So here’s the traditional pecking order of writers: journalists are at the top, those paragons of probing prolixity and unbiased storytelling. Public relations professionals are perhaps a rung lower – still able to craft press releases, articles and pitches that could stand alone as news stories if need be, but always telling the story from the point of view of an organization. At the bottom of the ladder? Sales copywriters. Those feeble hacks who resort to drama, fear and exclamation points to attract an audience. (We’ll leave the poets and novelists alone for now.)
While PR pros are traditionally trained to emulate the journalist when writing, the tables have turned: we need to start writing like sales copywriters. At least in our headlines.
It’s no secret that audiences are bombarded with messages these days, across mediums. Bombarded. We naturally look for ways to parse, sort and filter information to determine what’s important and immediate. In many cases, we do this based on a single line of text: the subject of an email, the post title in our RSS reader, the headline of a press release or news story. You could write the grandest, juiciest, most interesting press release ever, but if a reporter never opens the email, does it really matter?
If a press release falls in the forest…
I’ve been running a lot of email campaigns lately at work and the part that hangs me up like no other is writing the subject line. How can I get customers or prospects to open the email to actually get to the great content I’ve written? At most, I’ve got 40-50 characters to entice them (that’s a third of a tweet, by the way). When blogging, I usually save the post title for last, and often agonize over it. And, when readMedia clients send press releases over our wire, the headline of the release becomes the subject line of the email that reporters receive. A weak subject line means a press release might be deleted before the contents are even known.
Good writing is for naught if you can’t get anyone to read it. We rarely focused on headline writing in journalism school years ago (and writing headlines for print is very different than writing them for the web. So long, puns). We were committed to learning the inverted pyramid and AP style. The focus was on telling the story, and the thought of attracting people to read it was, well, not a thought at all.
A sales copywriter’s singular goal is to get someone to DO something: click a link, give up an email address, buy a product, request more information. Sales copy is compelling – not from a “hey, that’s interesting” perspective, but from a “wow, I need to do that” perspective. Why do magazines like Cosmo and GQ have those ridiculous blurb teasers on the cover? To do exactly that – to tease. To convince people that they have to pick up the magazine and read the article.
I’m not suggesting we should all start adding exclamation signs and dollar symbols and phrases like “Special Offer! Act now!” to our headlines and post titles. But we do need to start giving them some more thought. And we need to be thinking about optimizing our writing for search (Robert Niles even thinks learning SEO should now take precedence over learning AP style in j-schools).
The headline or title can no longer be an afterthought. It needs to be informative AND compelling. We need to be reading Copyblogger and learning how to adapt those sales copywriting techniques to public relations writing (and not feel snide about it).
We need to get people to open up — literally — and get to the good stuff.
The world we now live in is a world of sound bytes and chunks of information. Yes, people still read stories, but it’s the “sound bytes” that matter. Most people don’t read 4,000-word articles (despite Brian Solis’ success)–but they do scan the Web at an incredible rate. I have a friend who claims to scour 500 blogs a day. He doesn’t do that without some serious scanning. Think he ever really reads the fourth paragraph? Me neither. All of this, as you point out, puts a huge emphasis on writing in chunks.
And I don’t even think it’s a choice anymore for PR folks.
If I see a release that’s more than a page, I kinda chuckle to myself. Too long. No one’s going to read it.
I like Jason Falls approach in his “How to Pitch SME” section: Boil it down to one paragraph. “If you write more than one paragraph, you’ve gone too far.” Beautiful.
@arikhanson
Amy,
You are dead on.
As recently as the 90′s, it was a good idea to write press releases in a journalistic style. Often, and I’m speaking as a former newspaper editor, the release that created the least work for an editor is the one that got published. And very often, that was the release that was written in a manner that would allow it to be published with no or little additional work.
I’d also point out that most good newspapers spend A LOT of time on their headlines … trying to compile just the right combination of words that would pull a reader into the story.
We live now in a word of bites…text messages, tweets, etc. You have to deliver a knock-out blow from the start to stand out from the crowd.
This will require the strongest writing skills possible – the ability to write a few words with strength is and will be a very marketable trait.
Great post – it’s got to be quick and to the point. Of course the challenge is preventing the client/boss/lawyers from burying the news in long descriptions and “approved language.” And reminding them that just the fact the fact that Company X announced something today is not news (unless, maybe, if Company X is Apple or Google).
Thanks, Amy, for sparking me assemble a blog post based upon poor email marketing examples, all of which need more compelling copy — and moreover, more personality.
http://ariwriter.com/3-email-marketing-examples-not-to-copy/
Amy,
Totally agree with you. PR pros have to wear many hats, and the sales hat is definitely an important one.
I do the same as you – leave the headline or e-mail subject line for last and analyze the heck out of it. I know that first intro of copy will either entice someone to dig in deeper or cause them to move on to something more interesting. Copyblogger is my favorite source for learning tips and tricks to help decrease the time I spend staring at the blank headline space/subject line.
As a copywriter, I’m glad to confirm my place in the pecking order ;) But you are absolutely right Amy that anybody who needs to persuade the reader to do something (even if it’s just read the press release, resume or whatever) can benefit from a few copywriter tricks.
I have summarized some of my favorites in the “Copywriting 101″ category on the otisregrets blog. These are based on the class I teach for the Direct Marketing Association which, by the way, often has PR writers in it. In case your blog doesn’t capture my link it is http://www.otismaxwell.com/blog/category/copywriting-101/ .
Just discovered your blog and was very pleased to see this post. PR people always have to walk that fine line between the newsworthiness of an announcement and delving into a straight sales pitch of sorts.
I find myself often digging tricks out of my copywriting quiver in an attempt to make my releases have more “pop.” It’s not just about having a compelling story, but also encouraging a call to action.
How lame am I that I’m just now responding to these great comments? Sorry folks!
I’m glad I could spur some discussion. It’s interesting that David Carr from the New York Times had an article a few days ago that tackled the same topic: Taylor Momsen did not write this headline.
Writing skills are still so vital to the PR industry – but not necessarily the particular skills that we’ve all been trained on.
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Amy
Great post. It’s funny. My publisher for my first book has sent out press releases but, as you point out, that’s not enough. Bombarded is exactly the word that I would use to describe people these days. Content matters but you have to get people to do something first.
Also, this post reminded me of one that I did for Ari’s site:
http://ariwriter.com/be-your-own-pr-firm/
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The post right above this one uses a good title, Be your own PR firm. Simple, direct to the point, and tells the reader to take action. It doesn’t use any unnecessary or superfluous adjectives.
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