How to write headlines that work well with Google | #PR #ContentMarketing

From Ragan's: PR Daily 

When a press release, blog post, or article is indexed by Google and shows up in search results, the maximum character count runs between 65 and 80 characters (including spaces) before being cut off. Some rich snippets might show more, some less. 

Always plan for the low end, just in case. The actual length is determined by pixel size and total width, rather than a specific character count. (Newspaper headline writers quickly learn that the lowercase letters f, i, j, l, r, and t take up less space than other letters, especially m and w.) 

Write headlines that work in both the long and the short versions. A study showed that 80 percent of press release headlines were too long. Avoid making this common mistake.

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.

Why the writer is the star of content marketing

Bryan Clark at Copyblogger says the future of content marketing belongs to the writer:

Google made talented writers more important with the Panda and Penguin updates. Instead of weak content and “unnatural” link building, now sites need strong content that attracts links organically. 

But it hasn’t stopped there. Now who creates the content, and who does the linking out matters – which is why Google wants to know who you are via your Google+ authorship profile. What’s been dubbed Author Rank has the potential to be the biggest algorithmic signal for SEO since the hyperlink itself. 

The days of lame anonymous content are over. Even better, rock star writers with demonstrated success and strong social followings will command the highest compensation and equity positions. 

Think about that.

First rule of content: Be the show

James O'Brien at Mashable writes about the Red Bull content strategy:

The idea central to content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return. Instead of the commercial, be the show. Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story. The value returned is often that people associate good things with — and return to engage with — the brand.

12 virtues that can make your content more shareable

Monica Romeri at Social Media Today identifies 12 characteristics of content that folks are likely to share:

1.  It covers real-time, relevant issues or news. 

2.  It includes captivating images. 

3.  Highly shared titles are actionable, concise, clear, descriptive, authoritative and intriguing. 

4.  It includes compelling and illustrative infographics. 

5.  Highly shared content has breadth and depth.  

6.  It shares fresh, original thinking. 

7.  It covers topics blowing up in the news a la newsjacking. 

8.  Highly shared content is not solely focused on pushing products or services. 

9.  It is free of spelling errors, typos and grammatical and editing flaws. 

10.  It is visually interesting and presented in an organized fashion. 

11.  It showcases industry-relevant thought leadership. 

12.  Highly shared content may come from a trusted and credible source.

Simple tip to improve your writing: Use more periods.

Writers love commas.

They allow us to start in one place, meander freely through a series of connected concepts, wrap our prose around a metaphor or two, and arrive safely at a conclusion.

Unfortunately, they also allow us to abuse our readers, stumbling from one unrelated idea to another, ignoring the need for transitions, droning on and on, and utterly losing and confusing our audiences.

There is a simple solution to improve your writing. Use more periods.

Embrace the concise. Next time you are thinking about one more comma, go with a period.

Short on time and need content? Create a round-up story

Allison King at Ragan's explains:

Do you have 10 stories on the same topic? Pull them together in a list or primer that allows readers to access all the resources in a single location.

Write a short introduction, and include brief descriptions of each item with links to the original pieces. You'll drive traffic to a new piece of content and give a second life to older articles readers might have missed. 

Here are four other ways to create content quickly.

Borrowing the perfect strategy for developing content

From Simon Penson at the Content Marketing Institute::

I use reverse engineering a lot, and when it comes to content strategy, there are few better ways of using this little trick than by “borrowing” content flow and content strategy from the guys and girls who know it best.

Magazine planning has been perfected over decades of iteration, and the very best print-based titles leave a footprint that offers the ultimate blueprint from which you can create your perfect content strategy online.

Meograph lets you package your client's story in terms of time and space

From Rachel McAthy at journalism.co.uk:

Multimedia storytelling tool Meograph has announced a number of new updates to the platform, including making the geographical pinpointing of a 'moment' within a story optional.

The tool, which enables journalists to plot the times and places of a story on a map and timeline, was launched in July this year. Users can also add multimedia content to each 'moment', such as images, YouTube videos and links to outside articles, as well as audio narration.

The end result is an embeddable Meograph, a playable multimedia package that documents a story.

Tip: How to use Instagram as a publicity tool

A tip from Camella Mendez at the Content Marketing Institute:

Use Instagram to share unique, behind-the-scenes content that not only gives your audience a good reason to want to follow you there, but also helps you solidify a personal relationship and build loyalty with your customers new and old. Instagram is a perfect place to get even more personal with your biggest fans.

How to choose the right microphone for videography

Once you start working with video, you learn something early. While the quality of the video is important, the quality of the audio is absolutely vital.

An audience will put up with crappy video, but not crappy audio. It's just too annoying. Folks will just skip your video for the next one.

That's why you don't want to depend on your camera's built-in mic to capture audio. Instead, you will want to work with lapel mics, handheld wireless mics and shotgun mics. That can get expensive, but it's worth it.

I think it's fair to say that, if you have to choose between a top-of-the-line camera or first-rate audio equipment, you should put your money into the audio. (Unless you plan to never conduct an on-camera interview or to capture ambient sound.) It's that important.

With that in mind, here's a solid guide to selecting microphone from Videomaker.com

Why brand journalism works, from a former CBS News reporter

From former CBS News reporter David Henderson:

Brand journalism works to engage audiences. Why? Because it delivers stories audience want to hear. People have heard more than enough PR-type promotions, and therein is the rub. The big stumbling block is acceptance of new concepts by the PR and communications industry. They won’t budge from decades-old habits and tactics.

The way I see it, sharing a story that audiences care about is a whole lot more effective to get someone’s attention than falling into the predictable rut of traditional PR … which has not changed much in decades. While technology has changed, PR has remained in the mode of announcements, promotions, publicity and pushing stuff at audiences that by and large no longer are listening.

A time-lapse device for mobile phones for $25

The Phoblographer writes:

The Camalapse is a device that is made for smaller point and shoot cameras as well as mobile phones. Smartphones are loaded with great timelapse apps so there’s no need for complicated electronics inside of the Camalapse.

Video: What the next iPhone looks like

Anthony Wing Kosner at Forbes.com has posted a video that presents a side-by-side comparison between the next iPhone and the current one. The new one is taller with a much bigger screen. I'd post the video here, but Forbes offers no embed. But you can view it here:

• Would You Flip For The iPhone 5 If It Looked Like This? - Forbes

Take a good look. If you are a mobile journalist, this will become your primary tool. (Until the next one, anyway.)

At last! A Yahoo CEO who opens a Flickr account

Yahoo! bought Flickr in 2005, but has never embraced the site nor realized its full potential. In this post, photo blogger and Flickr champion Thomas Hawk welcomes Yahoo's new CEO to the fold:

Pretty much ever since the day Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo as CEO I’ve been doing a search for her name as a member of Flickr. I’ve been heavily invested both in terms of personal energy and emotion in Flickr as a place to showcase my photography on the web and have been critical over the years of how Yahoo executive leadership has handled the site.

More recently I watched as Mayer posted her personal photography on Instagram as Yahoo’s new CEO and felt that as the new leader of Flickr that she should post her work to Flickr instead. It’s not that you shouldn’t be trying outside products as a CEO, but it’s also important for perception that you support your own products as well — dogfooding and all that. Mayer’s new Flickr account sends a powerful and positive message both to Flickr’s staff as well as to Flickr’s users.

Flickr is a powerful tool for the mobile publicist -- if it can just survive Yahoo's inexplicable apathy.

What do media want from PR? More video, more photos | #MoPR

A new survey of journalists and publicists suggests there is a substantial gap between what reporters expect from and what they get from online newsrooms:

Bulldog Reporter:

The fact is, 86% of media websites use images and video with a story, and 80% of journalists and bloggers regard images with news as very important and say it significantly improves the chance of them using that content in a story. They expect to find images readily available in a company newsroom. Yet when asked what features journalists and bloggers think are important, only 4% of PR people said they thought images were very important, 22% said they were important and just over half (56%) of the respondents routinely add images to their press releases. When asked why they don't add images, 39% said they thought it was not necessary, 7% said they don't know how and 54% said they do not have the resources to produce visual content.

Social media ROI -- for dummies | #MoPR

The next time a boneheaded executive demands to know the return on investment for social media, ask: "What the ROI on an industry convention?" Social media marketer Brad Shorr explains via Ragan's:

At a convention, firms exhibit their wares and talk them up. To a greater degree than what usually occurs on a sales call, prospects and customers at aconvention are invited to look under the hood, to kick the tires. This is like the content syndication and discussion threads that take place on a firm'ssocial media pages. They provide people with a more intimate and critical look "inside the box." And just as we hope at a convention, we hope our socialmedia content differentiates us from the competition.

Few CEOs would question the value of putting on a great show an industry convention or of networking at parties or receptions. Executives consider these tactics to be common sense. Actively participating in social media should fit into the same category. We do it because common sense dictates we should.

The ROI argument is just mumbo jumbo.

5 reasons why short videos are the future of marketing

Filmmaker Kerrin Sheldon blogs for FastCompany:

Here are 5 reasons why online video will soon dominate your time spent on the web, and why if you're a marketer, you can use video to propel your business forward.

• More and more users are consuming their video entertainment online.
• Marketers are using video to engage social media audiences.
• Barriers to entry are low.
• Quality is expanding quickly.
• There are plenty of avenues for dissemination.

How to use Ospriet to capture real-time conversations at events | #MoPR

From William Couch at Poynter.:

,,, the most obvious use of Ospriet would be for a Q&A session with an official who may be on air, or featured in an upcoming piece. While Ospriet was built to be used in real-time, it works equally well as a way to gather comments and questions leading up to an event. I could imagine using Ospriet to recreate events like the Town Hall event Twitter hosted last summer with President Obama. 

Journalists could also use the tool later this month while covering the Olympics. They could gather commentary and feedback from viewers/attendees about an event, a particularly controversial finish or medal, etc. And they could encourage attendees at the Olympics to submit questions or comments via text message while the event is happening.

How do your headlines score in emotional value?

Jeff Bullas at Ragan's reviews an online tool that measures the emotional marketing value of your headlines.