3 ways to make your CEO more ... human

Matthew Schwartz at PR News offers these avenues:

• Blogs: At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a layup for CEOs. Writing a blog a few times a week provides a way for senior executives to share their passions, hobbies and, dare we say, quirks, in order to show their audiences that they are not obsessed with the top and bottom lines and can talk about their life beyond dollars and cents.  

• Podcasts: Does your boss love to chat? Even better, does your boss have a mellifluous and inviting voice? Set him or her up with a weekly podcast; not to shill for the company or the industry but to have a jargon-free conversation about the values of the brand and how it relates to some of the larger issues confronting society. Tossing in a periodic opinion about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the company can’t hurt, either. It shows that your boss is able to relate to subject matters beyond a spreadsheet. With apologies to Steve Allen, radio is the theater of the mind—and can help to cultivate your audience(s).  

• Video vignettes: Does your boss have a friendly tennis game that he or she plays weekly? Is your CEO a cinema buff? Or does he or she not miss any of their kids’ softball games? Arrange for a video crew to (unobtrusively) follow the boss on a personal outin This can show how gelling out with some friends or cheering on the kids helps the CEO to recharge the batteries and think more holistically about how to improve the brand’s products, services and relationships.

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.

3 ways to pique interest with a great title

Roger C. Parker at the Content Marketing Institute says:

• Metaphors make titles easier to understand and remember by giving readers a mental picture or point of comparison for the subject you’re talking about. Jay Conrad Levinson’s “Guerrilla Marketing” communicates its promise of describing unconventional ways to achieve success, by likening the marketing tactics to tactics used in guerrilla warfare. Another metaphor-based series is the “Chicken Soup for the…” series, which communicates a warm, nurturing feeling by referencing the meal that mothers and grandmothers have traditionally served to their family members who need some TLC when they’re under the weather.
• Alliteration, or rhymed consonants, also makes titles easier to remember. Examples include Cliff Atkinson’s “Beyond Bullet Points,” Dr. Frank Luntz’s “Words that Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear,” and Lynne Felder’s “Writing for the Web: Creating Compelling Web Content Using Words, Pictures, and Sound.”
• Curiosity can be aroused by unexpected words or contradictory terms, which can help set your content apart from “duller” treatments of the same topic. An example is David Chilton’s “The Wealthy Barber.” The contradiction between “wealth” and “barber” compels readers to find out “how” and “why” barbers can become wealthy.

Visit CMI to download Parker's 10-point checklist for creating titles that will sell your content to your audiences.

There is more than one way to be a journalist these days

That's a central theme in this brief video from PBS Off Book:

Create a web site in seconds from your smartphone

Here's an idea: How about an app that let's you quickly and easily create a website from your smartphone? In this video, Robert Scoble interviews the founder of a company that has created just that.  It's call Zapd.



The potential applications for the mobile publicist are enormous. Using Zapd, you could create mobile, social web sites that:

• Let you cover an event in real time, curating all the coverage onto a unique site while also pushing the coverage to Facebook.
• Allow your client's employees to collaborate on a public project from their smartphones while still allowing you to manage the results.
• Let your customers crowd-cover an event or collaborate on a specific subject.
• Host a real-time employee blog that allows contributors to post from anywhere in real time.
• Allow your CEO to communicate with stakeholders in real time.
• Establish an instant base of important information for stakeholders and media during a company crisis.

That's just off the top of my head. Going to play with this over the next few weeks and let you know how it performs. If you have any interesting thoughts on this, let me know.

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.)

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.

4 big trends to watch in social media -- from Richard Edelman

 Janet Tyler at Airfoil Public Relations blogs about a recent Harvard Leadership Program:

I confess, however, that the highlight of the event for me was the opportunity to hear from public relations icon Richard Edelman. In many ways, he is what Niall Horan from the boy band One Direction is to my teenage daughter—a rock star of our industry so-to-speak. In his remarks, Edelman pointed out four “big trends” he is observing in social media:

1. Keep an eye on three impending social giants: BuzzFeed, Pinterest and Tumblr. We need to watch them as closely as we do Facebook and Twitter.
2. Search and social now are more integrated than ever. If you’re doing well in one, you’re likely doing well in the other.
3. Amplification trumps circulation. Appearing in an influential online publication is one thing, but becoming the subject of online communities who begin discussing you represents a whole new level of success. When we can measure this amplification of initial content, we’ll be doing well.
4. Visuals matter more than ever. Think infographics, video, slides and any other way to tell our story beyond words.