Social Media / PR Archives | Page 16 of 26 | Bristol Creative Industries

Having a good website setup is essential before deciding to do PR for several reasons. When potential clients or customers hear about your brand, whether from a friend, another business, your social media pages or the press/advertising, you can guarantee that the first thing they’ll do is head over to your website.

If there is nowhere for them to be directed to, or even worse, your website is out of date, you instantly lose credibility, along with those potential clients you were after. Just think of how many times you’ve landed on a website that:

Remember, PR means your name will be published in multiple magazines, articles and newspapers. Potential clients and customers will need to be directed somewhere. I will be sharing three important benefits of having a good website in place before deciding it’s time to do PR.

Increases brand awareness

A website is an ideal place to showcase your brand and all that it stands for. You can do this through:

The branding of your website should be in line with the image you’ve created on your social media pages or anywhere else. Having consistent branding online supports authenticity. It will allow your business to be recognised amongst your competitors.

Improves credibility

A webpage works as the face of your business, providing any potential customers/clients with “the perfect shop window” for all that you offer. It’s important to keep in mind that the layout of your website must be kept clean. Chaotic-looking websites won’t help you appear more credible!

Helps generate leads

Having a webpage means you are in control of keeping the public up to date with relevant information first-hand. You can post your business working hours, and contact details and even provide webpage visitors with a call-to-action on each page. When built properly, a website, along with your social media pages work together by attracting organic traffic through SEO.

I hope these tips have helped inspire you to set up a strong website or have given you some ideas on improving the one you already have. Remember, your webpage provides you with a professional platform to communicate who you are as a brand, as well as allows you to seize opportunities.

If you’ve read our post on why good photography is key in PR then you know a good photograph can make or break a media story. This is particularly true when it comes to headshots.

When you think of a corporate headshot you may think of white background, suit and tie, and cheesy pose, but in reality, journalists don’t want these kinds of headshots.

So what makes a good headshot? In today’s post, we’re breaking down the dos and don’ts of headshots for PR. Follow these guidelines and you’ll be sure to have images any journalist would be delighted to publish.

DO – Ensure there’s an interesting background. Even better if they can reflect you as a business, your values, your location etc.

DON’T – Use a plain white or block colour background. And don’t use black and white – colour shots please.

DO – Take personality-led, relaxed images.

DON’T – Stand in stiff poses or take stylised images.

DO – Take full head and shoulders shots (priority) and full body shots only (nice to have for the senior team)

DON’T – Use crops.

DO – Have a mix of landscape and portrait shots. The resolution must be at least 300dpi at A4 size. Online media particularly welcome landscape shots to work with the format.

DO – Take individual shots plus joint shots of the management team and the whole team.

DO – Think about images that tell a story and convey emotion – in-action shots are nice.

NOTE – Props can be helpful as long as they don’t clutter the image.

A good shot could make the difference between coverage and not. Make sure your photography is stand out.

If you’d like to read more about how to get great photography for PR you can read our blog with some top tips.

The names Kardashian, Musk, Rogan and Winfrey are now just as well known as the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Coca Cola and Nike.

Whether you love them or hate them, their fame, notoriety and adoration are unquestionable. The Kardashians boast hundreds of millions of social media followers, Joe Rogan is the world’s most listened to podcaster and Oprah Winfrey is the very definition of the word mogul.

Individuals now hold just as much value, as leading brands… and this is all achieved through the power of personal branding.

Origins of personal branding

On this, there is much debate as to who conceived the idea of personal branding. Many claim it to be Tom Peters in a 1997 article The Brand Called You. However, history shows us that the ideals around personal branding existed long before the two words were coined together.

It was once written about Henry VIII that what he sought was not gold or gems but virtue, glory, immortality and Alexander the Great conquered nations and brought along with him his own scribe to publicise his ‘great deeds.’

It is often thought that ideals around personal branding are a modern phenomenon, turbo-charged by the ideals of social media. This is not true. You need only look to the history books to see how the ideals of personal branding have been interwoven with historical leaders.

What is personal branding?

Personal branding is the practice of building an identity for oneself, based on a number of elements such as knowledge, background, experience and values. Once established, this identity is then strategically projected to the outside world.

This is very much like brand-building for a business, it’s something that takes time, dedication, know-how and lots of time and patience.

Personal branding in action can range from overt to covert. We see it in day-to-day life more than we think. Magazine covers, newspaper articles and social media streams are filled with personal branding activities, and these are some of the most overt examples of it in action.

But the more subtle elements of personal branding can fly under the radar, being noticed only in a more subliminal manner.

Why is personal branding important?

Simply put, strong brands help you attract more customers, it helps with longevity and helps to tell your story, and build authenticity and trust. This is a strategic process with many benefits for both the individual and any brand or business they may be affiliated with.

Consider the personal brand of Steve Jobs. At the peak of his powers and the resurgence of Apple as a brand powerhouse. Brand Jobs and brand Apple were intertwined and interchangeable. Apple’s success could not have happened without Jobs.

Building a personal brand is a strategic process with an array of benefits for you and your business. A strong personal brand increases your authority and trust, shapes the way you’re perceived, boosts your competitive advantage and can provide great credibility and trust.

Building a personal brand

Creating a personal brand takes time, effort, and dedication. Having a distinct and well-thought-out personal branding strategy is key.

Every strong personal brand is routed in a unifying identity. This is built around the core drivers, motivators, interests, and beliefs of the individual. This is the keystone of building an authentic brand

Example: David Attenborough is perhaps the shining example of a personal brand in action. A man who has used his passion and his knowledge to tremendous educational effect, endearing himself to a global audience in the process.

2. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO BE KNOWN FOR

Once you have the who, think about that what… namely ‘what’ do you want to be known for.

Example: Margaret Thatcher wanted to be seen as a leader, so the image of the Iron Lady was created. A change in physical appearance and numerous photo opportunities reinforced this. The famous Tank driving image was one of the most powerful in setting the tone for The Iron Lady.

3. DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE

Trying to appeal to the masses straight from the get-go does nothing more than dilute your brand.

Instead, try focussing on defining a specific niche that’s well-aligned with your ethos and what you want to achieve. You can build your audience over time, but don’t make the mistake of trying to go too large too soon.

Example: Joe Rogan didn’t become the world’s biggest podcaster overnight. He started in the world of mixed martial arts and stand-up comedy, building a fanbase over years before branching out to podcasting.

4. SHARE YOUR STORY

People want to connect with people, and sharing your personal story and your professional success is one of the best ways of endearing yourself with a consumer base. If you don’t want to mix your personal and professional life, then talk about your business journey instead.

Example: Gary Vaynerchuck famously ‘holds up five’ in his photographs. This is a link to his personal story. As a child, he longed for a New York Jets jersey, but his parents couldn’t afford one. So his mother knitted him a jersey, with his name and the number five on the back.

5. GIVE BACK

Corporate responsibility and empathy are important traits in personal branding.

Now, as consumers shift focus away from praising multi-millionaires and billionaires for their achievements. Gen Z and millennial consumers are particularly concerned with brands and individuals who are mission-focused and have ESG on their agenda. This is why it’s important to cultivate an ethical and trustworthy image that sets you and your business apart.

Example: Bill Gates is perhaps one of the most high-profile examples of celebrities giving back. To date, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given more than $50 billion dollars to causes throughout the world.

6. BUILD AN ENGAGING WEBSITE

An important aspect of building a strong brand is owning your domain and building a strong personal website. Creating a site under your own domain name gives people an opportunity to get to know you, associate more with your brand and in time and if applicable take up services you may offer.

Example: simonsinek.com is a great example of using an online presence to boost personal and company brand. Sinek’s site is not only an extension of his own brand, but an effective vessel for his numerous coaching, classes, and written materials.

7. CREATE ENGAGING CONTENT

Creating and promoting content online is a great way to build and maintain your brand, as well as engage in various touchpoints which link to your brand and audience.

You may choose to write articles or guest posts, contribute to online publications or start your own blog. But it must be noted that content needs to be maintained, as stale old content will reflect negatively on your brand.

Example: Martha Stewart’s personal brand has had its ups and downs, but the fact that it remains strong and trusted is a testament to her own brand. Marthastewart.com is a great example of using content that’s reflective of an individual brand. The site is diverse and varied but all content featured is what we’ve come to expect from the perennial homemaker.

8. PUBLIC SPEAKING

Speaking engagements are fantastic opportunities to amplify your personal brand, and in some cases, your personal brand can be hinged around public speaking opportunities.

It’s important to tailor the talk to your brand, speaking at an irrelevant event that brings nothing to your brand value is of no worth. Research the opportunities that are right for you and right for you and your brand.

Example: Tim Robbins is perhaps the ultimate example of public speaking in action. His brand has been leveraged entirely around public speaking centrepieces. Robbins himself is an example of changing brand identity with the times, discarding the flash and brash of the 90s in favour of a more subdued and contemporary brand style.

9. LEVERAGE PUBLIC RELATIONS

If you want to build a personal brand to complement your business, PR is a powerful tool. PR and personal branding go hand in hand, PR experts and agencies can utilise an array of tools and skills to promote a public image. And they can also prove vital in crisis management scenarios. PR can also be a strategic tool in advising and developing the strategic elements of brand strategy.

Example: Like them or loath them, there’s no denying that the Kardashians have played a masterstroke in aligning public relations and personal brand. At every step, they have utilised and capitalised on media moments to advance their brand value… and their bottom line

Personal brand

A lot of business owners disregard personal branding as nothing more than a vanity project, designed to game the metrics favoured by social media channels. But this is an underestimation of the power of a personal brand.

Strong brands can help businesses grow, build and retain audiences and in-time increase the bottom line.

Martha Stewart’s personal brand allowed her to navigate difficult waters and even a prison sentence and come out the other end in a strong and healthy position. Gary Vee’s rags to riches story has been utilised to build his brand and increase his own wealth and Bill Gates has taken every advantage of his charitable givings to generate positive brand publicity.

One of the hardest parts of perfecting your writing can be editing your own work. It’s common to feel too close to a piece to be able to see what needs to be tweaked.

If that’s you, then try these editing tips.

It’s helpful to think of editing in two sections: big picture and line editing.

Big picture editing covers the content of the piece, the general paragraph structure, the themes, topics and ideas.

Line editing is more about checking for typos, being particular about word choice and thinking about sentence structure.

I would advise always starting with big picture edits as otherwise, you may find you spend a long time perfecting a sentence just to have to cut it when you realise it doesn’t fit into the wider structure.

So let’s start with big picture editing…

Big Picture Edits

Are you starting before the beginning?

The beginning tends to be a good place to start, and it’s surprisingly common that in our first drafts we start in the wrong place. Sometimes we can have a tendency to need to ‘warm up’ when we’re writing and there are usually a few sentences at the beginning of a piece that can actually be cut to get to the point sooner.

First things first, ask yourself if you’ve started at the beginning, or if you’ve done a little too much warming up.

Check the pace

The best way to do this is to read your work aloud. Does it sound dry or monotonous? Are you finding it difficult to read without breaking? Or maybe it feels too rushed? Think about varying your sentence and paragraph lengths.

Line Edits

Show vs tell

Try to avoid telling the reader everything and show them instead. By this I mean avoid phrases like ‘this innovative product’. Show the reader why the product is innovative.

Ask yourself ‘can I say that in a simpler way?’

Writers who lack confidence often feel the need to over-explain themselves, use complicated terms and repeat themselves. When you’re editing your work, always ask ‘can I say that in a simpler way?’ And if the answer is yes, then say that instead.

Cut the cliches, adverbs and adjectives

There’s nothing wrong with any of these things in small doses, but they’re often used as a crutch. If you make solid word choices they should mostly be redundant. You don’t want to become too reliant on overused words and phrases. Cliches can sometimes be effective, but everything in moderation. If you’re using them multiple times in every piece of writing, rethink.

Check for typos and mistakes

We’ve written a whole blog post about catching those pesky typos. Reading your work out loud, reading backwards, printing out your work or changing the font for a read-through are all ways that might help you spot typos. Check out the typo blog post for more detail.

As a marketer with 20+ years’ experience, I’m a big believer in using an array of tactics to get your message to market. People will argue for and against print heavy or social media dominant campaigns, but I believe that the more tactics you use, the wider you cast your net, and the more successful you’ll be. Of course, your messages and your approach need to be targeted within this net, but there is rarely a one size fits all solution, so the more ways you can reach your known target market, the better.

But are business blogs widely accepted as part of this marketing mix, or are they a nice add-on as and when marketing teams have the time? If blogging doesn’t have a regular spot in the marketing plan, should it be given a little more credence?

Some people may wonder whether blogging for business is as relevant in 2022 as it was in the mid 2000’s when blogs were the up and coming ‘fashionable’ thing to do. In an era of podcasts and video streaming, you could be forgiven for thinking written blogs have lost their way and are now irrelevant in the marketing mix.

In addition, according to DemandMetric 70% of people prefer to learn about a brand through articles, rather than through an advert.

As with most things in life, achieving success from business blogging is a changing phenomenon. What worked 20 years ago, might not work as well today, but that doesn’t mean we should throw away the potential that exists in blogs.

For example, it used to be the case that the more blogs you could produce, the better. But that is no longer the case. It’s still true that consistency matters – out of date blogs are not a good look on any website – but quality has risen in importance.

They want to conduct in-depth research before they buy, so if they can find everything they need from one website, they are more likely to trust that brand, revisit the site, and probably make their purchase. There are a couple of ways you can build this trust through quality blogging, and this might be through one or two longer blog posts, or it could be through a series of interlinked posts that cover different aspects of the same topic.

Whichever you choose, make sure you keep the customer in mind, because they are looking for more factual, helpful information and advice, than they are heavy handed sales and marketing messages.

Business blogging earns a spot at the marketing table for the content it generates for a company website and for the SEO benefits it brings, but it has also become increasingly useful for social media content too.

In 2022, more people are buying through social media channels. Accelerated by the Pandemic, more of us are opting to buy from brands we get to know online. So, the more information you can offer up online, the more trust you can build with your audience.

With longer, quality content being generated for blog posts, there is more to disseminate into smaller social media posts. These could be promotional posts to drive traffic to the blog, teasers about what’s to come, or multiple excerpts from the blog to continually drive the message to your target audience.

Building a relationship with your existing and potential customers is an ongoing process of give and take. Having more of a presence online via a business blog and the resulting additional social media content, allows you to interact with your audience and gather invaluable feedback about their likes, dislikes, and requirements.

Analyse the data you get back from each post. What have people responded well to and what hasn’t gone down so well? Create polls and ask direct questions in your posts to find out what your audience would like to hear more about. This can help you give them the advice that they need, and of course generate even more content for your business blog and social media channels.

Of course, it’s easy to say that blogging is a great element to add into your marketing mix, but who has the time to stay on top of regular, informative blogs? Blogs are like feature articles. They require time to think, plan and research. And unless self-imposed timelines are set, they are not deadline driven. Which is why they often slip down the priority list of marketing agencies that are managing entire campaigns, or busy team-members within the business who have been recruited to populate a business blog alongside their day job. If this sounds like you, don’t despair.

Believe it or not, many companies outsource the copywriting of their blog to external writers. Some people think it’s not a task that should be outsourced because it’s too personal. And if you hand over the reins of your business blog to a third party, it will no longer sound like you.

But a good blog writer will portray all the information you want to portray and more and ensure your blog sounds like it’s been written by you, but even better – read more about how we learn your voice here. Not necessarily because they are a better writer, although hopefully they do have more experience in writing if that’s their day job, but because they are able to give your business blog the time and attention it needs and deserves.

If you haven’t included a business blog in your marketing plan before, or you have and it’s continually slipping down the priority list, perhaps now is the time to start.

Every brand has an online reputation, and a quick Google search may reveal more about your business than you’d like.

Digital accessibility has made it easy for potential customers to find out more about a brand online. This is why your brand’s online reputation matters.

What is online brand reputation management?

Online reputation management is also known as ORM. It’s the process of monitoring and managing the public perception of your brand by taking control of online conversations.

You can do this in a variety of ways, from encouraging positive reviews to dealing professionally with negative feedback. Your brand’s reputation is not just manageable, but it’s also malleable and now your customers can do more than search for information, they can add to it.

Online reputation management strategies

Business owners are becoming increasingly aware that their brand is almost entirely shaped by the consumer. The best marketing and PR agencies understand that it’s not only important to include the consumer but to work with them to cultivate a positive brand image.

Online brand reputation management can help you deal with negative search results and strengthen a positive reputation for your brand. ORM can also modify the way you appear in search results.

Brand audit

The first step to boosting your reputation online should always be to conduct a brand audit. This involves conducting online research to help understand how your brand is perceived.

Search engine optimisation

ORM involves using tools to actively monitor your brand mentions, attempting to eliminate as much online criticism as possible. It broadly falls under the influence of search engine optimisation (SEO).

SEO attempts to build a strong portfolio of optimised content to increase the visibility of your brand on search results. Optimising your online content so that it appears on the first page of results is now a crucial requirement, 75% of searchers won’t look past the first page of Google search engine results for any queries.

Respond to online reviews

More customers than ever before are relying on online reviews, as a form of third-party endorsement, to help them make purchase decisions.

While it’s always great to receive positive customer feedback, negative reviews are an inevitable part of online visibility.

It’s always easy to become defensive but it’s always best practice to answer a negative comment quickly and professionally. 93% of customers read online reviews, and 89% of consumers read company responses to reviews.

Being seen as being responsive and proactive in the face of criticism is an excellent way of building endearment and loyalty towards your brand.

Monitoring social media

Social media channels and PR are based on communication and engagement. This is why they are so effective when used together. As social media presence grows, so does the opportunity to cultivate a persona that will satisfy target markets.

There are plenty of opportunities for online reputation management on social media. Simply cultivating social media interactions, and being present and visible, will allow you to create and grow your online visibility.

Leverage PR

ORM and public relations go hand in hand. While traditional media is still very much a part of Public Relations, PR’s remit very much covers online reputations.

Using a combination of methods, not dissimilar to digital marketing, PR utilises online platforms to manage your online reputation. Services include content marketing to improve ranking in search results, SEO, influencer marketing and crisis management.

PR’s central focus is the strategic planning of communications. Be it through media relations, social media and digital platforms, a strategic approach to PR can help develop better relationships and do more to protect your brand reputation online.

Monitor mentions

Brand monitoring is an incredibly effective way to manage your business online. By setting up alerts for your brand name, and related keywords, you can monitor any mentions as they happen.

Knowing where and how your brand is being mentioned online, allows you to react quickly and be responsive on social media, review sites, blog posts and forums.

The faster you can contain and respond to online negativity, the better. It’s perceived as more professional and more caring. But it isn’t all negative, monitoring brand mentions will also help you share and promote any positive content that might come through from third parties.

Get started with ORM

Online reputation management is constantly evolving as digital channels grow and change. To ensure business success, your online reputation must be cultivated, maintained and monitored constantly.

Tools of the trade

Executing your online brand reputation management strategy is far more straightforward when you have a host of tools to help.

Google Alerts, Buzzsumo, Brand Watch, Meltwater and Semrush are some of the tools used by ORM professionals for maximum results. Like any tools, of any trade, they are most effective when in the hands of an expert.

Online reputation management is constantly evolving as digital channels grow and change. To ensure business success, your online reputation has to be cultivated, maintained and monitored constantly.

There has been a lot of hubbub in the marketing world recently about the upcoming Government campaign encouraging businesses to cut their marketing spend to allow them to cut prices for consumers amidst the cost of living crisis. Is this a sensible move for any business, and should all marketing activity be treated equally in this scenario? How will business blogs fare in these discussions and how will you weigh up your options?

Yet again we find ourselves in an unprecedented situation – this time with the cost of living increasing exponentially. You hear about these things on the news and brace yourself for change, but when you go to the petrol pump and it costs almost £90 to fill up your family car with petrol, the pain is real! So, the fact that the Government is attempting to affect change for the masses is a necessary course of action. However, is cutting marketing spend really the best way to go?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim to be a political expert and I wouldn’t want to be making these decisions. But I do know marketing and anyone with any experience in the field will know that promotional activity has a lead time. If industry cuts marketing spend now, business won’t stop overnight, but gradually the pipeline will dry up. Conversely, more money spent on promotion now will result in more business further down the line. Many industries are still in very fragile states of recovery after the pandemic, so to pull back on marketing now, could be damaging to their future prospects.

Whether to cut back on marketing or not, is of course not just down to the Government either. Businesses always need to keep an eye on every line in the budget, and especially over the last two years will have wanted to make sure there is no wasted spend and every part of the business is as efficient as it can be. And of course, when making decisions about your marketing spend, it’s not necessarily an all or nothing scenario.

The best marketing campaigns consist of a mix of marketing tactics including public relations, direct mail, telemarketing, advertising, and online campaigns. If you are committed to best practice and you are already measuring the success rate of each tactic, perhaps there is an area you can easily cut back on because you can clearly see in your metrics it’s not performing as well as other activities in your marketing mix. Or perhaps you need to review your mix to make sure you’re getting the most for your marketing spend.

If business blogs don’t yet form part of your marketing mix, now might be an excellent time to instigate one. Business blogs are a fantastic low-cost option to build and maintain a consistent presence online, while creating content to use on social media platforms. An increasing number of businesses are moving their marketing spend online anyway, so whether you need to cut, adjust, or increase your marketing budget in 2022, business blogs are a fantastic, cost-effective option to have in the mix.

National Awareness Days refer to a day to commemorate an occasion or place of importance for a particular cause and can include day, week or month long campaigns.

There are national awareness days for almost everything, from the serious to the hilarious. You can shape your content to be as fun and adventurous as you like.

Most of us are familiar with a few of these campaigns such as International Women’s Day, World Book Day, Pride Month. But did you know that there are awareness days for so many different occasions such as International Picnic Day… The list is endless, and this is where the fun begins…

Want to know how and why to inspire content using an awareness day calendar? Read on to find out more.

Having a list of awareness days at hand (I have a printed copy stuck to my wall), you should be able to generate many great content ideas. With a little sprinkling of imagination, some time set aside to plan and prepare your content calendar and dedication, there is no reason why you too can’t benefit from using these awareness days to shape great content.

How do awareness days help to inspire amazing content?

National Awareness Days have been used by PR’s and Marketing experts for a long time.

Why? Because the media love nothing more than well-timed, relevant stories. Using these relevant days to reach your target audience is a powerful tool. If you can identify a date that’s relevant to your business, then you’ve identified a potential PR angle!

Awareness days are brilliant for inspiring content for social media posts, blogs and newsletters so use them to your advantage and use them wisely. Just look for the relevant opportunities and piggyback off them

How to make your content unique when using awareness days

Take it from me, it’s entirely achievable to create unique material when using awareness days to shape content. You just need to think outside of the box, be creative and use them as prompts to come up with content. Make sure business tone is captured.

Selecting Awareness Days that are relevant to you or your business

It’s important to let your creative juices flow when selecting the dates for your content. There will be many that are relevant to your business sector but also try to get involved with days that don’t feel 100% relevant – be sure to start by plotting these dates out and adding them to your content planner. You need to think creatively to make them relevant to your brand. If you feel passionate and have something to say about them, or feel some affiliation for the cause associated with it, then do add it to your planner.

Here at Carnsight Communications, we use a platform called Planable to schedule our posts. This is then the start of your content plan.

Plotting these ideas into your planner will provide clarity and structure to the content to create each week. Using this template will enable you to add in other forms of content around the awareness days such as case studies, blogs, client testimonials or business updates.

It’s important to plan ahead with content and definitely take advantage of the awareness days available to you but make sure you don’t overdo it with these dates. It’s the same with everything, if there is too much of one specific type of content, it gets boring for the audience. Be sure to mix things up a little.

Drop these Awareness Days in your content every now and then. Obviously, this is dependent on whether you feel the topic is relevant to you or your business.

If you can embed them into your content, great… they can be a brilliant way of engaging with your audience and can really get you noticed.

What are commentary compilations?

We keep every comment our clients have given us on a range of topics, but rather than using our inboxes as files, we use Trello. This ensures that whichever team member you give comments to, they’re captured, by subject area.

What comments do we use?

Meeting notes, responses to feature requests, previous interviews – there’s a lot of content that we can use, even from our every day discussions. That’s why you’ll often see us scribbling during meetings! For more on the PR process at Carnsight, see our blog on the things every small business should know about PR.

How do we use the comments?

Mostly these are comments first written in response to a certain feature, but sometimes they’re around a theme or a new launch, or even a quote in a press release.

We use them for a number of reasons and in a number of ways:

To save you time – you’ve put thought and energy into creating these comments and we want to maximise them. We can often use the same comments slightly editing to respond to journalists without having to come to you each time. This will also avoid you feeling like you’re repeating yourself by commenting in the future.
To inspire features or thought pieces – sometimes a particular point of view will spark an idea for a wider piece, or a comment made six months ago works with the current news agenda. In which case, we’ll refer back. We check the compilations frequently as a team.
To get to know you better – our clients comment on a wide range of issues that could be industry-specific or general – such as comments on the workplace or recruitment. Your comments help us to understand who we should approach in future on similar pieces.

What if I don’t have time to comment?

If commenting doesn’t come easily, or you never seem to find the time, don’t worry. We have a range of techniques for busy business owners including taking notes over a 15 minute phone call, working from a brain dump or bullet points or pulling content from existing presentations, blogs or social media post.

We’ve worked with over 50 different founder-run businesses over the last six years and we are a small business ourselves, so we know the challenges involved and how to overcome them.

There’s more on where to start with content for PR in our blog.

Originally posted on: www.carnsight.com

Writing is a skill that has to be honed over time, but today, Carnsight Communications Account Manager, Leigh-Ann, is sharing seven quick tips to take your writing to the next level.

1. Always say what you want in the least number of words possible

I’m a chronic rambler in real life. I used to ramble a lot in my writing as well (still do sometimes). But the reality is, the quicker and simpler you can say it, the better.

And don’t worry if you find this difficult. Ramble all you want in the first draft and then be brutal and cut, cut cut! A writing mentor of mine used to call it ‘changing up the gears’. Read through your writing and see if you can spot where you were changing up the gears and when you hit full speed. Cut the gears part. (Thanks, CJ Skuse!)

2. Consider planning what points you want to make ahead of time

Sometimes it can be helpful to jot down the points you want to make before you start writing. That’s what I did to write this article. This will help you focus on what it is you want to say without having to work your way up to it through writing waffle.

3. Interrogate your use of adverbs and adjectives

As a general rule, think no adverbs, few adjectives. You can definitely break this rule. In fact, I would encourage you to eventually. But remember you have to learn the rules to break them.

If you’re using too many adverbs and adjectives, chances are you just aren’t picking strong enough words. Rather than saying ‘he said loudly’, perhaps ‘he shouted’ works better. Again, it comes down to conveying meaning in the most concise and considered way.

4. Avoid overusing exclamation marks

Exclamation marks are very useful but like any device, when overused they can really bring down the tone of a piece of writing. Exclamation marks are used for emphasis. But don’t overemphasise!

If you overemphasise too much then it becomes meaningless! It can even feel like you’re being shouted at!

5. Learn your literary devices

I know it may remind you of dreaded English classes at school, but having a few literary devices in your toolbox can be a really great way to take your writing to the next level.

You may think that these literary devices are only present in novels or pieces of fiction, but the reality is that these devices are used to engage the reader in all types of writing; including non-fiction. These techniques are present in the great classic pieces of literature because they work. Try using a few in your own pieces of writing and see what a difference it makes.

6. Avoid staccato sentences

Staccato sentences are short sentences written back to back. When used appropriately they can create tension and build pace within a piece of writing. When used incorrectly and too often, they make a piece of writing feel bland and monotonous.

Avoiding staccato sentences is all about understanding the rhythm of your writing. Rhythm in writing is about varying your sentence length. Think about how we talk. We don’t use sentences repeatedly with the same syllables and sounds. The rhythm of our sentences changes. Let me show you what I mean…

7. Really think about tone and how word choice impacts this

Tone and voice are all about how a piece of writing sounds and feels. What vibe or feeling does the piece of writing give off? Your word choice will massively impact the tone of your writing and so it’s always important to take extra care when it comes to choosing the right words. It’s not just about conveying meaning, it’s about how you convey that meaning.

Use too much industry jargon and waffle and your tone will be pretentious and condescending. Use over-simplistic language and you run the risk of insulting the intelligence of your reader. It’s all about striking the right balance.

Most of us will alter our tone and word choice appropriately automatically when in conversation, but it can be harder to get it right when writing things down. I’d advise reading your work aloud. Imagine you’re reading it to the very audience you’re trying to reach. Does the tone feel right?

Bonus tip! Tools like Grammarly are a lifesaver.

You don’t want to be reliant on these kinds of tools, but they can be incredibly helpful, particularly when you’re starting out. We’re not affiliated with Grammarly in any way, but it’s a tool I use myself and recommend to anyone trying to tighten up their writing.