wiifm

Engage readers by writing in the second person

Lead with you in media relations pieces

It’s counterintuitive, but true: The product is never the topic. The program is never the topic. The plan is never the topic.… Read the full article

How to write in first person: Don’t

Avoid Institutional Narcissism

Richard Roll, an economics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, studies narcissism in CEOs. Turns out the more narcissistic executives are, the more likely they are to overrate their skills and make bad business moves.… Read the full article

How to write a press release headline that draws people in

Write about the reader, not ‘us and our stuff’

Front-loading your headlines with your topic word just makes sense if your readers are going to encounter those headlines in online lists — a search engine results page, for instance, or your online newsroom.… Read the full article

Move from event to impact in PR writing

Focus news stories on MOI

Screenwriter Nora Ephron long remembered the first day of her high school journalism class.

Ephron’s teacher announced the first assignment: to write the lead for a story to appear in the student newspaper.… Read the full article

Who’s ‘Me’?

You can’t write a WIIFM without the M

If you wanted to keep teens from smoking weed, what message might you communicate?

One health organization, reports Guy Kawasaki in his book Enchantment, used the message that young people who smoked weed were five times more likely to engage in sex.… Read the full article

‘Say Goodbye to the 60-hour Work Week’

Steal techniques from this great WIIFM copy

You know that the topic is never the topic: The reader is the topic.

You’ve acknowledged that readers don’t care about “us and our stuff”; they care about themselves and their needs.… Read the full article

What do employees want?

It’s all about me, says Roger D’Aprix

What information do employees seek from their organizations?

According to communication consultant Roger D’Aprix, author of Communicating for Change: Connecting the Workplace with the Marketplace, they want answers to these questions: