This brief article by Jeremy Porter, of Journalistics.com is targeted toward authors that write on-line,
But wait!!! Before you hit the delete button because you do not write for online distribution, think about how people access your 4-H newsletter. Some get it in the mail, many of them get it through your county website, and wouldn't it be great if people new to our program saw the newsletter because of a viral link to the content we produced.
Whether or not you write for the internet, I think you'll find Porter's insights useful in the writing you do.
Want better results? Make your content likable and linkable
By Jeremy Porter
Like a great unpublished novel on a closet shelf, your terrific writing might not be reaching its audience
If there's one area where journalists and public relations professionals are in complete agreement, it's around writing quality. Whether you're writing articles, blog posts, e-mails or subject lines, great writing trumps all.
If your writing is exceptional, more of your articles will get read-and more of your pitches will be spared from the delete button. Unfortunately, great writing skills are only half the equation today. If you want to drive results with your content, your writing needs to be engaging, interesting, relevant and compelling, but also linkable.
Linkable content is about writing content people will want to link to. Content they will share with others, who in turn share with others. This is how your content goes viral and reaches the maximum number of people possible. Isn't that what you're writing for in the first place? It should be.
If you're not doing so already, evaluate the content you're producing on a regular basis in terms of its potential appeal to your audience, as well as how easy it is to share across multiple channels. If you only have a basic understanding of this concept, here is some additional food for thought that might help:
*
If you write for a newspaper or other print publication, do your articles also appear online? Are the articles available to any visitor to the site for free, or do users need to subscribe or register to read the articles? If the latter, you're limiting your audience. Encourage management to break down the barriers.
A good example of this point is PRWeek, my top source of news for the PR industry. There is so much good content I would love to share with other people, as well as discussions I'd like to engage in, but the subscription wall stops much of this from happening. People are less likely to share content their readers will have to jump through hoops to access it.
*
If you write and distribute press releases, do you write them as a journalist would write a story? Do you answer the who, what, when, where, why and how in your release? Do you avoid industry jargon and gobbledygook that is so commonly used in releases these days? Would you want to write about the release if you were a journalist?
*
If you do have a newsworthy press release, do you distribute your news on a wire service? Do you also format your release for social media consumption, using a social media release platform such as PitchEngine
? Do you blog about your own news on your site and provide an easy way for your readers to comment, share and link to your post? Your blog might reach more readers than the publicity you generate-don't overlook this option.
And finally, do you tweet about your news on the day it goes out and update your other statuses across social networks? The list goes on and on. If you're not doing most of these things, you could be missing out on thousands of readers.
*
Back to the journalism side of the equation, do you share links to your recent articles across these channels? You can't rely on search engine visitors, e-mail and RSS subscribers and your friends and family to pass the word along. You need to get your content into the hands of as many people as possible.
*
What are you doing to help people find your content beyond these suggestions? Do you optimize all your content for search engines? If you're not using descriptive page titles, descriptive permalinks, meta descriptions, meta keywords, alt image text and headers to your advantage, you might be missing out on thousands of people searching for the topics you're writing about.
*
Include options for sharing. Make it easy for people to tweet about your content, to share your content via social bookmarking sites, or to e-mail your content to their friends. This may sound like common sense to a lot of you, but more often than not, great content goes unnoticed because it's not presented in a format that is easy to discover and share. Writing great, likable content is only half the battle. Today, if you want to get noticed and rack up the results for your hard work, you need to make it easy for your readers to find and share your content.
How are you making it easy for people to find and share your content? What steps do you take to ensure your content is as good as it can possibly be? Jeremy Porter is a veteran public relations professional with more than 10 years of experience developing and managing strategic public relations programs for clients. He is the founder of Journalistics.com
.
Posts
