Infographic: How to choose between text, photos or video for your content

In the days before social media and the smartphone rewrote the rules, the dominant life forms in mass media were writers, photographers and videographers.  They were specialists serving an editor who would mix and match the media as needed to best serve the story.

But in the online world … all media merge. 

Content journalists can’t afford to specialize in just text, photos or video. We must have a working knowledge of all three media

So the question becomes: What to use and when to use it?

Text – Words remain the fundamental building blocks of the online world. Search engines look for them. People use them to fuel Twitter, Facebook and any number of blogging platforms. “Text” is now a verb.  Words remain the fastest and cheapest forms of communication to produce.  Sentences can do two things. They can describe things. They can describe actions.  When you need to persuade, to explain in detail, or to tell a story, text remains your best option. 

Photo – Sometimes words are insufficient. You need to illustrate your message. You need to show instead of tell. Photos work well when you need a quick way to communicate things like shape, texture, color or environment. Good news: Becoming a competent photographer is easier, faster and cheaper than ever. If you own a smartphone, you have a professional camera. Download something like the KitCam app, and start shooting. If you get serious about photos, go to the Digital Photography School and learn more.

Video – Sometimes you need motion. You want to demonstrate a series of steps. You want to put a product into action. Video can do both. It also gives you the option of adding audio, either as a narration to provide extra personality to your content, or as ambient sound to enhance the sense of “being there.” Good news: It is also faster, easier and cheaper than ever to become a competent videographer. To learn more, check out the New York Video School's online lessons. (Amazingly cheap!)

To sum things up:

• When you want to explain, use text.
• When you want to illustrate, use photos.
• When you want to demonstrate, use video.

How to write for readers

Anyone who can converse in English can learn to write clearly.  I’m convinced of it. Not everyone can write like Hemingway. But just about anyone can learn to write to the level of an above average newspaper reporter.

It’s a matter of discipline. If you follow a handful of principles, many of them set down by the readability expert Robert Gunning, you can master the craft of writing clearly:

1. Write to express, not to impress. If you follow this principle, the others fall into line. Get past the idea that there is an “educated” style of writing.  Communicate ideas as quickly and easily as possible.
2. Keep your sentences short. This is a general rule. On average, you should compose sentences that can be read aloud in a single breath. But it's also a good practice to vary the length of your sentences to improve their flow and to avoid choppiness.
3. Choose the simple; avoid the complex.  If you expect readers to wade through a tangle of needless adjectives, adverbs and clauses to discover your point, then prepare for disappointment.  Keep your sentences lean.
4. Stick with familiar words. There are only a few thousand words we use in everyday conversation. Work with them.  Words with more than two syllables slow down the reader. Grease the wheels. Stay with one or two syllables whenever you can. Use polysyllable words as your change of pace.
5. Use precise nouns. If you find the need to use an adjective, think again. There’s probably a noun that will allow you to avoid the modifier.
6. Use active verbs. Any sentence can perform two tasks. It can describe a thing or it can describe an action. The best sentences do both. Do your best to work around sentences that use verbs like “is,” “are,” and other variations of “to be.” Such sentences lack verve.
7. Use the active voice. All sentences that are written in the passive voice should be recast.  The active voice brings power to a sentence. The passive voice drains a sentence of its momentum.
8. Prefer the concrete to the abstract.  If you wouldn’t use a word or a phrase in everyday conversation, then find another one.  Scientists, engineers and economics speak in abstractions. We’re not writing for them. Everyday people talk in concrete terms. You will get further writing for them.
9. Understand your readers. Study their wants and needs. Learn to speak their language. Relate your ideas to their experiences.
10. Write with a human voice. Avoid the legalese. Distain the corporate drone. Craft sentences that sound as if they come from a friend.

3 reasons for every brand journalist to love the inverted pyramid

For generations, newspaper reporters have depended on the inverted pyramid when they need to crank out a story on deadline.

The form has taken a beating in recent decades. The critics say it’s outdated.  They are wrong.

Think about it. Today's news cycle is both 24/7 and instantaneous, even for brand journalists.  Plus, more and more readers are choosing the smartphone as their main news medium.

We often have to write fast. We have to fit our stories onto smaller screens. Thus, the virtues of the inverted pyramid are clear. It is:

Easy to write

Unlike the story or the essay, the inverted pyramid is not designed to flow logically from premise to conclusion.

Instead, the inverted pyramid starts with a lead that answers the 5Ws and the H: who, what, when, where, why and how. After you’ve nailed the lead, you simply arrange the remaining paragraphs in the order of their importance.

This is child’s play with Microsoft Word. Just write the paragraphs in any order than occurs to you,  and then rearrange them into order by cutting and pasting.

There is a reason this is the first form a rookie newspaper reporter learns to execute.

Easy to edit 

The inverted pyramid is as easy to edit as it is to write. The editor really has only a few decisions to make. First, does the lead work? Second are the paragraphs in the right order?

Any rewriting takes very little time, even if you kick it back to the writer.

Easy to read

Readers are trained to read the inverted pyramid. They understand the rules and aren’t expecting a brilliant essay or a riveting story.  They just want the facts.

The inverted pyramid is designed to deliver information quickly and cleanly.  The reader can quit the story at any time and still get the gist.

Best time to use 

• When you need to write fast, particularly on deadline.
• When you are reporting hard news.
• When you are starting out as a content journalist.
• Anytime you are in doubt about which format to use.
• If you have a small staff with a large workload.

Keep a simple idea simple; avoid needless complexity

Here’s a news release that allows the news to get lost in the weeds of legal and technical yip-yap.

Supertel Hospitality, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPPR), a real estate investment trust (REIT), today announced that it sold the 114-room GuestHouse Inn in Jackson, Tennessee for $1.1 million. Supertel purchased the property in July 1998 and it was no longer classified as a core holding. The company will use the proceeds from the sale for general corporate purposes.  

Year-to-date Supertel has sold 11 non-core hotels generating gross proceeds of approximately $19.3 million. Four hotels are currently under contract and expected to close by year-end, pending financing and other customary closing conditions. The sale of the hotel demonstrates the company's continued commitment to the business plan which calls for continued balance sheet improvement by shedding underperforming assets.

What went wrong

• The original text is written for the high school graduate, scoring a 12.7 on the Gunning Fog Index. We prefer to produce text that scores between 6 and 7.

• The text contains only 114 words, but 26 have three or more syllables. That’s about 23 percent. We want to cut that by at least half.

• The original takes a simple business deal and makes it hard to grasp. It forces the reader to wade through a lot of wasted words to find the main point. The real story here isn’t that the company sold a hotel.  The story is that the company is following through with its plan to sell off its worst hotels. The underlying message is: “We’re getting better, so you should buy our stock.” But that gets lost in all the wasted words and clumsy punctuation.

• The text is written for the eye, not the ear. Try reading it aloud. Notice how awkward it feels on the tongue. This is a sure sign of writing that lacks clarity. If you can’t say it easily, you can’t read it easily. It is just that simple.

• The lead paragraph uses two sets of parentheses in the first 11 words. Parentheses are stoppers. They disrupt the flow of a sentence and make it harder to read. It makes far more sense to work parenthetical information into the body of the text.

• Lawyers love to add words that add nothing.  In the pursuit of absolute precision, they sacrifice clarity. For example: “Four hotels are currently under contract and expected to close by year-end, pending financing and other customary closing conditions.” Needless words put the burden on the reader. When faced with hard-to-read text, readers seldom work harder; they are more likely to quit.

The rewrite

Supertel Hospitality has sold the GuestHouse Inn in Jackson, Tenn., for $1.1 million, the company said today. The GuestHouse is one of 11 hotels Supertel sold this year for a total of $19.3 million.

The company has sold 11 hotels this year for a total of $19.3 million.  

Supertel viewed the hotels as poorly performing assets and sold them to improve its balance sheet. Contracts to sell four other hotels should close by Dec. 31.  

Supertel Hospitality is a real estate investment trust that trades on Nasdaq as SPRR.  

The company bought the 114-room GuestHouse Inn in 1998.  Money from the sale will go into the general fund.

Why the rewrite is easier to read

• The rewrite scores a 6.8 on the Gunning Fog Index., making this text measurably easier to read than the original. Of its 94 words, 11 have three or more syllables.

• The rewrite puts the actual news front and center. We no longer have to search for the connection between the news hook with the big picture. The hook is the sale of the hotel; the big picture describes how the sale fits into the company’s strategy.

• We’ve cut the multi-syllable words to 12 percent, making the text much easier to comprehend on the first reading. We could make the rewrite easier to read if we could cut the multi-syllable words like “hospitality” and “investment.”

• We have also changed the voice of the text from passive to active.  For example, “Contracts to sell four other hotels should close by Dec. 31.”

• We've taken out those nasty parentheses that mucked up the lead paragraph, and moved that information to graf 4. The lawyers may not like it, but the readers will.