Social Media and the Evolution of Writing

A lot of old school thinkers lament the loss of writing skills brought on by the rise of social media. I say it is an evolution, just as we have seen since Gutenberg printed his Bible. Take newspapers: Find newspaper copy from even a few decades ago and notice how different the writing is. Quality is subjective. For some, the writing is better now; for others, it is worse in some ways. What is inarguable is that writing, now, is of this time. It evolves through natural selection--this is how people read and absorb information now. They see it on screens. They absorb it in microbursts.

If anything, I think it takes more skill to write effectively in this era.

While evolution continues, foundations for effective writing still exist. In 1998, Jacob Nielsen produced what remains as some of the best advice for writing on digital and social media platforms. His tips for crafting Microcontent (such as headlines, e-mail subject lines, tweets) include:

• Explain what the article is about in terms that relate to the user.
  
• Make the first word and important, information-carrying word. Skip leading articles, for the most part.
  
• Avoid teasers. People have been burned too many times.
  
• For digital media, write headlines to stand on their own. The way people read online does not enable them to gather as much context from surrounding data (photos, graphics, etc.) the way they do in print.
  

No matter the platform, no matter how much it evolves, effective writing still must serve a need. It must be audience-focused. Which brings me to the "Shameless Plug for My Book"--Reclaiming Your Readers--which is now available from Marion Street Press and most other websites where you can order books.

My kids want to go to college...I have to do what I can.

Death of Newspapers Again Disputed

Are newspapers dead? Here we go again...

Until pixels do totally replace ink, this will be a valid question and dinosaurs like me will continue to say "No" and present reasons why. Certainly they need to evolve, but there are some characteristics they should maintain as they do.

One such characteristic was brought to light by Tim Giago, founder of the Native American Journalists Association. He writes in Huffington Post that the newspaper's demise is indeed linked to the Internet, but he blames the fact that newspapers have lost touch with their communities far more. Weeklies in small, rural communities continue to do well because they maintain their connection to the communities they serve, he writes.

This community connection--the way a news organization can and should weave itself into the fabric of the community it serves--must never be lost. That's one sure way for newspapers to die.

I recently came across an edition of a newspaper that I cared about deeply at one point in my life (and, thanks to journalism school and my work for Inland Press Association, there are many). I didn't know whether to be disgusted or sad. It was clear the newspaper had lost its connection to the community. The news seemed obligatory. Real people were absent. I found nothing in the pages that made the newspaper unique or helped define its community. For the first time ever, I felt I wasted my money on a newspaper.

In whatever form (print or online) a publication takes, its connection to the audience starts with relevance--making the news essential to the people who read it. I still see too many newspapers ignoring these crucial questions:

• Who is the audience?
  
• What do they want?
  
• What form do they want these things in?

This seems as good a place to start as any for newspapers that have lost their way.

Readership Numbers Another Mixed Bag

After a busy spring/summer at PTA and some much-needed family time, I have come back to the blog to re-dedicate myself to exploring what readership means in this day and age. With audiences fracturing and media proliferating, the evolution of media consumptions moves pretty fast. You keep up or you wither away. Guess I don't want to wither.

So I looked at the latest readership figures from GfK MRI. The headlines look good. Magazine readership remains stable. Overall readership rose a percent.

Given the difficulties in growing mass media readership, steady or stable is good. As many propose, what would be helpful is if these figures could be combined with online readership of these same titles.

PTA hopes to achieve this kind of synergy when it releases its first truly digital edition of Our Children, the National PTA magazine. It's in the planning stages for this fall, so anything could happen. But, hopefully, this will be an initiative that can educate all of us.

Reclaiming Your Readers

I am finishing up edits on my book. Very anxious to see this long project finally come to fruition. My thanks to Marion Street Press for believing in this book and what it teaches--a reader-focused method of writing. Here is what we're saying about it:

With a new, more impactful, efficient way of writing, this handbook introduces writers of all types to the ARC Method--a technique for reader-focused composition that ultimately leads to a devoted readership. Demonstrating how this strategy incorporates the concepts of Audience, Relevance, and a readership Continuum to change the paradigm of writing, this guide reveals how utilizing this approach addresses the audience's true needs. Enabling writers to produce content for multiple formats, this examination is guaranteed to make writers more effective and valuable to employers, instructing them on how to adapt to the current trends of media proliferation such as blogs and online social media all while staying true to traditional outlets. With valuable tips on combating audience fragmentation, this study offers writers of all backgrounds a solid solution to winning a loyal following across a variety of platforms and styles.

What is Readership?: 3 New Elements to Consider

What is readership?

Is readership more than the four cornerstones as outlined by the Readership Institute: content, service, brand and culture?

I've been mulling this over, as these four cornerstones continue to age. Do they need refining? Are they still valid?

The answer to both is yes. Step one is stop mulling and start thinking and discussing. What is readership?

The foundation of readership is still in the four cornerstones. Content that serves audience needs. Service that rises above the audience's expectations. A brand that resonates with the audience and promotes relevance and a work culture that supports the pursuit of the three other cornerstones.

Elements of readership can fit into any of these four "boxes" but sometimes it is valuable to think about things in a different way and consider new boxes (notice how deftly I avoided using that horrid, overused "out of the..." phrase). We can start with three F's (yeah, the third one is kind of a stretch but bear with me):

Format - Readership is driven by the format in which you deliver the information. How do readers want to consume the information? Your information can be relevant and valuable but if it is delivered in a way they find inaccessible or inefficient, your information will be rendered useless.

For instance, newspapers still pack a lot of relevant information in their pages, but they simply aren't the format that many people get their news anymore. That relevance is lost.

Fulfillment - The degree to which the audience's information needs are filled. Certainly this involves relevance, which the content cornerstone addresses, but information can be relevant and still not fulfill a need. Many newspaper stories were written about the housing market's collapse. That's relevant. But few stories explained how this happened, which would have fulfilled a greater need. Fewer still explained what people could do in response, which would have fulfilled an even greater need.

Easy to Find - This is largely about search. You really can't take SEO out of the equation anymore, given how important it has become. Search engine optimization enables people to find content quickly and easily, two essential factors to readership. So web content needs to be optimized for search engines, which involves a number of skills. It takes skill to determine important keywords and weave them unobtrusively into the content. Much of SEO involves site design, navigation, linking policies and naming conventions, which might be out of the hands of writers and even some editors, but they should still know what is involved.

So there are the three F's...are there more elements to consider?

New experiment in readership development

As promised in my earlier post, I am blogging about our work at PTA toward integrating our media and messages. I just posted a story called "Money Management for Kids" on PTA.org. Using Google's Wonder Wheel and AdWords Keyword tools I SEO'ed the story to death, using the most-used search terms for money management and kids.

I tried to consistently use money management for kids as the primary keyword. It's in the headline of the story, the title of the page, and the URL--good SEO practice. It is also the title of the discussion I started in the PTA Great Idea Bank, which I linked to, and the headline for the e-newsletter article to be published next week. Consistency benefits everyone.

In the works are a post promoting the feature on the PTA Blog and the regular social media promotion through Twitter and Facebook.

In the near future, we will add a TweetMeme and bookmarking tools, as we have to other pages. Ideally, I want this page (and others like it) to take on more of a Google Living Stories feel, where content gets updated frequently and users are encouraged to use the page as a quick-stop for the most up to date info on this topic. In the meantime, I want to add some links to other resources in the empty space on the right side of the page.

As I mention in the upcoming blog post, National PTA aims to deliver relevant information in the most convenient form in as timely a manner as possible. We'll track this experiment to see how closely we come to achieving our goal this way. Stay tuned.

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Deepening User Engagement: Lessons from Jay Rosen

Jay Rosen writes in his PressThink blog about how the "backchannel" has changed the game for conference panelists. While he was specifically referring to his experience as a panelist at SXSW, his advice applies to the broader topic of user engagement.

Rosen points out that social media and mobile platforms have established powerful peer-to-peer connections--"horizontal" connections that run simultaneous to one's vertical connection to news, institutions, programs, speakers, etc. His preparation for The Future of Context panel was different from panels in years past, thanks to the influence of a heavily wired audience.

Some of Rosen's advice can be used by media to deepen audience engagement. Just think "publication" instead of panel:

• Blog it first - Blog to promote the panel and use early reactions to hone the presentation.
  
• "Write once, run anywhere" - Use the title of the panel as the domain for a dedicated website, the hashtag on Twitter, the search term to emphasize.
  
• Watch the backchannel like a hawk - Monitor the online conversations going on, sense where the conversations are going, react when necessary.
  
• Arrange a meetup directly after the panel - Invite the audience to continue the discussion.
  

I plan to implement these strategies at PTA soon. Stay tuned. I'll blog about it first.