Learning never stops

I attended a joint PRSA/IABC workshop today hosted by Ann Wylie, the writing coach. It was a sold-out presentation and the folks sitting with me were from Arizona State University and Salt River Project. Ann, whose columns I've been reading every month in the PRSA newsletter, focused on ways to reach more readers and her No. 1 suggestion is to think like one. She also says we should not use words that are more than two syllables, but I honestly don't know how I'm going to manage that! 

Here's a page from her tips:


Think packages, not pieces.

No doubt about it: Your readers would rather read a short piece than a long piece.

One good way to reduce the length of your copy is to focus each piece on a single message point. You say you have six messages? Then you have six pieces —not one long, unwieldy piece.

That’s what we call “redirection,” or breaking your story into multiple pieces. In addition to your main story, you might repackage your piece into:

• Sidebars
• Boxes
• Lists
• Related stories
• Web sidebars
• Freestanding vignettes
• Fun facts, trivia or other marginalia

You might even consider serializing your story, or breaking your piece into short chapters or segments to run over time.