I’ve been nagging my husband, Phil, to get regular massages — at least every other week — for 23 years. You’ll feel better, I say. Reduce stress. Get some blood flowing into your creaky knees. Be more flexible at the gym.

VOICE OF AUTHORITY: Academics, experts and analysts top the chart of the most trustworthy people, according to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer

Nah, he’s said for 23 years. Don’t need ‘em.

Last week, Phil had his once-every-five-years rubdown at Ten Thousand Waves in Santa Fe.

“You should get regular massages,” his massage therapist, Karma, said. “At least every other week.”

“I should get regular massages,” Phil reported to me later. “At least every other week.”

While I’m grateful for Phil’s good Karma for setting him on the path to enlightenment, I also found it a little irritating that my husband bought the massage therapist’s advice, but not mine.

But then, social science explains that. Turns out Phil was just responding to the persuasive principle of authority: We look to experts to show us the way.

Authority recently got a boost, according to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual study of global opinion leaders. While people are less likely to trust their peers (a consequence of having 762 “friends” on Facebook?), they place the most trust in expert spokespeople and information sources.

Academics, experts and analysts are now the top three voices of credible information — outweighing peers, CEOs and company employees, according to the barometer. And analysts’ reports and articles in business magazines and newspapers now out-influence conversations with company employees and advice on social networking sites, according to the study.

So how can you tap the persuasive power of authority?

• Quote experts and authority figures in your persuasive copy.
• Don’t drop traditional PR efforts. Journalists remain important authority figures, according to the Edelman study. Let them help you tell your story.
• Cite your credentials. When an executive published the credentials of people brought in to turn around a London bureau, the government monitoring and advisory panel was more accepting of the rate and type of change the team made, reports Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.
• Arrange for someone else to cite your credentials. In a study, researcher Jeffrey Pfeffer and his team asked one group to read passages about an author’s credentials from the author’s agent and a second group to read the same comments made by the author himself, according to Yes! Participants rated the author more highly on nearly every measure when the author’s agent sang his praises than when the author tooted his own horn. Testimonials, third-party introductions and displays of your diplomas and trophies shine a light for you without making you look arrogant.
• Look the part. Use design to increase your authority in social media, suggests viral marketing scientist Dan Zarella. Off-the-shelf themes and default templates are for rookies. Invest in a custom design that’s unique to your site, blog or page and that presents you as an expert. While you’re at it, make sure your design is sophisticated and professional. Avoid a MySpace-y look.

And if all else fails? Maybe you can get Karma to intervene.

Move readers to act

Want to master the art of writing copy that sells, not just products and services, but programs, plans and positions, as well?

• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Think Like a Reader” workshop.
• Work with Ann to Think Like a Reader in one-on-one writing coaching.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on persuasive writing at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find out about Ann’s next “Think Like a Reader” teleseminar.
• Read Ann’s “Think Like a Reader” toolkit.

___

Sources: Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Robert B. Cialdini, Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, Free Press, 2008; 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, Edelman, 2010

“On the show today: giant carnivorous birds, flying snakes, and what all of that has to do with how you season your French fries.”

That’s how Caitlin Kenney, associate producer of NPR’s “Planet Money,” introduced a recent podcast about the history of spices. These summaries at the top of radio shows and podcasts are called billboards.

And that’s what publication editors can learn from podcasters: Billboard your stories. Tell readers what they’re going to get and sell them on the story to promote your content.

Nobody billboards better than “Planet Money.” In fact, sometimes one host will congratulate another on a billboard.

“That was very well billboarded,” contributing editor Alex Blumberg said after Kenney’s spice story promotion.

So how can you create praiseworthy billboards for your publication?

1. Choose the right billboard.

Billboards are known as “refers” in the publication world. (Not that, silly! Refers because they refer readers to specific stories.)

They come in many forms. Consider billboarding your story in coverlines, tables of contents, skyboxes, rails, refers and indexes.

2. Draw readers in.

There are two main ways to drive readers to your story, whether in print or in podcast: 1) promise a benefit or 2) entertain. So focus on news readers can use or choose or on creative techniques like humor, drama or human interest for your billboard.

“Planet Money” entertains with billboards that tease the listener into sticking around for the story. (Yes, these people manage to make complicated economics stories hilarious or heart-warming — a skill any communicator could emulate.)

Here are some recent “Planet Money” billboards:

“On the show today, homeowners who want to be foreclosed on, and banks saying, ‘Eeeh … let’s wait a minute.’ The foreclosure mess enters a topsy-turvy, upside-down new phase, and we’ll hear all about the fascinating details from a foreclosure attorney in Phoenix.”

Alex Blumberg: “Our topic today, David, is tied to our economic indicator. The indicator is $14 billion. And that is one estimate for the size of California’s largest cash crop.” David Kestenbaum: “Oranges?” Alex: “Nope.” David: “Organic milk?” Alex: “No. … Marijuana.” David: “I thought that number seemed high.”

“On our show today, a story about a cable TV producer from New Jersey, a podcasting Libertarian economist, an international pop superstar and the two dead economists who brought them all together.”

“On the podcast today, we have something almost every economist loves and almost everyone else hates. Well, not everyone, but a lot of people.”

Adam Davidson: “Today, we have the second half of our look at Denmark.” David Kestenbaum: “Denmark: the awesome-est economy on earth, the country that figured everything out and figured out the best way to …” Adam: “(interrupting) Alright, David. Easy, easy …”

Get more tips for writing refers.

3. Don’t drop the billboard.

Content promotion — advertising stories within your publication — helps drive readership. Don’t forget to promote your stories within the publication itself.

Rev Up Readership

Want to master the art of lifting your ideas off the page with display copy?

• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Rev Up Readership” workshop.
• Work with Ann to write better display copy in one-on-one writing coaching.
• Have Ann review your publication or Website.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on writing better display copy at RevUpReadership.com.

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.

Reach Readers Online

Want more tips for getting the word out on the Web? If so, please join me at PRSA’s March 25 teleseminar, “Writing for Social Media.” You’ll learn how to:

• Use the 70-20-10 rule for engaging your followers, plus other tips for making sure your status updates are welcome guests, not intrusive pests
• Pass the “who cares?” test and four other techniques for becoming a resource, not a bore, on social media.
• Get retweeted. Five steps for expanding your influence and reach on Twitter
• Tweet like the FBI. Write dramatic, compelling status updates that draw followers and get clicks
• Make your posts personable. There’s a reason they call it “social” media
• Tweak your tweets. Get your message across in 140 characters or less. Plus, learn how to make140 characters go further — and when you must come in under the character limit

Learn about my other upcoming teleseminars.

Newspapers still set the media agenda, Pew study says

Tempted to throw up a Facebook fan page and call it your media relations campaign? Pitching to bloggers and tweeting is way more important than sending a release to the local daily, right?

Not so fast.

After examining a week of news activity in Baltimore, the Pew Research Center found that 95 percent of stories that contained new information came from traditional media. And most of those came from … newspapers.

We’re rehashing the same old story

“Most of what the public learns is still overwhelmingly driven by traditional media — particularly newspapers,” the study’s researchers found. “These stories tended to set the media agenda for most other media outlets.”

Most “news,” it turns out, is just rehashed. Eight out of 10 stories published, in fact, were just repackaged versions of previously published pieces.

Blogs, Twitter and other social media “played only a limited role,” the researchers wrote, “mainly [as] an alert system and a way to disseminate stories from other places.”

Releases play a bigger role

News releases also play a bigger role in traditional news reporting than they have in the past.

“As the press scales back on original reporting and dissemination, reproducing other people’s work becomes a bigger part of the news media system,” the researchers wrote. “We found official press releases often appear word for word in first accounts of events, though often not noted as such.”

Want to reach bloggers? The best way may be to send a release to newspaper reporters.

Don’t ignore ‘new’ media

But don’t give up on social media, either. It expands the reach and influence of any story, regardless of its origins.

For example, where do you think I found out about this study?

On Twitter.

Reach bloggers, journalists and readers

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

• Read the full study.
• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing or editing project. As PRSA’s “national writing coach,” Ann knows how to get the word out through media relations.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a PR writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Find out about Ann’s next “Anatomy of a News Release” teleseminar.
• Study Ann’s “Anatomy of a Release, Pitch and E-mailed Release” toolkit.
• Get dozens of advanced PR writing tipsheets on RevUpReadership.com.
• 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.

Intranets are getting more mobile, according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen. Some 30 percent of the Nielsen’s “10 Best Intranets of 2010″ had special mobile features, he reports.

Here are some approaches you can steal from these award-winning sites:

• Create a separate design for mobile users. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), for instance, built a dedicated application instead of a site to optimize the design for the iPhone.
• Develop social features for individuals. Walmart, for instance, offers discussion and profile pages. Trend Micro’s TrendSpace includes employee-contributed content. MITRE’s social bookmarking service lets employees share their favorite links. And GE offers commenting and rating features.
• Use blogs to show executives’ “human face.” Walmart’s executive profiles highlight personal experiences and interests as well as work experience. And Trend Micro offers semiannual online meetings where employees can engage directly with the executives.

Reach Readers Online

Want to get the word out on the Web?

• Learn more top intranet trends in Nielsen’s full report.
• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing or editing project. We’ve written Web copy for companies ranging from American Century to H&R Block to Westrope Insurance.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a Web writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on creating effective online communications on RevUpReadership.com.
• Study Ann’s Reaching Readers Online system.
• Find out about Ann’s next Web-, microcontent- or social media-writing teleseminar.
• 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.

“Show them the forest; introduce them to a tree.”

— William Blundell, author of The Art and Craft of Feature Writing

To introduce the first replacement knee for women, Zimmer Inc. ran a campaign that included a series of patient stories like “‘Grammy’ Back to Babysitting Now that Knee Pain Is Gone.” It started like this:

“Eileen will never forget the morning she stopped by her daughter’s house, and heard her 2-year-old granddaughter crying upstairs in her crib. She zipped up the stairs to tend to her and was rewarded with Anna’s engaging smile for ‘Grammy.’

“It was all that much sweeter because Eileen couldn’t have zipped up those stairs a few months earlier. Eileen, 68, had such pain in her right knee that the things she loved most, including babysitting for her grandchildren, going to the theater and dinner with friends, and even walks in the park had become impossible.”

Need to call attention to a problem or issue? Don’t lead with the numbers. Find a poster person — a single human being who can stand for your point.

One of my favorite things about being PRSA’s “national writing coach” is my annual visit to the association’s headquarters in New York. There, I review Silver Anvil Award-winning campaigns, like Zimmer’s, studying trends and techniques to identify the best of the best public relations writing practices.

And one of the big trends I saw this year was humanizing stories with a single person. Whether you’re writing to clients and customers, employees, the community or members, how can you find a poster person to put a face on your message?

Tap People Power

Want to master the art of letting people stand for your point?

• Read Zimmer’s Silver Anvil Award entry.
• Read Zimmer’s patient stories.
• Read all of Zimmer’s “‘Grammy’ Back to Babysitting Now that Knee Pain Is Gone.”
• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing or editing project. We specialize in writing human interest narratives for organizations like Saint Luke’s Health System.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a Make Your Copy More Creative workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on writing human interest copy at RevUpReadership.com.
• 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.

First there was DBT, or Death by Tweakage: When a brochure or newsletter “fails due to unnecessary tinkering or too many last-minute revisions.” (BuzzWhack.com)

Then came nanomanagers: “Bosses who have taken micromanaging to a whole new level of nitpicking.” (BuzzWhack.com)

Enter niggling: That’s Procter & Gamble’s verb for editing a memo. Memos can go through a dozen or more “niggles” on their way up the corporate hierarchy at P&G. (The Wall Street Journal)

How much does DBT cost your company?

So here’s the question: How much is all this tweakage costing your company? (The answer to that question is also the answer to reducing niggling, nitpicking and nanomanaging.)

One of my clients ran the numbers and found that her organization spends north of a million bucks a year on do-overs.

Now find out how much it costs your organization. All you have to do to find an answer is to run the numbers:

• Choose a sampling of communication projects at random.
• Have project managers track the number of hours spent reworking the copy or design on each project.
• Multiply those hours by companywide hourly wages, including benefits.
• Come up with an average rework cost per project.
• Multiply that by the number of projects your group completes each year.

The result: a reasonable estimate of how much your organization spends — in creative time only — on niggling.

Once you have that number, you’ll have a compelling business case for reining in the approval process.

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.
• 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.

Jan. 25, 2010 — A good sound bite can help you support your points, give your story a human voice, change the pace of the piece and add creativity and color to your copy.

“Unfortunately, quotations in press releases often sound as if they were manufactured by a computer, not spoken by a human being,” says Ann Wylie, president of Wylie Communications Inc. “Quotes can be the most boring — not the most interesting — parts of your copy.”

A new teleseminar aims to help writers transform their quotations from blah to brilliant.

Program details

What: “Create Snappy Sound Bites,” a one-hour teleseminar (http://bit.ly/6Xs3Sv)

Why: To help communicators write sound bites that journalists and bloggers want to publish — and that reader want to read

Who: Presented by Ann Wylie (http://bit.ly/60rAFt); sponsored by the Public Relations Society of America (http://www.prsa.org/)

When: 3 p.m. Eastern time (2 p.m. Central, 1 p.m. Mountain, 12 p.m. Pacific) on June 10

Where: Register online (http://bit.ly/6Xs3Sv)

In this program, Wylie will share tips on how to:

• Make quotes crisp, clear and concise, and how to avoid overquoting, hiccup quotes and an irritating “bumpety-bump” formula that lulls your readers to sleep.
• Peel back your quotes to make them tighter and more interesting. As Mark Twain said, the best sound bite is “a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.”
• Write a colorful, quotable quote, and watch it get picked up by the media.
• Write attribution like a pro and use some simple tricks and rules of thumb that will give your writing polish and authority.
• Find and craft testimonials. “What others say about you and your product, service or business is at least 1,000 times more convincing than what you say, even if you are 2,000 times more eloquent,” says Dan Kennedy, author of “No B.S. Sales Success.”

Quotes:

From workshop attendees:

“Since the seminar we have all seen better results from our work that has been going out. Reporters have been responding quicker to our press releases and pitches and we’ve had increased coverage of our current west coast company event.” — Karen Halesky, Public Relations Associate, ING Direct

“An excellent teleseminar on enhancing writing skills and creating punchy sound bites that increase the likelihood of media using quotes.” — Joan Lister, president, HealthComm

“This information provided some valuable insight to the mistakes in our writing styles. Because this is something we do regularly, we may have gotten bored or lose our focus. This definitely helped me get a fresh perspective on my writing and what to do to make it more productive.” — Ashley Jennings, Beaumont Convention & Visitors Bureau

From the PRSA professional development director:

“Ann’s insights are especially valuable because she has worked on all sides of the communication ‘desk’ — as a corporate communicator, in a PR agency, as a magazine editor and as a consultant. Her workshops are always extremely well received by our members and other writers.” — Judy Voss, PRSA’s director of professional development

More information on sound bites

See Ann’s resources on writing sound bites.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc. (http://www.wyliecomm.com/), 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. Her workshops take her from Hollywood to Helsinki, helping communicators at NASA, FedEx, Motorola, H&R Block and other organizations improve their skills. She’s the author of a dozen learning tools, including  RevUpReadership.com (http://bit.ly/KJ2t3), a toolbox for writers; and Wylie’s Writing Tips (http://bit.ly/6JgZLJ), a free e-zine. Her work has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills.

About PRSA:

The Public Relations Society of America (http://www.prsa.org/), headquartered in New York City, is the world’s largest professional organization for public relations practitioners. The society’s members represent business and industry, counseling firms, government, associations, hospitals, schools, professional services firms and nonprofit organizations. Chartered in 1948, PRSA has 116 chapters throughout the United States and extends services and professional development to the student level through the Public Relations Student Society (PRSSA) with 209 chapters on college campuses throughout the country.

For more information, contact:

Ann Wylie
Wylie Communications Inc.
816/997-8753
Ann@WylieComm.com

But acronyms can also make your copy easier to read and remember, writes Jack Napoli, if you use them to group your key ideas “into nuggets of distinction.”

MARC, for instance, is easier to remember than Mid-America Regional Council. It’s also easier to remember than an acronym that doesn’t spell out a pronounceable word — Midwestern Regional Council, or MRC, for instance.

“Can the audience recall your message 2 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 martinis later?” Napoli asks. To help your audience members, he suggests keeping your acronyms:

• Short: three to six characters long
• Meaningful: Make sure the acronym compliments the subject matter.
• Repeatable: easy to say and remember

Napoli sells the idea of using acronyms to create sticky messages in his excellent post, but he doesn’t offer any how-to’s. Here’s one approach for turning a list into a mnemonic device to help readers remember your key points:

• List the words you want to include. You might need to find potential substitutes.
• Type the first letter of each word into the online anagram server box.
• Click “get anagrams.”

The result: a meaningful acronym that helps readers codify and remember your big ideas.

Play with your words

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

• Get dozens of tipsheets on playing with your words at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next creative writing teleseminar.
• 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.
• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing project.
• 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.

• Why you? Target the journalists and bloggers you pitch. Start with a personal greeting and slant your story to their media outlet, column or segment.
• Why this? Give just enough detail to demonstrate that this story is different and worth covering.
• Why now? Create a sense of urgency. Show that this isn’t a generic, evergreen story but a timely piece that should be covered right now. Make your lead timely or link it to a hot topic.
• Why us? Give an indication of authority and credibility. Without blah-blahing your spokesperson’s whole bio, show that she’s a credible — maybe even controversial — figure.

Then share all of your contact information, including your phone numbers. (After all, how timely could this story be if you’re willing to let the journalist try to track you down via e-mail?)

Repeat your e-mail address in case your message gets forwarded.

Then “Best,” your name, and out.

Reach bloggers and journalists

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

• Read Ann’s “Anatomy of a Release, Pitch and E-mailed Release” toolkit.
• Get dozens of advanced PR writing tipsheets on RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Anatomy of a News Release” teleseminar.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a PR writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your PR writing 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.