Writing

In the spirit of the NCAA basketball tournament, PR News offers its own version of March Madness with the 2018 Most Overused PR Words & Phrases Tournament. Take a look at the first-round picks and vote on Twitter for the overused words from each pairing that you’d like to see advance. We’ll announce the second-round picks this Friday, and every Friday through the end of the month until we crown a champion.

Strong writing skills can supercharge your brand’s message and propel your own professional growth. After all, the best way to influence anyone is a story well told. Yet, many communicators undermine their brand’s message—and their own credibility—by stumbling over some common but easily avoidable linguistic hurdles. Here are three common errors to keep in mind before you hit the send button.

Admit it, just the thought of giving a speech makes your stomach turn just a bit. This article will help you get over that fear with four tips for crafting and presenting a speech in front of a crowd or a talk to your staff. In both situations it’s best to prepare far ahead and have goals that you wish to accomplish.

When you’re developing a news release, a good quote can make all the difference in giving character and perspective to your announcement. Once you’ve laid out the what, when, where and who, a quote from a spokesperson fills in the why: why your brand is passionate about an issue, why something needed to be done, why something is significant, why the reader should care.

As you know, social media has an important role to play in any PR effort. The ability to connect with and put thought leadership content in front of large social networks via these tools lends itself exceptionally well to addressing the need to influence. Practitioners, though, focus so often on short-form communication on social that the power of long-form publishing in the medium has failed to become as widely recognized—or at the very least, its rate of implementation is lower. Here’s why that should change and how you can be a part of it.

Plagiarism happens, sometimes intentionally, other times accidentally. What do communicators need to know about plagiarism? And how can they avoid plagiarizing others? And, yes, themselves?

Are you thinking about starting a blog at your company? You recognize the value it could provide your organization, but how do you make sure the time you invest in it is worthwhile? How do you know if you’re writing the right types of blog posts for your brand and its publics? Here are tips to build a blog that builds your brand.

Strong writing skills can propel a PR pro’s career, but the opposite is also true—weak writing skills can undermine your message and professional growth. Whether it’s a press release seen by thousands or an email seen by one, a PR pro’s goal is to make any piece of writing concise, impactful, polished and clear, said Sid Orlando, managing editor of curation and content at Kickstarter, at PR News’ Writing Workshop.

My take on the new year is different in its emphasis: 2017 will be when we realize that the land rush associated with new channels and platforms is over, and we no longer have excuses for not focusing on the key elements that drove PR for the century before digital media: quality and credibility. Yes, we’re at the tail end of a few years’ window when you could get ahead simply by posting more frequently to your brand journalism site than the laggards. Google rewarded sheer quantity. And you could get a bunch of free followers by jumping onto Facebook before your competitors, and then Twitter, and to some extent Instagram. This channel-hopping seemed like the new normal. But in the grand scheme of the history of marketing, it will be viewed as an outlier on the front end of the digital revolution, where fundamental rules got bent for a while.

It’s become harder to gain media coverage. Likewise, securing coverage in down months like December and January can challenge even the most committed PR pros. Some may have little to no fresh content to pitch. But if you want your brand to remain relevant, you must be active in the public conversation.