The best piece of advice I’ve received on writing came from one of journalism instructors at Ryerson, a shrewd Brit who’d spent many years on London’s Fleet Street elevating cheeky tabloids headlines to an art form. He insisted all effective writing is framed around one thing – something called people.
If you want to attract attention, he told us, you have to make people the focus – it’s the secret sauce that makes the audience — who are also people – want to dig in for more whether it is a news story, a feature story, or blog post.
That piece of advice was unforgettable and has shaped my writing throughout my career in journalism and PR, no matter what I’m writing or for what audience. Putting people front and centre in your story almost guarantees you’ll get someone to take a look, — perhaps it’s just a peek — but you’ll get their attention. People relate to other people, they put themselves in their shoes, they see themselves reflected back in the subject, and it helps them visualize what you are trying to communicate.
Since your work is competing with a wall of information overload that just gets bigger every day, maybe it’s time to recruit some humans to be your secret weapon to blast through the noise and get your writing the attention is deserves. Here are a few ideas…
1. Once upon a time
Stories are the way we interpret our world. We got hooked early on sitting on our bed listening to our parents read us our favourite storybook over and over until they eventually hid it from us. Why are stories so effective? They take a big pile of cold, unfriendly, boring facts (think quarterly earnings) and inject life into them, transforming them into something three-dimensional, memorable and maybe even emotional. When wrapped in a story, a bunch of facts on sales results trapped in an endless list of bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation suddenly becomes a battle of David and Goliath. The exciting areas of the right brain start to light up and give the left brain a well-needed rest. Final sales numbers never looked more attractive than in a story about how a sales team collaborated with teams across the company on a unique solution and snatched the biggest account of the year from the giant in your industry.
2. Give me an example, please
Our world has become so technical. Bar codes are now making our coffee in the morning, iPhones our talking to us and yesterday my new Fitbit told me it loved me. Whether you’re in the tech sector or not, chances are you’ve been faced with translating stuff so technical it would give the average person instant narcolepsy. The best way to simplify anything is to inject a human. The one thing all technical information and products have in common is that they are used by human beings or they impact humans. Here’s the burning question on the mind of anyone reading about the latest shiny new product – how does the darn thing work? Once you give the reader an example, or spoil them with a couple of examples, telling them how the product works and how it is going to make their life simpler, they may just want to buy it. Or perhaps you’re writing about an SAP implementation, a multi-year project that’s redesigning hundreds of processes that manage financial reporting. A real snooze fest? Not if you drive your monster truck through the technospeak and emerge with some reasons to show how it’s helping humans. Maybe you start the article with a headline like this: Want to reduce your expense reporting from one hour to 10 minutes and get reimbursement on the spot? Employees might start looking forward to the SAP implementation updates (it could happen).
3. People shine in direct quotes
There is a reason reporters use direct quotes. They provide stories with depth by offering an inside look from those who were there or are experts in their field. Say your boss is torturing you by making you give a speech on the most boring topic in the world. Let’s just say the topic is lint, you know the white stuff that sticks like crazy glue to your favorite black outfits. You’re thinking about doing a whack of research on Google and then packaging up your findings in a PowerPoint slide deck, stuffed with charts and bullet points highlighting the molecular structure of lint, its origins, and its future. Or — you could inject some humans into this topic with direct quotes to add some sizzle to those clinging little bits of annoying matter. Maybe you talk to the person who did the study on why people with abdominal hair have a greater the tendency to collect belly-button lint (real study mentioned in the Wall Street Journal) and then rivet your audience with some direct quotes from some sales people who live and breathe lint rollers. Lint is actually a competitive business accounting for $100 million in sales every year from the two main players and they are in a nasty fight for advertising supremacy (story on CBS website). You can wrap up the speech with a quote from fantasy writer Charles de Lint. “Don’t forget – no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.” All you have to do is include your secret ingredient.
If you want to attract attention, he told us, you have to make people the focus – it’s the secret sauce that makes the audience — who are also people – want to dig in for more whether it is a news story, a feature story, or blog post.
That piece of advice was unforgettable and has shaped my writing throughout my career in journalism and PR, no matter what I’m writing or for what audience. Putting people front and centre in your story almost guarantees you’ll get someone to take a look, — perhaps it’s just a peek — but you’ll get their attention. People relate to other people, they put themselves in their shoes, they see themselves reflected back in the subject, and it helps them visualize what you are trying to communicate.
Since your work is competing with a wall of information overload that just gets bigger every day, maybe it’s time to recruit some humans to be your secret weapon to blast through the noise and get your writing the attention is deserves. Here are a few ideas…
1. Once upon a time
Stories are the way we interpret our world. We got hooked early on sitting on our bed listening to our parents read us our favourite storybook over and over until they eventually hid it from us. Why are stories so effective? They take a big pile of cold, unfriendly, boring facts (think quarterly earnings) and inject life into them, transforming them into something three-dimensional, memorable and maybe even emotional. When wrapped in a story, a bunch of facts on sales results trapped in an endless list of bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation suddenly becomes a battle of David and Goliath. The exciting areas of the right brain start to light up and give the left brain a well-needed rest. Final sales numbers never looked more attractive than in a story about how a sales team collaborated with teams across the company on a unique solution and snatched the biggest account of the year from the giant in your industry.
2. Give me an example, please
Our world has become so technical. Bar codes are now making our coffee in the morning, iPhones our talking to us and yesterday my new Fitbit told me it loved me. Whether you’re in the tech sector or not, chances are you’ve been faced with translating stuff so technical it would give the average person instant narcolepsy. The best way to simplify anything is to inject a human. The one thing all technical information and products have in common is that they are used by human beings or they impact humans. Here’s the burning question on the mind of anyone reading about the latest shiny new product – how does the darn thing work? Once you give the reader an example, or spoil them with a couple of examples, telling them how the product works and how it is going to make their life simpler, they may just want to buy it. Or perhaps you’re writing about an SAP implementation, a multi-year project that’s redesigning hundreds of processes that manage financial reporting. A real snooze fest? Not if you drive your monster truck through the technospeak and emerge with some reasons to show how it’s helping humans. Maybe you start the article with a headline like this: Want to reduce your expense reporting from one hour to 10 minutes and get reimbursement on the spot? Employees might start looking forward to the SAP implementation updates (it could happen).
3. People shine in direct quotes
There is a reason reporters use direct quotes. They provide stories with depth by offering an inside look from those who were there or are experts in their field. Say your boss is torturing you by making you give a speech on the most boring topic in the world. Let’s just say the topic is lint, you know the white stuff that sticks like crazy glue to your favorite black outfits. You’re thinking about doing a whack of research on Google and then packaging up your findings in a PowerPoint slide deck, stuffed with charts and bullet points highlighting the molecular structure of lint, its origins, and its future. Or — you could inject some humans into this topic with direct quotes to add some sizzle to those clinging little bits of annoying matter. Maybe you talk to the person who did the study on why people with abdominal hair have a greater the tendency to collect belly-button lint (real study mentioned in the Wall Street Journal) and then rivet your audience with some direct quotes from some sales people who live and breathe lint rollers. Lint is actually a competitive business accounting for $100 million in sales every year from the two main players and they are in a nasty fight for advertising supremacy (story on CBS website). You can wrap up the speech with a quote from fantasy writer Charles de Lint. “Don’t forget – no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.” All you have to do is include your secret ingredient.
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