One of my brilliant clients at Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield once wrote in a healthy-eating column:

“Instead of our steak being the size of a deck of cards (a standard, four ounce serving), it’s often the size of small laptop computer.”

I’m not a steak woman, but I do like my brie-on-brioche sandwiches to be at least as big as my iPad.

Visualizations help us ‘see’ size.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT How can you use simple graphics to trigger your audience members to change behavior?

Whatever your personal dietary demons, we can agree on this: Visualizations help people make better decisions. Telling people that a serving of salmon should be the size of the palm of their hand makes it easier to control portions than to say it should be about four ounces.

That’s one reason I love the USDA’s new MyPlate graphic. It helps you see what you should eat.

The plate’s the trigger.

But there’s another reason I love MyPlate: It uses environmental triggers to help audience members implement the new dietary guidelines.

I, for one, have never eaten off a pyramid. But tell me to fill half of my plate with fruits and vegetables — and show me what that looks like — and every time I look at my plate, I remember what I’m supposed to do.

Move your audience to act

Want to deliver copy that gets read?

• Read more: Learn about the USDA’s MyPlate.
• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a persuasive writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Think Like a Reader workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to think like a reader in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next Think Like a Reader webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s Think Like a Reader toolkit.
• Join the club: Find dozens of persuasive writing tipsheets at 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 © 2011 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

“A few years ago, my former newspaper did a study in which interviewers asked readers who or what was most important to them. Their answer was in some ways surprising. Many did not say their families, children or God. Instead, their answer was: ‘Me.’”

— Dick Weiss, former writer and editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Screenwriter Nora Ephron still remembers the first day of her high school journalism class.

Image by Hugh MacLeod at GapingVoid.com

Ephron’s teacher announced the first assignment: to write the lead for a story to appear in the student newspaper. He told them the facts:

“Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown.”

Ephron and the other budding journalists condensed the who, what, when, where and why of the story into a single sentence: “Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead, and Robert Maynard Hutchins will address the Beverly Hills High School faculty Thursday in Sacramento …”

The teacher reviewed the leads, then paused for a moment.

“The lead for this story,” he said, “is ‘There will be no school next Thursday.’”

Move from event to impact.

What’s the point of your news story? It’s probably not really the five W’s and the H. Instead of focusing on the event, focus in the impact, or how the news affects your readers.

Covering a:

• Speech? Write about the most valuable thing the speaker said, not the fact that she spoke.
• Event? Focus on what people will be able to see and do at the event, not the time, date and place that the event occurred.
• Meeting? Center the piece on what was decided at the meeting and how it will affect the reader, not on the logistics of the meeting itself.

What would Miss Piggy do?

To reach readers, think like Miss Piggy and write about MOI, counsels management consultant Alan Weiss. That’s “My Own Interests,” from the reader’s perspective.

One way to do that is to shift your focus from event — what occurred, when, where and why — to impact. That will make your copy more interesting, relevant and valuable to your readers.

Get reader attention

Want to deliver copy that gets read?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a persuasive writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a “Think Like a Reader” workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Think Like a Reader in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next “Think Like a Reader” webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s “Think Like a Reader” toolkit.
• Join the club: Get the whole story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. And find dozens of tipsheets on persuasive writing at RevUpReadership.com.

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.

My mother serves as Wylie Communications’ bookkeeper. (Yes, Mom still balances my checkbook.)

When she asked me recently to bring a bag full of business documents over, I put the bag on the bench by my front door so I’d see it on my way out. After forgetting the bag twice, I laced my purse straps through the bag handles. The act of untangling my purse finally reminded me to carry the bag to the car.

That’s called an environmental trigger — a visual cue in the right place to remind you to act in a certain way.

You use environmental triggers all the time:

• That’s why your vitamins are on the shelf in front of your cereal box.
• It’s why your take-at-bedtime prescription is on your bedside table next to your reading glasses.
• It’s why the first thing I see when I open my refrigerator is a party-sized tray of crudités from Costco. (Which, sadly, doesn’t keep me from reaching around the tray to grab the sour cream dip.)

Environmental triggers move you to act. You can also use them to move your audience members to act.

Get trigger happy

In a recent study, professors Jonah A. Berger and Grainne Fitzsimons used triggers to get college students to eat more vegetables.

In the study, one group of students saw this slogan:

“Live the healthy way, eat five fruits and veggies a day.”

Another group saw this one:

“Each and every dining-hall tray needs five fruits and veggies a day.”

The group that saw the message with the environmental trigger — the tray — ate 25 percent more fruits and vegetables the next week.

Another trigger-happy campaign is AT&T’s “It Can Wait” pledge on Facebook:

“Take out your phone right now and look at the last text message you got. Read it out loud. Is that text worth causing an accident? Texting and driving, it can wait. Please take the pledge not to text while driving. …’

Why not “Think of the last text message you got?” Because your phone’s the trigger. Next time you pull it out while you’re behind the wheel, AT&T communicators hope, you’ll think “It can wait.”

Do it now

BJ Fogg, experimental psychologist at the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, catalogs three kinds of triggers:

• The facilitator, which simplifies an action you already plan to take. One-click shopping, for instance.
• The spark, which motivates behavior. I get alerts from Mint.com on my iPhone, for instance, every time I buy a Twix bar or otherwise threaten to step outside my budget.
• The signal, which neither motivates nor simplifies but indicates that now would be a good time to do this. A traffic light, for instance, is a signal.

Now comes the hard part: Choosing the right trigger for your message, given your audience and where they’re likely to be when you want them to act.

Move your audience to act

Want to deliver copy that gets read?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a persuasive writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Think Like a Reader workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Think Like a Reader in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next Think Like a Reader webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s Think Like a Reader toolkit. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Find dozens of persuasive writing tipsheets at 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 © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

___

Sources: Chip Heath and Dan Heath, “Time to Get Trigger Happy,” Fast Company, October 2007

BJ Fogg, “Design for behavior change: Why Facebook and Twitter are winning,” IABC 2009 World Conference, June 2009

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.”

Use the persuasive principle of authority.

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.

Five ways to increase your authority

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 your audience to act

Want to deliver copy that gets read?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a persuasive writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Think Like a Reader workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Think Like a Reader in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next Think Like a Reader webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s Think Like a Reader toolkit. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Find dozens of persuasive writing tipsheets at 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 © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

___

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

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.

In tough economic times, the communicators who thrive  — and those who help their organizations thrive — are the ones who know how to write copy that sells: not just products and services, but programs, plans and positions, as well.

Let’s face it: In this environment, organizations can’t afford to communicate just to get the word out. They need communicators who know how to move the needle on the bottom line.

Sadly, most communicators were taught to report and inform, not to write copy that drives readers to action. In fact, many of the standard practices in business communication and PR writing today actually do more to put readers off than to persuade them.

But here are three ways to write copy that moves readers to act:

1. Put the reader first.

The secret to writing to persuade is to position your messages in your audience’s best interests. (Most communicators position their messages in their organization’s best interests.)

So write about the reader and her needs instead of about your organization and its stuff. One simple trick: Change the structure of your messages from “We offer this” to “You’ll receive that.”

To focus your copy on your readers’ interests, put the reader first. Start your sentence — and your story, for that matter — with the word “you.”

2. Write in verbs, not nouns.

People don’t buy products, services and ideas. They buy what those products, services and ideas will do for them.

So instead of writing about your organization’s stuff, write about the benefits that stuff will deliver to readers.

That takes verbs.

Benefits are verbs (“get back to work faster”), not nouns (“ability assurance”). So when you’re writing about things, you’re not writing about benefits.

The headline writer for a conference ad almost got it right. The deck — that essential one-sentence summary under the headline — is a benefit. How do we know? It starts with a benefits-focused verb:

Revitalize your sexuality
and justify your chocolate obsession

Sounds good to me. But the headline — “Women’s Health Conference” — is a yawner. So is a tertiary head naming the speakers. That’s because the conference and speakers are features, not benefits. They’re nouns, not verbs.

Want to sell your products, services and conferences? Write in benefits, not features.

And that takes verbs, not nouns.

3. Use “that means you will …”

Having trouble finding those reader benefits?

Try prompting your subject matter expert with the line “that means they will …” The end of that sentence is likely to be a benefit.

Your subject matter expert says, “We can handle our client’s internal audit functions.”

You say, “That means our clients will …?”

Your subject matter expert says: “That means our clients will free up their own employees for bottom-line projects and better control the costs of producing internal audits.”

“That means you will …” also makes a great way to present your benefits:

“XYZ Company can manage your internal audit function. That means your management team will no longer have to worry about day-to-day responsibilities like recruiting, training, planning, execution, reporting or methodology. And that means you can focus management talent, capital funds, overhead and other resources on your core business. …”

Try it. “That means you will …” can help you discover — and deliver — reader benefits.

Move your audience to act

Want to deliver copy that gets read?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a persuasive writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Think Like a Reader workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Think Like a Reader in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next Think Like a Reader webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s Think Like a Reader toolkit. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Find dozens of persuasive writing tipsheets at 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 © 2009 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

The Think Like a Reader cheat sheet of formulas and checklists provides you with all the action steps of the Think Like a Reader Toolkit on one piece of paper. Keep the checklist by your computer to use on every piece you write and edit. Our clients tell us that this job aide is one of the most valuable tools they use for applying new skills to their daily writing.