writing tips

Don’t Press “Send”! E-mail Lessons from a New Pro by Joshua Romero

Heather Sliwinski 1 Comment

Being a new staffer at an organization can be a challenge – reading through binders of HR paperwork, figuring out everyone’s names and responsibilities, getting the copier code right, learning how to dial out, the list goes on and on. The last thing you should worry about is making rookie mistakes communicating via e-mail.

Here are some of my tough lessons learned in the world of e-mail communication:

Did I Press “Reply”? I Meant “Forward”.

What Happened: When I was assigned to write my first news release for the law school featuring a quotation from the dean, my supervisor suggested that I craft a statement from the dean and ask for his approval. She was very encouraging of my work, suggesting that the dean rarely, if ever, suggests changes or revisions to the statements we prepare. I sent the dean my quotation.

When he replied, I was surprised to see that he had some significant changes to what I had prepared. Keeping my supervisor in the loop of my progress, I sent her an e-mail: “Of course, he would want to edit the very first quote I put together for him. HAHAHA! Good thing this hasn’t gone out yet. Can we just go home, since this is most definitely a Monday!?!”

I thought the e-mail went to my supervisor. Apparently I hit “reply” instead of “forward” and the lighthearted message went right to the dean’s inbox.

What I Learned: Our dean is a very gracious man! In all seriousness, he was very understanding of the incident and understood my joking about the challenges of our work. He even said that it is good for us to laugh at those things. More importantly, I learned to always double-check the recipient before I press send.

Can I Have Your Number?

What Happened: It was a busy media day for me with three requests for legal experts coming in from three reporters on three different subjects. With the chaos of logging reporter contact information and trying to get professors on the phone or on e-mail, my desk was covered in a patchwork of Post-it notes. I secured one of our professors and the reporter asked me to e-mail her the professor’s contact information. I typed out the e-mail, double-checked who I was sending it to and pressed send. Moments later, I got an e-mail back from the reporter: “You sent me my phone number.”

What I Learned: As important as it is to respond quickly to media requests, it’s just as important to provide our media colleagues the correct contact information. I got lucky. The reporter saw my e-mail and corrected me. She gave me a chance to make things right, when she could have just moved on to another legal expert.

You’re Not So Special

What Happened: I’m probably not alone in sending out news release e-mail blasts. I’ve been fortunate enough to develop one-on-one relationships with some members of the media who have asked that I send all of our news releases to them. With these contacts, I compose a news release e-mail and “Bcc” them. After a few weeks without sending news releases, I had some news to share. Since I was out of practice on my releases, I accidentally entered my contacts in the “To” box instead of “Bcc.” Whoops! Looks like my media friends aren’t so special anymore, because everyone gets that news release.

What I Learned: On the surface, I learned to double-check where you’re entering recipients’ e-mail addresses. More importantly, I realized the value of that personal touch with your media contacts. Just because everyone wants your news release, that doesn’t mean you can’t send it out individually. It is more work, but I’ve found that it helps to nurture those relationships you’ve already built. It also gives your media friends that “I’m special” feeling. Plus, it keeps them from thinking that someone else might cover the story so they don’t have to.

Learn from my mistakes. Only press ‘send’ when you know you’re sending the right message to the right person. For those who can’t break the habit of pressing ‘send’ prematurely, you can always learn how to recall an e-mail!

 

Joshua P. Romero is the marketing & communications coordinator at California Western School of Law in San Diego. He manages the media relations and social media programs for the school. Romero is Member Co-chair of the New Professionals Section of PRSA.

Higher education PR: who controls the college website? by Elizabeth Rhoads

Heather Sliwinski 1 Comment

High school students begin their college search online. They explore Princeton Review, US News & World Report and search for some of the colleges they’re familiar with on Google. College students are directed to their college’s website to get more detailed information on a few assignments for the semester. Professors who have completed research in their field want to make sure that their information is on the website for everyone to see.

One of the most crucial parts of public relations in higher education is a website. Considering that the majority of high school students spend quite a bit of time online, a college’s website often serves as the first impression for prospective students. While it’s used as the primary recruiting tool, it also has to serve a couple of other audiences – current students and faculty members. So, websites in higher education are more complicated than they may appear.

Not only does a college website have to serve a few different audiences, but everyone wants to have control over their part of it. I recently read an article that questioned why college websites are so awful, given that faculty and staff in higher education are often perceived as being a very intelligent crowd. Part of the answer is that while there is a common theme and template, every department has their own information that they feel is absolutely essential to display on the website. It’s often impossible for one or two web designers to be able to keep up with all the constant updates and posting, in addition to somewhat serving as a filter to what gets put up online. As a result, many departments are given the ability to update the site, and therefore, the website is actually written by several different people, in several different tones.

The question becomes, who’s the most important audience to serve? The answer depends on the college.

Personally, I believe the most important thing is to have a consistent tone throughout the entire website that is appealing to prospective students. Although a second person, conversational style was rare years ago, it has become more common. Rather than trying to formally convey the college, or departments’, mission and vision, I believe simply stating the benefits of the college (or department) in a conversational style is the best way to communicate with prospective students through a website. As for the faculty – often times they don’t have much time to dedicate to posting content on the website, which gives someone else an opportunity to write for them. That’s where we come in – who could be better for the job than a PR professional?

Elizabeth RhoadsElizabeth Rhoads currently serves as the Web Content Coordinator for a small liberal arts college in Central Pennsylvania. She graduated from Susquehanna University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Communications. She is an alumna of the White House Internship Program.  Rhoads serves the PRSA New Professionals Section Executive Committee as Programming Chair.

communication and pr… Three Things I Do to Improve My Communication Abilities by Janet Krenn

New Professionals PR Blog Leave a comment

In The Public Relations Strategist, I recently read an article called: “Leading in Tough Times” by David Grossman (APR, Fellow of PRSA, and CEO of The Grossman Group). The article had several bits of interesting information, but one point stuck with me. Grossman points out that just because you write or talk doesn’t mean that you are communicating.

“If your audience isn’t understanding you, then it doesn’t matter what you are saying. Communication happens in the mind of the listener,” Grossman writes. In other words, the difference between writing and communication is how well you’ve reached your audience.

For people who aren’t in public relations or journalism, this concept is just about completely foreign! In school, other departments teach students to write in academic prose, which is typically too wordy with too many clauses and too stilted for consumption by the average individual. Just because you communicate well with an academic, doesn’t mean that you are communicating well overall.

In my opinion (and I don’t believe this is original thought, but maybe just difficult to determine to whom to attribute it), there are three things we can do to better communicate with a general audience:

1. Prune
How many times have I written useless words in this article? “Just”, “so”, the list continues. Trimming back these useless words and some redundant sentences would make any written piece more understandable. As William Zinsser, author of “On Writing Well”, wrote “It won’t do to say that the snoozing reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. My sympathies are with him. If the reader is lost, it is generally because the writer has not been careful enough to keep him on the path.”

2. Practice
We all practice writing at work–it’s part of the job! But what do you do to practice when you’re not in the office? Later, I might practice by writing a long update email to some friends or by adding to the pages of my neglected journal. Right now, I’m practicing by writing this blog post. If you’re looking for more ways to practice your writing and communication, New Professionals members can also write for this blog. (Contact me if you’re interested.)

3. Read
It’s no secret that the best writers are enthusiastic readers. Now, we find so many sources of content, narrowing down options has become tough. Hundreds-of-thousands of books are published each year, and maybe as many blogs are posted each day. Then you have newspapers, social media. So how do you find what to read? On top of my work-related updates on Google Reader, the dailies, and the weeklies, I typically take recommendations from magazines, friends, or colleagues. (Did you notice that your New Pros group has been reading and discussing 3 books during our “Summer Book Club”? It’s not too late to participate in the August’s book “Crush it!; we’ll discuss the book on the blog during the first two weeks of next month.)

What about you? How well do you think you communicate with your intended audience? Do you have tips or tricks that keep you on your game?

—
JANET KRENN is the 2010 Chair of the New Professionals of PRSA and will be hosting the “CRUSH It!” discussion during our Summer Book Club in August. You can contact her at janetqs(a)gmail.com or @janetkrenn.

It Is About Building Relationships

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by Jim Haynes, APR, Fellow PRSA, jhaynes1102@sbcglobal.net

Make your copy clear and concise.
Write with the audience in mind.
Know your purpose:
* Inform/educate
* Motivate
* Entertain
Write short sentences.
Use active verbs.
Use simple words.
Get to the point quickly.
Check your facts.
Proof. Proof. Proof. (Spell checker results are not reliable. Check this: “Its letter perfect awl the weigh; my checker tolled me sew.”)
Know your audience.
* Write what they know and understand.

* Don’t assume that they know the meaning of acronyms and jargon.
* Use terms they use.
* Ask one of them to check your work.
If you use an abbreviation or acronym, explain it.
Use the style appropriate for the medium.
Use the styles prescribed by the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook for print media and the AP Broadcast News Handbook for broadcast media.
Play the hand you’re dealt
Be sure your writing advances the organization’s objectives.
Get the level of management’s approval that’s needed.iWriting:

Write in “chunks”—headline, then a “brief” or lead, then text (More).
Understand that the user gets to decide how deep to read or scan.
Make each “chunk” useful.
iButtons and iLinks:
Limit each to 1-3 words.
Make them clear and precise.
Break your text into chunks.
Limit paragraphs to 2-3 short sentences.
Provide a link option for the full-text version.
Writing the effective iHeadline:
Make it short, and stand-alone.
Include both a subject and a verb.
Make the tense present or future.
Limit it to 10 words.

Finally: Let it rest!
Leave it overnight.
Take another look the next day.
You’ll probably find ways to improve it.

—

Mr Haynes is a partner and director for QuickSilver Interactive Group, Inc. of Dallas, and is a member of PRSA’s national Board of Directors. He has taught PR at four universities and served as assistant dean at The University of Texas at Austin. He also is the co-author of the textbook Public Relations Writing: Form & Style.