content Archives | G2 Communications Inc.-Medical Practice Marketing

Mar 22 2016

Surviving the Transition: Q&A with Lisa Wrenn, Bay Area News Group Executive Features Editor

The Bay Area News Group (BANG) is a model of digital transformation, whether it’s expanding digital advertising, producing videos, or building responsive mobile sites. And the group’s consolidation of several Bay Area daily papers over the years is a direct response to declining revenues now that the Internet has changed the business model. At the same time BANG is trying to meet readers’ demands for more focused regional news. As Lisa explains, “Our challenge now is how to cover our large circulation area most effectively with our limited resources.”

I sat down with Lisa to learn how the transition from print to digital has affected her role as editor and the nature of local news today.

How has your role as an editor changed in the last 10 years?

My role as a manager is more important than ever. I’m managing change, and I’m required to do more things with fewer people. I have to identify people’s strengths and weaknesses, and fine tune the job to get their best work. My biggest challenge may be keeping up morale for people who haven’t had a raise in years!

Personally, my strongest skill set was working with writers on long narrative stories, but today we’re writing shorter and faster. I miss the luxury of working one-on-one with a writer to make a story even stronger. Still, we care a lot about integrity, so we work hard to get it right and get it first.

How has the transition from paper to digital affected the stories you publish?

The biggest difference is that now we have to drive traffic to our sites, and that drives how we make news decisions. What we think readers should know and what will drive traffic are sometimes in conflict. We like to take on big local issues, and we have a reporter who covers city hall, but even with local news we often are looking for a headline that is search engine friendly.

“Eat, Drink, Play” is one section that happily came about because we had to do something differently. We decided to make our former Food and Travel sections more Northern-California-specific to make it more valuable to regional readership. In print, our Thursday Eye for Mercury News readers and the Entertainment section, and TO Weekend sections also are somewhat zoned and we focus on local arts. At the same time, if people want to Google a pop star we want the search to lead to us, so I have to be on top of pop culture news too.

What is the best way for PR pros to work with BANG reporters?

Take time to get to know what we’re looking for and who to reach out to. I get pitches all the time from people who don’t even know where our paper is located! It’s okay to say, “I’m not sure if you’re the right person” and send me a pitch as long you’re aiming in the right direction. I get tons of business pitches, and if one is good I will forward it to the right reporter or editor.

Email is still the best way to go, and a follow-up phone call doesn’t hurt. I get hundreds of emails a day so I have to triage, but I will listen to a thoughtful call and reply. And another tip: Include a color photo with an event pitch. In Features, at least, we are very art driven and if we get a good image that gives us more options we’ll use it in a best bet capacity.

Photo: Column sig photo for Lisa Wrenn, Executive Features Editor in the Mercury News photo studio in San Jose on Tuesday, Jan.5, 2016. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Feb 09 2016

To Fix the Copy Fix Your Thinking

Lauren Edwards is founder of WriteCulture, a company that coaches PR teams on writing, pitching and interactions with clients. Lauren has trained over 1,000 PR pros, from entry-level staff to SVPs.

I sat down with Lauren to get her perspective on current PR challenges.

Why is poorly written content so prevalent these days?

The bar is lower because there are more publishing platforms run by untrained writers and editors. There’s also the advent of automated writing and outsourced writing. New software lets non-humans assemble and package nuggets of information into simple formats like online slideshows and “Top 10” lists. And ESL speakers are writing first drafts later edited by native speakers.

Some of the new “citizen journalists” have realized that writing is harder and more time-consuming than they expected and are looking for help. We’re at a juncture where more people would like to communicate effectively but don’t have access to the right kind of education.

What advice do you have for PR professionals who want to write better copy?

Take time to think from the audience’s POV, and write about people not products. When you write about people, you put human beings at the start of your sentences and use active verbs. Also, give away the punchline at the beginning to get to the point faster.

Always keep your clients’ long-term business goals in mind. For example, a famous company I worked with had 80% commercial customers, but their long-term goal was to have 80% residential customers. If you were pitching for them, you’d be smart to emphasize a residential angle to further their business goals. If you don’t know their goals, your choices might actually work against them.

Why is there so much jargon in tech industry PR copy?

Unseasoned PR writers may not know their client’s technology or industry, so they use material already crafted by marketing. They move the words around without trying to reach out to an audience. Curiosity and experience eventually make it possible to write in a meaningful way, but some people retain bad habits.

Another reason is that some people come to work wearing a “professional” veneer. When that veneer is on, they don’t write like people; they write like a “company,” in a stiff style.

What can PR agency supervisors do to improve their teams’ writing?

Stop treating the symptom; treat the disease. The problem isn’t grammar and syntax; it’s the thinking behind the writing. People often focus on details like new product features, but there’s a larger story to tell that will improve business outcomes. The writer should look ahead to goals and coming initiatives, and back at important milestones. This puts “news” into context and accomplishes more valuable goals.

Writers need to think critically during the pre-writing phase, and learn who they’re writing for and why. I always say, “Writing is thinking made manifest.” If you can fix the thinking, the writing often fixes itself.

Feb 19 2014

Unshakable Marketing Principles for the Digital Age: Q&A With Marketing Consultant Kathryn Gorges

Kathryn Gorges (pronounced gorgeous!) knows how to spell out the core principles of marketing for companies overwhelmed by the present demands of content strategy: “The most important thing is who you’re targeting and how you’re solving the customer’s problem. You can’t create content for the masses; you need to speak directly to your target segments.”

Gorges is a marketing consultant and Social Marketing Diva with over 17 years experience. She works with brands to increase visibility and nurture customer relationships through web content, social media, email, and event marketing.

I spoke with Gorges to glean insights into how marketers and PR professionals can generate quality customer conversations and relationships in the digital age.

In the midst of constant changes in digital marketing, what are the core, unshakable marketing principles?

KG: We’re still in the middle of a transition where we have these bright shiny objects and we’re not sure how to use them. People are throwing thousands of dollars away on marketing automation and blogging and images, and not knowing what they’re doing.

The truth is, at the heart of everything is still the story. People doing marketing strategy the right way are the ones that lead with the story of how the product or service is really making a difference for people. Out of that, all content is created. The story is the core, the touchstone.

Companies need to figure out, what is the central narrative? People are developing all kinds of content and wasting money because the content doesn’t match up to that central story. It’s the story and behind that is the customer.

There’s a problem of focus these days. The focus is on lead generation and brand awareness and putting all that into these tools. But where you make money is with repeat business. Otherwise it’s a transaction. If you don’t have real customers and repeat customers then you’re not building relationships with those customers.

It’s not about one-way messaging. What is the reality like when someone calls your company for service? If you know your job is to give them an excellent experience but the customer gets put on hold for 20 minutes then it doesn’t matter what your message is. Companies can’t rely on the artifice of messaging and phone scripts.”

What value does social media provide in all this? Lead gen? something else?

KG: Customers talk to other customers. They can do a search and find out what others are saying about you. It’s all out there. Millennials have come through the recession and are really skeptical about vendors’ promises and one-way marketing. They want real relationships. They are going to build that relationship on top of the trust that gets passed on by knowing how other customers feel about your product or service, especially from people they know. That’s first, then the relationship with the company follows.

That means the real experience people are having is more important than the messaging. Customers won’t form a relationship with a brand because of the brand’s messaging. They want to know, ‘does this make a difference for me?’

Today there are so many places to find out about a product or service before customers even talk to a company. They want other people’s experiences first. Once they’ve seen that then they are ready to see what the company says about itself.”

Why does content strategy matter?

A content strategist figures out how to create a bigger view (and greater visibility) on the web. This person develops a cohesive strategy that in every way carries forward the narrative, with different pieces of content for different platforms. Companies need a content strategy where derivatives of the content are published on the companies’ social platforms as well as 3^rd party media platforms.

Derivative content includes: press releases, infographics, blog entries, bylined articles/op eds, social channel entries, etc. You can get your content in front of people directly but it delivers real value when you have a direct relationship with the customer. Now you have this whole other mechanism of getting content out there.

Knowing how to develop and produce the most compelling content; knowing what resonates is now vital to marketing success. Marketing people haven’t had to produce this content before. There wasn’t this big content machine.

So there is an ever demanding content generation machine and your potential customers are consuming that content. But there’s also Google – companies need to get decent search results to have social authority. There’s this crushing need for generating content and putting it out on company websites. But the company needs to be a subject matter expert, not a media company.

Don’t lose sight of the 2-way relationship with the customer. That isn’t going away any time soon.

Images:

Kathryn Gorges: Kathryn Gorges

Jun 05 2013

How to Write Micro Content for a Macro Audience

“Content is King” has been the credo of digital marketers ever since Bill Gates coined the phrase back in 1996. With the battle for top search engine rankings, and the rise of keyword driven SEO (search engine optimization), content has continued to reign. But the Internet of today is a much different place than the pre-Google, pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, pre-SEO world of the 90s.

Today, PR and marketing are inseparable from social media, and social media is all about short, shareable bursts of text and eye-catching images. That’s why some have begun using a more web 2.0-friendly credo, proclaiming Micro Content is also King.

Micro-content requires a whole different set of skills than long-form copy. To succeed in the era of micro-content, you must be able to craft punchy headlines, engaging tweets and click-worth summaries. Here are 5 Tips for writing microcopy that will stand out:

1. Get Strategic

Before you set fingers to keys, perform a micro content strategy. Who is your target audience? What action do you want them to take? Which social media sites do they use?

Say your audience is urban, 30 to 50 year-old women, and you want them to subscribe to your lifestyle newsletter. With a little research you discover that Facebook and Twitter are most popular with your demographic. Armed with this information, you can now write micro content that is targeted and actionable from the first draft.

2. Craft Stand-Alone Headlines (i.e., Write for Goldfish)

Did you know that the average attention span has shrunk from 12 seconds to 8 over the last decade? That’s shorter than a goldfish, which can apparently stay focused for a full 9 seconds!

Say it Up Front: Tell readers what they need to know right off the bat with clear and captivating headlines. If a headline is so vague or clever that readers can’t tell what you’re about to give them, they won’t bother finding out.
Don’t Rely on Context: Headlines appear differently online than in print. They frequently show-up in a list of other links, in search engine results, or re-tweeted without supporting text.

3. Be Clear

Internet users don’t read, they glance. Make your item brief, clear, and explanatory. As we just learned, your audience is likely to see bits of content out of context before they click through to the web page (if they actually do). Make sure you state the essential information, and make sense to inundated readers.

4. Write Visually: Visual language is engaging and memorable—two objectives all marketers strive for. Don’t mistake visual writing for flowery writing. Too many adjectives make for a slow and clunky read. Instead, use descriptive nouns and verbs to paint a vivid image with as few keystrokes as possible. For example, “Zoo Acquires New Animal” becomes much more click-worthy as, “Baby Elephant Reunited with Worried Mom.” And including actual visuals never hurts. Tack on a twitpic of the elephant’s reunion, or a link to the zoo’s photo gallery.

5. Make it Personal: To get personal, you have to be personal. Whenever possible, give your social accounts a face. Readers trust micro content that is shared by a human with a name, profile picture, title and background story. They are also more comfortable sharing content, commenting and generally interacting with human accounts. Personalize your content and steer clear of empty, mass marketing lingo. You’ll be rewarded with loyal followers.

Bottom line: the micro-content revolution has already occurred. The best way to join in is to spend time in the social media world and see what has traction. Learn the language and identify the key players of each platform, then get in there and claim your niche.

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