Are you branding your business products and services effectively in the media? It's a complex undertaking, but shortcuts to top-tier quality do exist.
In the quest to make any brand name a household word, business communicators are bombarded today with one idea after another. It is one thing, for example, to plan "integrated" strategies with articles and videos, but it is quite another to actually write the engaging content needed to motivate audiences.
Complicating matters are the requirements of the distribution channels. How, for instance, does the content style differ in "paid" channels versus the "earned" channels? Should we write differently as well for the "owned" channels?
"The answer will be pleasing to busy writers," says Jane Stokes, workshop instructor and author of the Complete All-Canadian Content-Writing Handbook, recently released online at Blurb.ca. “Write every article and script the same way as though each item must earn the approval of a perceptive audience.”
Earned, she points out, is content of a quality that is good enough to be placed side-by-side reporter-written articles and videos. On the other hand, in paid content (such as native advertising) and owned content (such as websites, publishing-house items) those all-important standards are often dropped.
"While achieving earned distribution is hard work requiring the highest quality in soft news writing, that is the channel with the greatest rewards," Stokes explains. "It's your ticket to the most reliable, word-of-mouth sharing – so be sure to do the same in the paid and owned channels. Over-selling usually leads to the opposite of what was intended: resistance to the information.
"If you want to catch attention, inspire discussion, be believed, and hold the audience's interest from the beginning to the end of your content messaging, there is a way to achieve it every time: write your articles and scripts the way an objective reporter would write them."
And for those skills, say observers in the field, public relations writers and business communicators can access tools to teach themselves.
"Start by reading print and digital articles on a daily basis for the purpose of examining the tone and branding techniques," Stokes suggests. "Attend refresher workshops, practise regularly, and increase confidence as you write with guidebooks that contain checklists and templates."
