Writing is at the heart of good communication.
Writing is at the heart of good communication.
Think about your job. You are probably writing all the time. You’ve possibly stopped writing to read this.
Press releases, crisis media management statements, emails, social media posts, marketing material, pitches, website content and internal communication articles are just some components of the comms pro’s job description.
All require words that captivate, compel, motivate, convince and inspire.
But writing isn’t easy. Can we improve our skills?
Well, during a recent masterclass for The Media Team Academy, we were joined by professional copywriter Jackie Barrie for a business writing skills masterclass to share some of the secrets behind good writing and persuasive copy.
Jackie has spent her career writing sales and marketing copy. And her skills and techniques transfer to other forms of writing, whether it is website copy, social media posts, internal communications, marketing material, or press releases.
She began by sharing her four-step model for compelling content AIDA. It stands for:
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action
Let’s take a look back at what she discussed.
Grabbing attention
“We get bombarded with more information in a day than our grandparents did in a lifetime,” Jackie said.
“And the brain can’t cope with that amount of input. So, it filters out anything that isn’t directly relevant. This is why it is crucial to grab attention.
“Your headline and subject line have to be relevant to the reader otherwise they will filter it out with all the noise our overloaded brains can’t cope with.”
How do you do it?
“One technique for doing this is to be brave and different and to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.”
But Jackie admits headline writing is not always easy. Technology, however, can help, through tools such as Portent Idea Generator, Tweak Your Biz and Coschedule’s headline analyser.
“Artificial intelligence is creeping into copywriting,” she said.
“It hasn’t yet replaced humans, but we can harness it to help us.
“There are tools that can help us generate headlines and grab attention. You will still need to use your brain to edit or adapt it, but it could save you time.”
“Some of the suggestions they come up with are clickbait ones. We know clickbait works in terms of grabbing attention. But it leads to disappointment. To avoid this, you must make sure whatever you promise in your headline is lived up to by the rest of your content.”
Maintain interest
The second part of the AIDA model is ‘interest’.
How do you make sure your content is interesting enough for people to keep reading?
Jackie has two main techniques for this. The first is what she describes as bottom-up language.
“People are always thinking ‘what’s in it for me?’,” she said. “And the only two words that answer that question are ‘you’ and ‘your’.
“If you are doing a one-to-one communication, you can use their name, which is even more powerful than ‘you’ and ‘your’.
“But, if you are doing a one-to-many communication, the words ‘you’ and ‘your’ communicate directly with their brain. It is almost impossible to overuse them.
“I call ‘you’ and ‘your’ bottom-up writing. Whereas the company focused language is top-down writing.
“To improve the level of interest in your reader, you have to write from their point of view. And that’s where these words come in. The more you cross out the top-down words and replace them with bottom-up words, the more interesting it will be.”
What does this mean for top-down language? Should you avoid using it?
Jackie said: “You will still use it. But it belongs in the bottom third or bottom half of your communication in most cases.
“To assess your writing, you can colour code it. Anything you recognise as top-down, put in red or underline it.
“Anything that is ‘you’ or ‘your’ language, put in green. Then you can see, at a glance, how much of each you have got and where it appears.
“You want most of the green at the top and most of the red at the bottom. Once you have hooked them in with the ‘you’ language, they are more likely to read until the end because they will be interested enough to find out more.”
How does top-down writing sit with press releases?
“Well, with press releases you might be writing it in the hope thousands or millions of people will read it,” Jackie said.
“But they will be sitting in their chair, in front of their device, reading it on their own, one at a time. So, the word ‘you’ is singular, not plural. And that might be how you switch it for some of those messages.
“The other thing with a press release is that you are probably writing it in a more neutral way. So, you might say ‘here is what we do for clients’ rather than ‘here is what we do for you’. But even that would be a top-down expression.”
And what about crisis statements?
“Let’s say a banking system has gone down, and people can’t access their accounts,” Jackie said. “They will want to know why they can't get to their money and make transfers and payments.
“You need to recognise that, be honest and open, and say, ‘we know this has been causing you problems’. You can then say, ‘we are doing everything we can, and we will let you know as soon as it is fixed’.
“You can see there I am using some ‘we’ language – you don’t need to banish it altogether. But you need to use it intelligently and in the right way.”
The other vital technique for maintaining interest is the inverted pyramid model, which will be familiar to those of you from a journalistic background.
Jackie said: “This is one of the first things I learned at journalism college. You start with the most newsworthy information – the who, what, why, when, where and how.
“And then you go on to the next most important information until you finish with the general background information.
“Journalists structure stories like this for two reasons. Firstly, so sub-editors can cut the stories from the bottom to fit in different slots without losing the crucial details.
“The other reason is that people consume news quickly. They turn the page or click away as soon as they have got the point of what you are saying. There is a risk they won’t reach the end, so you must put the most interesting information at the top.”
Where could you use the inverted pyramid?
“You can apply this to things like press releases, but also LinkedIn profiles, company histories, team biographies, and marketing material,” Jackie said.
“If you think about company histories, people tend to start by saying ‘we were formed in this year, then we recruited this chief executive, then we bought this machine’. It is in chronological order.
“But you need to turn that upside down - using this model -and start with where you are today and end up with how you got there. No one cares who you are until they know what you can do for them.”
Generating desire
So, you’ve made your product or service sound interesting? How can you get beyond this and make it desirable?
How do you get readers to recognise they want what you are writing about?
Jackie has another acronym to help: FAB, which stands for Features Advantages Benefits.
“With this technique, your start by listing in a grid the features of what you are writing about,” Jackie said.
“It is normally pretty easy to think about this and come up with a list.
“Then you need to start thinking about the advantages of those features.
“And the more you use this method, the more quickly you will jump on to the next stage, which is the benefits of those advantages.”
To illustrate the model during the masterclass, Jackie used a new coffee cup. One of its features is it is made from cardboard. The advantage of that is it is recyclable. And the benefit of that is it is environmentally friendly.
“The more writing of this style you do, the more instantly your brain will jump to benefits,” Jackie said.
Three tests can be used to turn features into benefits – the so what test, the who cares test, and the ‘which means that’ test.
So what? For every sentence you write, you need to answer ‘so what’ from the reader’s point of view.
Who cares? Lots of companies write ‘we are proud that’ or ‘we are passionate about’. No one cares how proud or passionate you are. They want to know what is in it for them.
‘Which means that’ For every line you write, you can add ‘which means that’. Let’s say you have written about how close your office is to a train station. You can add, ‘which means you will have an easy commute every day’.
Jackie said: “All this information is the research you carry out before you start writing. You are probably not going to include all of what you have gathered.
“You have to think about what is the most important part for your target audience. Pick one crucial thing.”
Prompting action
The final part of the AIDA model is action. How do you persuade people to do what you want them to do?
Jackie said: “With every piece you write, there will be a most-wanted reaction. And that turns into your call to action.
“So, you need to work back from there. Start with the end in mind.”
Simplicity with calls to action is pivotal.
“It needs to be no more complicated than the scissors symbol and the words ‘cut here’ that you used to see on coupons in newspapers,” Jackie said. So, your call to action may be for someone to click on a link, download a document or donate money.”
Evolution
Like many aspects of communication, the AIDA model has evolved in recent years. A new layer is often added for Conviction.
The C of Conviction means AIDA become AIDCA, which sadly does not roll off the tongue quite so easily.
But it is worth considering how it fits into your writing.
Jackie said: “This model has been around for decades and is tried, tested and proven. And it has evolved in recent years to include a new layer which is C for Conviction, which comes in between Desire and Action.
“Conviction means third part endorsements, which could be case studies, testimonials, star ratings or reviews - anything someone else says that supports what you are saying.”
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 35 years of experience. We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
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