Online. Offline. Bottom Line.™
(skip to the content)
Home | About | Jobs | Privacy Policy | Contact | Login or Register
Earlier this week, I wrote about how the inverted pyramid is still alive. Now David Meerman Scott describes the new press release era in his latest MarketingProfs article.
The most significant take-away? If you still believe that press releases only target the media, your strategy will likely fall short. The press release is now fully web-enabled.
As blogs, instant messaging and other social media gain popularity, it’s tempting to conclude that communications professionals no longer need traditional journalism skills. Some have even argued that corporate public relations departments should be replaced with bloggers. After all, who needs the AP stylebook when you write with an informal, more personal online voice?
However, the inverted pyramid is still alive – and solid news writing skills are still highly relevant.
The best writers disappear from their work.
This and other thought-provoking recommendations come from novelist Elmore Leonard in a post on his web site (via Lifehacker). Leonard maintains that disappearing from your work means you’re successfully showing – not telling – the reader what’s happening.
Although Leonard’s advice is written with the novelist in mind, a few of his main points are relevant for communications and marketing professionals.
When was the last time somebody asked you to check out the writing on a Web site? I’m going to guess it’s been awhile. But it’s a whole different story when talking about the visual design of a site, in fact you can find sites dedicated to visual design like CSS Vault and CSS Beauty. During a time where everybody shouts “Content is King” there are not a lot of sites doing anything to highlight great writing, until now that is. Garrent Dimon recently launched Notable Words in an effort to bring to light good examples of writing. I’m particularly pleased with his first postings because he included Daring Fireball which is one site I am always happy to see has something new to read.
Good writing can provide your customers with a valued and relevant source of information as well as help your site move ahead in search engine rankings. While having a great design to wrap your content in is necessary, don’t forget you also need to have great content as well to attract and keep visitors to your site.