Creative copy can attract or distract
“Prose is architecture. It’s not interior design.”
— Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning novelist
But the power to attract may also distract readers from your main idea.… Read the full article
Creative Copy
Why creative content marketing works
Make readers’ brains light up
After I presented a Make Your Copy More Creative workshop recently, an attendee pulled me aside. “The speeches I write are just 20 minutes long,” he said.… Read the full article
Why creative content writing is important
Grab attention, keep it longer, communicate better & more
My husband likes to quote his favorite philosopher, Anonymous:
“If a man speaks in the forest, and no woman is there to hear him, is he still wrong?”
… Read the full articleColor bind
Yes, Communicator, you can make your copy more colorful
How can scanning old news headlines, getting a quick education from Wikipedia or asking your BFF and research assistant Google a question or two save a boring story?… Read the full article
Paint word pictures
‘You’ll have your hand on your head with a knot under it’
My grandma and namesake, Annie B. Vrana, was an Oklahoma farm woman and one of the most colorful people I’ve known.… Read the full article
Show and tell
Map out your story on Ann’s roller coaster grid
The best stories show, then tell, then show, then tell, again and again and again. And the best pieces mix up their concrete details with stories, statistics, scenarios and more.… Read the full article
‘Don’t light your clothing on fire’
WCB-Alberta teaches safety through ‘The Hunger Games’
Some topics are hard to tackle. Brand guidelines, casual dress codes and safety, for instance, all come across as finger-wagging, nagging stories.… Read the full article
Concrete news stories get remembered
Representative photos improve recall
People remember concrete news stories 60% better than abstract ones, according to a study by a professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University.… Read the full article
Examples prove the rule
Illustrate your point with for instances
You could say that in Cleopatra’s time, women had few legal rights. Or you could say, as Stacy Schiff does in Cleopatra: A Life:
[I]n a city where women enjoyed the same legal rights as infants or chickens, the posting called upon a whole new set of skills.… Read the full articlePaint the schnauzer
Find an example to illustrate your point
The other day, I was working with communicators at a financial services organization on their content marketing pieces. For a story on the organization’s financial camps for kids, they’d written:
“As the weather warms up and the end of the school year looms, a familiar dread emerges among parents of preteens, middle schoolers and high school students: What will keep their children busy this summer?”
… Read the full article