How to ask the perfect question

From Jeff Haden at Inc.com:

1. Limit the actual question to one sentence. Feel free to state the problem or issue in detail, but limit your question to one sentence. "How can we increase productivity?" "How can we improve quality?" "What would you do if you were me?" Sticking to one sentence helps ensure your questions are open ended.
2. Provide options in the question only if those truly are the only options. But keep in mind those rarely are the only options. The odds you've already thought of everything are pretty slim.
3. Don't shade the question. You may think you know the answer. Great. Keep that to yourself. Make your questions answer-neutral.
4. Follow the same principles for follow-up questions. Stay short. Stay open ended. Stay neutral.
5. Talk as little as possible. You already know what you know. Great questions are designed to find out what the other person knows. So stay quiet and listen. You never know what you'll learn when you ask the right way.

Need to build a quick vector map? Here are two new tools

From ProPublica:

Today we're releasing code to make it easier for newsrooms to produce maps quickly. Landline is an open source JavaScript library for turning GeoJSON data into browser-based SVG maps. It comes with Stateline, which builds on Landline to create U.S. state and county choropleth maps with very little code out-of-the-box.

We finished the project and wrote documentation as part of last week’s Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Code Convening program (thanks to Github's Jessica Lord for helping out on short notice). We've been using variations of Landline at ProPublica for some time, for example on the front page of our nursing homes app and this voting rights act explainer.

Both should work in nearly every commonly supported browser. The full documentation is over at GitHub, but in a nutshell ...

'Readers first!': a new definition of Search Engine Optimization

Bill Belew at Search Engine Journal says:

I ask “What is search engine optimization?” often when I give talks. Most of the time I get stares in response. Some people try but give up soon enough. What would you answer? Tell me in the comments BEFORE reading on. 

I have a new definition for the term: 

Search Engine Optimization is creating good content on a web site in the form of pages and posts that real people want to read, which satisfies the query AND can be found by a search engine. In that order. Readers first!

Four reasons why quality journalism will survive the current apocalypse

From Michael Kinsley at Vanity Fair: 

There will always be a demand for high-quality news—enough demand to support two or three national newspapers, on papyrus scrolls if necessary. And the truth is that if only two or three newspapers survive, in national or global competition, that will still be more competition than we have now, with our collection of one-paper-town monopolies. 

A second truth is that most newspapers aren’t very good and wouldn’t be missed by anybody who could get The New York Times or USA Today and some bloggy source of local news. 

A third truth is that former roadblocks—people’s refusal to get their content online or to pay for it—are melting away like the snow. 

A fourth truth is that rich foundations and individuals appear downright eager to jump in and supply foreign or other prestige news if newspapers won’t. Former Times executive editor Bill Keller just quit the paper to help start a nonprofit to cover justice issues. Paul Steiger, formerly managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, founded ProPublica—a nonprofit that produces top-quality investigative journalism.

How to put the 'news' back into your brand stories in just six steps

All too often, I run into a brand story that is written as an essay, when it should be written as straight news.

Rather than starting with a straight news lead, too many brand journalists and other content marketers ease into a story with background they believe will set up the true lead, which they then will bury somewhere between paragraphs four and seven.

These writers never seem to ask themselves: Are readers willing to wade through all this background material to get to the real news we want to share with them? The answer is: No. Nein. Nyet. They won’t do it.

Get a clue, folks:

• News sells, essays don’t.

• News websites flourish.  Essay-based sites do not.

• For more than 150 years, there has been a “news business.” There has never been an “essay business.”

Readers love news. They crave the inside scoop. So give it to them. Tell them a news story about your clients, their brand, their company, their products, their services.  Identify the part of your story that is the news – and get to it, immediately.

So let’s talk about how to do that.

Remember, newswriting is NOT an art. It is a craft. It is a formula. It is designed to allow reporters to write something that is easy to read, and do it very quickly on deadline, and do it while a city editor is breathing down their necks. So don’t overthink it. Generations of news writers have used this formula. It works.

Step 1: Find the news peg.

Go through your notes from your interviews with your company's subject-matter experts. Find the thing that is happening right now, or will happen relatively soon. Look for the time element that answers the question, “When did or will this happen?” That’s a good indicator that you have found the news peg.

If you can’t find the time element, go back to your sources and dig for one. Ask your subject-matter experts, “When in your next big milestone?” or “When was your most recent milestone?”  A milestone is a significant development or accomplishment in life of a brand, a company, or a product. But it doesn't have to earthshattering.  Really, it just has to be both interesting and timely.

Step 2: Build your lead around the peg

Take the “when,” and start adding the “who, what and where. “ Use the active voice. Keep it simple and basic.  Here are three leads from recent news stories found on the BBC News web site. I’ve boldfaced the peg for each one:

• Asian markets ended Friday's session lower as investors took their cue from the US and dumped technology stocks.

• Several chimpanzees briefly escaped their enclosure at Kansas City Zoo on Thursday.

• US Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is resigning following the problematic launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare law, US media report.

“But those are real news stories,” I can hear some of you scream at me. “I’m writing brand stories for corporate clients. They're not the same.”

Of course they are. News is news.

Before I moved into copywriting and public relations, I worked as a business reporter, covering financial services: banks, credit unions, stock brokerages, accounting firms, bond brokers, sub-prime lenders, and such.  I couldn’t afford to wait for these companies to come to me with stories. Most of them wouldn’t know a story if it raised its hand and coughed.

So my approach was: Choose a local company, give them a call and set up a meeting with a top officer. It could be a lunch, or a facility tour, or just a sit-down in the office. I’d let them give me all the background they wanted to give me, carefully listening for anything interesting: an emerging product, an unusual strategy, a coming location, a newly identified market segment … you get the idea. And once I heard anything like that, I started asking questions. My first was always: “How soon does that happen?” Then: “Do you think that’s something your folks are willing to talk about for my column?”

Why those questions? If I didn’t have a time element, then I didn’t have a news peg, and thus I had no news to tak back to my readers.  Also, if the company wasn’t ready to talk about that idea, there was no point wasting time on it right now. I could file away the idea for later, when the company might be ready, but for now the job was to dig for something I could use immediately.

Only when I had an interesting idea attached to a news peg, and a willing company ready to tell me the full story, did I move forward. Here are some of the leads that came out of that process; again, I’ve boldfaced the news peg for each story:

• Community Credit Union plans to roll out 11 new Metroplex locations over the next 30 months, using a fast, inexpensive expansion technique pioneered by banks but never used before by a Texas credit union.

• TownBank N.A. is breaking ground on a 10,000-square-foot headquarters at 1522 Gross Road near Interstate 635 in Mesquite, just a block from the bank's current location in a small strip center.

• Mayflower Capital L.L.C. is launching its third venture capital fund, aiming to raise $50 million to reinvest in a portfolio of emerging companies across the nation.

• At age 3, Dallas National Bank is enjoying a growth spurt.

• Flush with $26.5 million in new capital from private investors, Texas Capital Bancshares Inc. is planning to use about 75% of that to power its red-hot Internet bank toward an initial public offering.

• The World Indoor Soccer League says it's ready to sell exclusive rights for a corporate sponsor to attach the sponsor's name to the WISL brand name.

Note that in most of these leads, I’m vague about exactly “when” each will happen.  I got more specific later on in each story, but I wanted my leads to sound as close to “right now” as I could get them.  That’s why I used verb phrases like “plans to roll out” and “says it’s ready,” to bring the action as close to the present as possible.  Readers want to know what’s happening now. Find a way to give them that feeling, even if it’s an illusion. Trust me, they won’t notice the illusion.

This is a process I continue to use today with my clients. Try it. You will be amazed how a news approach will help you take what appears to be mundane corporate dreck and transmute it into gold. 

Step 3: Look for the “why and how” to flesh out the lead, and use them to build the second and third paragraphs.

For example, here’s the second paragraph from the Community Credit Union story:

Community will open the locations inside new or remodeled Albertson's supermarkets in Carrollton, Lewisville, Garland and other cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. These "in-store locations" cost about a tenth as much to build as standard brick-and-mortar locations.

If you have a solid quote, work it into the third paragraph.  A good quote introduces a human actor, and readers like that. It keeps them in the story. For example:

"There's no doubt we're the first credit union in Texas to do this," says Gary Base, the credit union's president and CEO. "There may be 20 to 25 credit unions in the entire nation that have at least one in-store location. The most they've got is three locations. We're committed to 11. No credit union has tried the in-store approach on this scale.”

Step 4: Arrange the remaining paragraphs into the inverted pyramid.

Once you get past the first three paragraphs, you are just arranging information by what you think is most important for the reader to know. This is the inverted pyramid.

Sometimes the best approach is to just type up your notes into clean, clear paragraphs – and then worry about the order. That’s the joy of cutting and pasting with Microsoft Word.  It’s a much easier process than the old days, when we wrote on clunky Royal typewriters

Step 5: When you are done, stop.

Don’t look to summarize, as you would in an essay. When you reach the last useful fact, don’t get clever or reflective. Just stop writing. Really. Just stop.

Step 6: Write the headline.

It’s bad enough when writers bury their leads. But when they compound the problem by writing lazy headlines, they really should be fired.

The point of the headline is to entice the reader to actually read the lead. The point of the lead is to entice the reader to read the second paragraph. And so on, until the story ends.

If you start with a crappy headline, you lose.

Writing a news headline is simple, but rarely easy. Aim to boil down your lead paragraph into eight to 12 words, while keeping the focus on the news peg. If you’ve written a solid lead, the headline should almost write itself. If you struggle with the headline, the problem may be that your lead sucks, and you need to take another crack at it.

A lot of reporters write a headline before they write the lead. Doing so helps them focus their thoughts as they construct the lead. If that works for you, go for it.

When you are stuck: Go to the BBC News web site, and just read leads and headlines until you feel you’ve got the swing of it. Then go back to your own story. When in doubt, ape the BBC. They are the best news writers in the world: http://www.bbc.com/news/

The perfect story pitch: a 12-point formula

From Matthew Barby at Find My Blog Way:

As a general rule, all of the content pitches that I craft will adhere to the following guidelines:

1. The body of the email mustn’t exceed 190 words.
2. The email must addresses the recipient by their name.
3. It must give a very brief intro into who I am and who my client is (if I’m pitching on their behalf).
4. The pitch section should get straight to the point of what the content is and take up no more than two paragraphs.
5. Never send over the content in the pitch email. Wait until you’ve had the go ahead from them.
6. If the content is very complex, use bullet points to get the idea across in a short way.
7. Give an emotional hook for the recipient to want more information.
8. Every pitch should be unique and add a personal touch if possible.
9. Explain how publishing the content will be mutually beneficial.
10. I should have a good understanding of what the recipient publishes to ensure that the content is completely relevant to them.
11. Email subject should be no longer than 55 characters and should encompass the content idea within it.
12. Get straight to the point and don’t use buzzwords!

3 ways your brand can get more from the ‘slowest medium’

From Michael Wayne, CEO of KIN, via CommPRO:

In a recent interview,  Buzzfeed’s Jonah Perritti paints a picture of a media consumption continuum: Twitter is on one side with ‘very fast’ consumption of ‘of the moment’ content. Facebook is in the middle with ‘relatable’ content that has ‘broad human emotion’, and Pinterest is at the other end with ‘slower’ content that takes time to organize, consume and use.  …

So then where does online video – YouTube, MCNs and creators – fit into the continuum? I would argue that this is the ‘slowest’ medium. Audiences have to watch videos (time); get to know creators and subscribe (more time); and build relationships with them (even more time) – all before cooking a recipe or trying a new make-up look. …

Here are a few ways brands can embrace Slow Media:

• True Advocacy. Advocate for things YouTube creators care about and they will advocate for your brand. If you support them in honest and meaningful ways, they will ultimately champion your brand to their audiences.

• Share the Same Values. More often than not, a channel with the most engaged audience is going to perform better than just a “big” channel with the most subscribers and views. Engaged audiences want to feel like the advertiser has the creators’ best interest in mind and shares the same value.

• Participate in the Platform. YouTube should be a part of your social media strategy, just like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Participating in the platform will allow you to gain greater understanding of the YouTube eco-system and its growing opportunities.

Why does repetition work? Science explains!

From National Public Radio:

Psychologists have found that people tend to start off wary of — or even hostile to — new things, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. But then the act of mere exposure — nothing more than further exposure — changes our feelings. We typically feel more warmly toward things we encounter again and again. 

"Let's say you've heard a little tune before, but you don't even know that you've heard it, and then you hear it again. The second time you hear it you know what to expect to a certain extent, even if you don't know you know," music psychologist Elizabeth Maugulis says. "You are just better able to handle that sequence of sounds. And what it seems like [your mind is saying] is just, 'Oh I like this! This is a good tune!' But that's a misattribution. 

And the power of repeated exposure isn't just limited to music. Research has shown that the mere exposure effect makes stockbrokers feel more warmly toward stocks they've seen before; it also works when looking at art or fashion or random geometric shapes. And, as the psychologist Robert Bornstein  of Adelphi University, points out, the mere exposure effect is part of the reason we see so many political ads before elections.