Engaging the Reader

I recently read a book written in the first person in a way like a minister delivering a sermon to an audience. It is not what many readers would expect of a well-written work because of its unconventional writing style and the lack of smoothness or intrigue. Yet the book took the number two place on The New York Time's bestseller list.

The popularity of a book is obviously not about how well a writer writes, but about writing on the right topic and about content. Unless the writer is a celebrity or a famous someone, expecting high readership for what one writes may just be wishful thinking unless the writer has done his or her research to know what topics and content engage readers.

As an enthusiast of the social media, I have managed blogs and social network platforms long enough to understand how certain topics and content are well received while others fall short or fail badly. If the number of followers and comments are a guide to measure popularity and engagement, then analytics may be a good way to help make trending observations.

When I write on topics like healthcare, for example, the number of followers tends to fall far below expectation even with strong digital marketing engagement through campaigning, promotions, and the like. When I write on topics like career or faith, on the other hand, the number of followers increases exponentially even without campaigning.

Engaging readers or audiences in the real world requires knowing what's hot and what's not, what moves the heart or touches a chord, what reaches out and helps meet a need. In a nutshell, a writer needs to do research to know what readers really want before beginning to write.

Writing for New Media

Writing encompasses many fields, and unless we are a novel writer, we need to be prepared to write on any genre if our job requires us to provide editorial services.

One of the most common writings requested by customers these days is content writing. Content writing is all about creating useful and informative content for websites and the social media.

Content writing is a branch of content marketing, which aims at writing in a way that draws the targeted audience to the site in engaging them to active participation. This participation may include readers commenting on blogs and social networks, clicking ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ or ‘Tweet’ about the written post or uploaded video.

According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI), “content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.”

A good content strategy often begins with the use of search engine optimization (SEO) technique to obtain higher number of visits to the site. Among the first things we need to consider and ask ourselves when writing for content marketing are:

• Who is our audience? What do they like to know or talk about?
• Where do they usually hangout online? Which social network, community or forum?
• Which style of writing best suit the targeted audience? Social or formal? Business-to-customer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B)?
• What is the objective of the writing? Is it to bring awareness of a need, a message to convey, a goal to achieve, or something to educate and inform?
• What keywords should be included in the content writing for SEO?
• Is our writing easy to read and understand? Are there technical words or jargons in the content we need to change or remove for better clarity?
• How can we measure the results and know which conversations catch fire?

The path towards good content writing and content marketing requires the constant analysis and evaluation of which approach best fit the targeted audience at a specific time. What works best, however, changes all the time, so there is no hard and fast rule to optimal results. The most important point to take away regarding content marketing is, without good content, marketing is impossible. Unless the readers find value in what we have written, they are unlikely to participate in the conversations to find out more. What we write in the content to draw interest and engage the audience is therefore crucial and foremost.

More Readings
What is Content Marketing?
How to Develop a Social Media Content Strategy
Content Writing Tips - How to Hold User Attention

Writing Press Releases

If writing press releases is a part of your job, then among the first things you must remember is although your final target audience is the readers of the news, the media as the vehicle for getting the news published is just as important.

The media need not and usually do not publish a large part of what you write in the press release. Catching the media's attention or interest to your piece of news therefore should be your first objective, and that will require the news to be noteworthy.

If the news is about a new product or service, then you as the writer must highlight what is different that makes it stand out from the rest. If there is nothing worth highlighting, such as a unique selling point, then there is unlikely any news going to get published. Journalists always seek out only what is newsworthy.

One of the greatest mistakes vendors of products or services make is to have press releases contain too much technical details or the over emphasis of numerous features or functionalities. If there is nothing different or outstanding among the many things mentioned, then there is nothing much that will attract or draw the journalists' attention to write about it.

Vendors often think that information in the press release is what the end users want to read about, but frequently such details are not newsworthy for publish. Even if it does get published, it will often be placed at the end of the story. Information or text placed at the end of the story, depending on the space available in the newspaper or other media, may be lifted off by the editor or gatekeeper to give way to other more noteworthy news.

When writing a press release, therefore, a good approach is to use the 'reverse pyramid' methodology, where the most important is placed at the top and the less important at the bottom. The first paragraph, as the intro of the press release, should summarize the key points of the entire story to answer at least three of the 5Ws and 1H—who, when, why, what, where and how.

Within the press release, at least one quote or two from a spokesperson should be included as a standard practice. This is because journalists in general prefer to have someone say something within the story so as to eliminate the monotony. This is especially true for a feature story.

In short, it means when writing press releases, always remember the media plays an important role of what gets published, therefore, the content must be newsworthy.

News and Media Archives

News agencies often use archived pictures and video clips for re-publishing in general news articles. This method of placing back-dated clips or pictures however can mislead audience to perceive the visuals as occurring only recently.

Just yesterday, a friend of mine was perturbed when she saw her picture appear in an article of a local newspaper which was taken by the press two years ago for an event. Although the picture from the archive is appropriate for the theme of the article in illustrating the dependency of good teacher-pupil relationship in providing effective teaching, it is seemingly 'incorrect' to portray it as part of a recent news relating to a subject discussed in Parliament concerning a new method of assessing teachers under the Enhanced Performance Measurement System, especially when it is published without prior permission from the person in the picture. This, however, is how it is with news reporting. Where a piece of news has been accepted for publishing by the press, all its content essentially becomes the property of the news agency, in which the agency reserve all rights to do anything they want with it. Such content once published is deemed to be for the 'public' eye, hence, can no longer be considered private, which would require the agency to seek permission before re-publishing. However, if the picture is being misused to convey something not relating to the original intent, the matter can then be brought up for scrutiny.

Take the example of the news station that presented an archived video clip of the celebration by Iraqis after the September 11, 2001 event where the twin World Trade Center towers were destroyed in New York. This piece of news was telecast throughout the world and created much hatred, resulting in Gulf War II. The video clip in question, however, is not shown 'live' from Iraq, but from an archive in the library. In reality, nothing of that celebration took place, yet by telecasting the clip immediately after showing the video of what happened to the World Trade Center, audience's perception was misplaced, resulting in hate.

The issue being discussed here is not to determine the extent in which the journalism code must be adhered or about what is and what is not ethical. It is about how audience must perceive news that is found in the newspapers and television news. To this end, my hope is for all of us as readers of news, to learn to see beyond what is written in the text, so as to decipher for ourselves what is true and untrue, what is real and unreal, and what is right or wrong.