We had a great session with PRCA last week, delivering a morning session on ‘Writing for PR in the Digital Age’, with lots of very healthy discussions from agency and in-house PR professionals. We thought we’d sum up a short part of the morning, with four top tips for writing online.
If you’re keen to know more, please do contact us for details of the next session, or we can set up an in-house training session for your organisation here in Dubai, just email sam@footstepcommunications.com. For now though, our four top tips:
1. Keep it short and to the point
Cut out the fluff! Front load your writing with all the key information at the beginning as few people are likely to scroll to the en – your key message and call to action need to be at the start.
2. Make it easy to scan
Keep sentences and paragraphs short, with lots of white space in between, as this will allow people to scan easily, and will make the text seem less imposing. Give your text structure – use bullet points, numbered lists, sub headers, for easy scan and digestion. Draw attention to key messages using bold, italics, underline, or a font colour or size change – this will ensure people see it.
3. Do your keyword research before you start
Know what words and phrases your audience actually use to search – and use them! Liberally (but sensibly, your writing should be natural, not spam). Position these keywords at the start of your text, ideally in the headline too, and highlight them by underlining, or marking in bold or colour – Google will pay more attention to these.
4. Link away!
Link externally to reputable third party pages (such as newspapers and trade bodies) and within your own site for more information, ask people to contact you for more information and drive them to your ‘Contact us’ page. Encourage others to link to your website too.
All of these tips are a helpful way to make sure your writing is optimised for digital, however it’s important not to forget the basic rules of writing for PR also, the most important being to keep things strategic, and for every piece of writing evaluate what your trying to achieve, who (exactly) your audience are, what you want them to do/think as a result of your writing, and what the best platform is likely to be.
For more information, to set up or join a session with us, or simply a coffee and a chat, please feel free to email sam@footstepcommunications.com
