Focus on the reader’s needs
If you were giving away a Hawaiian vacation to people who signed up for your webinar, which would you lead with?… Read the full article
wiifm
How to find feature, benefit
Ask the right questions in the interview
Having trouble finding reader benefits? Maybe you need to ask different questions.
Ask your subject matter experts:
- What happens if our customers buy this product or service?
Features vs. benefits: Avoid fake benefits
No ‘Pat yourself on the back for choosing us’
“Clean your face,” demands a hotel soap wrapper. No, YOU clean YOUR face! I want to respond.… Read the full article
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 targets readers
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:
- What’s my job?