Oddly, odd numbers sell better than even ones.)

The same thing’s true in social media. Add a numeral to the headline for your blog posting, and it will make the rounds more widely on Facebook.

“In a wide range of marketing arenas, digits have been shown to perform very well,” Zarrella writes. “They tend to help conversion rates in the form of prices. And on social news sites like Digg, ‘Top 10’ style posts have always done well.”

In Zarrella’s research, blog posting and article headlines:

• Including the numerals 1 through 9 got passed along 1.25 percent more often than average
• Without digits got shared nearly .75 percent less often than average

3. Publish on the weekend.

People post fewer articles on Facebook on the weekend. But the stories that do get posted on Saturday and Sunday get shared more often, on average, than those that get posted during the week.

Why?

One reason is that more than half of U.S. companies block Facebook, so people can only use the social network at home, Zarrella says. Also, the mainstream Facebook audience doesn’t use Facebook for work.

Zarrella found that pieces posted on:

• Saturday get passed along nearly 40 percent more often than average
• Sunday get shared more than 15 percent more often than average
• Weekdays get shared about as often as or a little less often than average

“If you want your article to be shared on Facebook,” Zarrella says, “try posting it on the weekend.”

Check out Zarrella’s Facebook-sharing research methodology.

Get the word out on the Web

Want to master the art of reaching readers online?

• Read Ann’s Web writing learning tools.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming teleseminars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a Web writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your Web 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 © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

Need to kick-start creativity? Try a change of scenery

I think it’s time I came out of the closet: I am not an enormous nature lover. Never have enjoyed being outside. After all, there are gnats out there, and weather.

For 51 years, my idea of the great outdoors has been the space between front door and car door.

While my sister, Lynn Wylie, has entertained herself exploring caves, jumping from airplanes into kayaks and trekking through Lady Gaga only knows what kind of wilderness, I’ve enjoyed a civilized life. A life involving air conditioning and wine. A life spent studying Lorrie Moore’s sentence structure, Rick Bayless’ ginger margaritas and Maksim Chmerkovskiy’s abs.

So when I asked Lynn what I could get her for her 50th birthday, I was a little surprised that her wish list contained only one item: She wanted me to go hiking with her. And I’m not talking about my traditional use of the word “hiking” — aka exploring the Louvre. She wanted me to tromp around outside in the Utah desert.

What was she thinking?

OK, to be fair, Lynn was suggesting a spa. A very nice spa: Red Mountain Spa, just outside Zion National Park. Plus a lodge near Bryce Canyon situated just yards from the renowned restaurant Hell’s Backbone Grill.

Reader, as it turns out, I LOVE nature! I just don’t want to sleep outside or relieve myself behind a tree. And I do think five-star meals should be part of every vacation experience.

Why didn’t anyone tell me about the pleasures of trekking through postcard settings, breathing the clear desert air on a cool spring morning, seeing the world from the tops of mountains you’ve climbed all by yourself (Lynn calls these particular mountains “rocks,” but still … )? I felt like I was living the lyrics of a John Denver song.

And guess what? Turns out this sort of thing is fabulous for creativity.

Get out of your own backyard

I have long preached the gospel of getting out of your comfort zone when it comes to nurturing creative ideas.

Find inspiration outside your company, industry or geography, I’ve counseled. Otherwise you risk practicing what marketing guru Dan Kennedy calls “creative incest.” Like real incest, he says, the product of creative incest just keeps getting dumber and dumber and dumber with each generation.

Turns out, as it so often does, that the choir I was preaching to should have been me: You can also enhance creativity by trying something new — learning a new language, experiencing a different culture or letting go of the remote and heading for the hills (or rocks).

How can you get out of your office — and out of your comfort zone — to kick-start your own creativity?

Open the Creativity Toolbox

Want to kick-start your creative process?

• Bring Ann to your organization for a workshop on Opening the Creativity Toolbox.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on nurturing creativity at RevUpReadership.com.
• Get ideas for making your 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 © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

The news of storytelling’s death has been greatly exaggerated

“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of Story. As you may have heard, it’s kaput — or, at the very least, terminally ill, wracked by videogames, wikis, recaps, talkbacks, YouTube, ADD, and the rise of a multiplatform, multipolar, mashup-media culture. … Beginnings, middles, and ends are headed for the attic, next to the box marked VCR Rewinders/Beastmaster Franchise.”

— Scott Brown, Wired columnist, in “Story Bored”

Brothers and sisters, let’s let Scott Brown mourn the death of Story. We have more interesting things to do — like figuring out the beginning, middle and end for our next blog posting.

For the record, I’m a congenital worrywart (a gene passed down on my mother’s side). And I’m not troubled at all about the demise of storytelling.

Because storytelling is doing fine.

Sob story

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had my concerns. On the day I found out about Twitter, I had to lie down and put a washcloth over my eyes.

“Really?” I sniffed. “Are we really going to do this in 140 characters or less?”

Luckily for me, that happened to be the same day that a quarter of a million kids lined up around my block. They were there to be first in line to buy the 652-page Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when my local Barnes & Noble opened at midnight. (And those were the poor folks who weren’t among the 750,000 to preorder the book from Barnes & Noble alone.)

Storytelling dead? Folks, she doesn’t even have the sniffles.

Tweet me a story

And technology’s not about to kill her. Consider:

• iPads and other e-readers actually kindle more linear, narrative reading.
• Some of the best nonfiction stories I’ve ever experienced are on the “This American Life” podcasts I listen to on my iPhone.
• And the cleverest among us — and by that I mean the folks at the FBIPressOffice — have figured out how to write mini-narratives in 140 characters or less. Three of my favorites:

“Gotcha!: Bad Cops Caught, Part II: Five cops go bad in Memphis, Tennessee, and the FBI worked with polic.. http://bit.ly/d4M1h”

“A DANGEROUS BETRAYAL: The Case of the Cash Hungry Contractor: An undercover sting helped prevent a federal energ.. http://tinyurl.com/lzvnrp”

“CANINE CRUELTY: Five-State Dog Fighting Ring Busted: A year-long multi-agency investigation results in approxima.. http://tinyurl.com/mffmh6”

So friends, let’s not waste another instant kvetching about the death of Story. Instead, let’s invest that time in mastering the art of the storyteller.

It’s an art we’ll be able to use for a long, long time.

Master the Art of the Storyteller

Want to put the most powerful form of human communication to work in your very next piece?

• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Art of the Storyteller” workshop.
• Work with Ann to Master the Art of the Storyteller in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Read Ann’s storytelling learning tools.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on storytelling at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Master the Art of the Storyteller” teleseminar.

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.