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DIY Media release template and writing tips

Kylie Fennell
As a former journalist I often get asked about the best way to gain media coverage.
Beyond having a good story or ‘yarn’ in the first place, the biggest favour you can do yourself is to have a well-written media release.
Journalists have always been time poor, but they are more busy than ever these days. As a result they are likely to give precedence over a well written media release, than a poorly written one. The easier you can make their job, the better the outcome is likely to be for you.
While different news outlets and countries have slightly different preferences in terms of format and presentation, the basics are usually the same. Here are some tips and a media release template based primarily on Australian news style.
Before you write your media release
Consider the following:
§  Why are you writing the release – what is your aim? 
§  Who will read your release – who is the audience?
§  What is your story – what is your newsworthy angle?
§  What does the audience think/know already about this topic? 
§  What do you want them to think/know?
§  What key messages must you include?
 
Let’s write
§  Ask yourself, “How are people going to relate to this and will they be able to connect?”
§  Avoid excessive use of adjectives and complex language – the simpler the better.
§  Spell out the numeral one to nine and use figures for 10 and above (unless used in association with $. For example ‘$3 million’ is okay, but ‘3 participants’ is not okay)
§  No numbers at the beginning of paragraphs (unless spelt out)
§  USE “million”, NOT “m” or “M”
§  Check consistent figures, facts and titles are used throughout the release
§  Use “per cent”, NOT percent, %, pc or p.c.
§  Check spelling and grammar, especially spelling of names
§  Check all other important details such as phone numbers and email addresses
§  Don’t use ampersands “&”, USE the word “and”. Unless it is bad of a brand or company name.
§  Don’t use exclamation marks
§  Watch apostrophe placement (singular/plural/possessive) and be careful of ‘it’s vs its’. It’s is short for ‘It is’. Its is possessive eg. The company held its annual general meeting
§  Do not mix past/present tense in the same sentence
§  Use ‘more than’ not ‘over’ with figures. Eg. ‘more than 700 jobs’
Review your media release
§  Watch your segues – this refers to the flow of the information. Make sure the paragraphs connecting and flow logically.
§  Use active voice not passive – passive speech uses words such as ‘being, been and be’, followed by a past tense verb. Often the word ‘by’ is in sentences with passive speech. The words ‘has’ and ‘have’ followed by a past tense word is not passive speech. Another alert can be that the person/organisation you are talking about is at the end of the sentence, or is not mentioned at all. In active speech the person/organisation is upfront at the beginning of the sentence and is doing something rather than having something done to them.
§  Negative Language – use positive language wherever possible, even if the subject is negative. Eg. ‘Entry will not be accepted without a ticket’ vs ‘Present your ticket to gain entry’
§  Key messages ­– key messages are one of the most important tools we use in all communication. They provide common direction, meaning and focus and ensures internal and external messages are consistent. These messages should be developed in advance for specific projects, initiatives and contentious topics or issues. Have no more than three key messages you want to get across and make sure you include them in your media release.
§  Read your media release thoroughly – identify any clumsy or long paragraphs. Re-phrase these, or break them into smaller, easier to read sentences. It sounds strange, but it’s great to read a media release out-loud and identify any sections you stumble on. These are the sections which need more work
§  A second pair of eyes – always get someone to read your media release before finalisation. Preferably someone unfamiliar with the content so they can pick up on anything that doesn’t make sense.
§  Approvals – finally, make sure anyone quoted or organisation mentioned in the media release has an opportunity to review and approve the content. Always ensure you get appropriate internal (your organisation) approvals as well.
Still not sure where to start?
If you’ve never written a media release before, you may like to use the below media release template.
The below template is a fictional media release, about how to write a media release.
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<use your own company letterhead, font and layout as appropriate>
MEDIA RELEASE                                                                                                                   
For immediate use
X Month Year
EXPERT SHARES SECRETS TO WRITING A WINNING MEDIA RELEASE
A world-renowned writing expert shared his secrets for writing a winning media release at the Australasian Writing Conference in Brisbane today (X Month).
The Writing Company, Chief Executive Officer, John Smith said anyone could write an effective media release.
“The good news is that you don’t need to be a journalist or a brilliant writer to create a good media release,” Mr Smith said.
Mr Smith said the headline and first paragraph were the most important parts of the release.
“The headline should be active, short and punchy – 10 words or less.
“Your first sentence must catch the reader’s attention, inform them what the story is about, and make them want to read the rest of the article. This sentence should not exceed 25-30 words.”
Mr Smith said another important component was having quotes from a reliable source.
“Quotes should be used for less factual, more personable information or subjective statements,” he said.
“The speaker must always be introduced with an indirect quote first, with their company name, job title, first name then surname, used in the first instance. They can then be referred to as Mr/Ms surname after that (as shown above).”
Mr Smith said indirect quotes should always be in past tense and be used to introduce a new ideas.
“A subject in a direct quote should be introduced first in an indirect quote and the punctuation must be clear.
“The first direct quote ends in a comma, then quotation marks, then Mr/Ms surname said, and then a fullstop, as shown above.
“Running quotes end only in a fullstop but the final running quote ends with a fullstop and quotation mark as shown above and here.” 
Factual information does not need to be included in direct or indirect quotes. After breaking up quotes with a block of text like this, you need to recognise the speaker again at the end of their quote, as per below.
“You must include the five Ws and H – what, where, when, who, why and how in order of importance, but try not to exceed one page in total,” Mr Smith said.
ends
For more information contact first name surname, on phone number or email.
Photo/interview opportunities are available (Include this only if they are available).
Also include details of your website and any social media sites.

What the blog?! Why you need a blog and anyone can do it

Kylie Fennell
Blogs are one of the most under-utilised and misunderstood marketing tools a business can lay its hands on. Anyone can start a business blog and the best news is that it can be done for free.
For nothing more than a little planning and your own time, you can create a business blog that drives all of your online marketing efforts and boosts your traditional promotions and advertising.
Now before I go on, we need to dispel some myths and mis-conceptions you may have about blogs.
To have a successful blog you do not need to:
  • be a tech-head or computer wizard
  • be a great writer
  • be a celebrity
  • spend hours a day typing away at your computer in your PJs/trackie dacks – though that is completely optional. 

You do need to have enthusiasm and a commitment to blogging on a regular basis, such as once a week or fortnight. The rest is relatively easy. Just follow my blogging guide below.
What is a blog?
A blog or weblog is a simple way to get your viewpoint into the market and bring together online and social media marketing efforts. Your blog should form the basis or primary source of all of your social media activities. 
You should use Facebook, Twitter and other social media to drive traffic back to your blog and website. 
How does it work?
The blogger writes about a topic and uploads it to the internet on a blogging platform, such as WordPress or Blogger.
People interested in the blog, can go to the blog’s web address by typing the url address into their browser, just like visiting a website. Users can then read the blog, as and when they choose.
Most blogs also have built-in tools and plug-ins, which allow your audience to subscribe to blog updates via email or RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. This means, whenever you update your blog, your subscribers will receive notification.
Don’t worry about the technological components of this, as the tools are usually built into your blogging platform’s templates as ‘options’. FAQs and instructions are also usually available on your blogging platform.
Users can also share your content on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn via buttons or ‘plug-ins’ usually built into the template.
Additionally you can allow users to engage and comment on your content (if you enable comments on your blog).
Some people may not like the idea of letting strangers make comments on their content, so you can use various moderation options available on blogging platforms. This can allow you to moderate or check comments in a range of circumstances and check for offensive language. You can also restrict comments to ‘members only’ if you wish.
You may choose not to allow comments at all. This option is not recommended as the aim of a blog is for people to engage with you. If they can’t comment, they can’t engage. Additionally, regular comments also contributes to optimising your blogs for search engine optimisation (SEO).
Also keep in mind that if your moderation is too rigorous that users may be put-off from engaging. For example it is reasonable to moderate comments added to a post after 14 days (it is harder to for you to manually monitor comments made to old posts). You can choose this as an option in your platform. You may also be able to moderate a users first post only, to demonstrate the first time they are not a trouble maker. You can even have an automated message that explains this in a polite way.
  
The benefits of blogs
+      Search engine optimisation – blogs rank high in search engine results especially if they are regularly updated and have comments on them. In most instances, blogs will rank much, much higher than corporate websites. The more traffic on your blog, the more leads you get. The more posts, the more your overall site traffic increases.
+      You can provide important background information and context in a blog, which you couldn’t provide in a tweet or on Facebook
+      You have the space to provide better and more valuable content to your readers
+      It uses simple software which is often free (WordPress or Blogger are two examples) ­– anyone can have a professional looking blog up and running in minutes
+      You can position yourself as an expert by providing insights about your field of expertise or industry
+      You can build trust by providing valuable, consistent and authentic content
+      You can voice your opinion about key industry issues (in a controlled manner)
+      You can gain insights from your customers and test new ideas/products.
But I’m not a writer
You do not have to be a great writer to have a successful blog. The most successful bloggers write in a conversational style that resonates with their audience. 
What do I write about?
First of all, write about what you know. Write about things you are passionate about. Also consider what your point of difference is to other blogs out there.
Once you decide on your overarching theme, stick to it.
Ideas for blog posts can come from anywhere, but her are a couple of ideas.
+      Create post with lists eg. “Top 10 tips for a Successful Blog” or “25 Tips to Increase Traffic to Your Blog.”
+      Interview Bloggers or an expert in your niche. Post the Q&As on your blog or even better – upload the audio interview – this helps with web traffic and don’t forget to include a photo
+      Ask a colleague, staff member or another expert to ‘guest write’ one of your blogs
+      You can also use HitTail to help automate the process and come up with ideas that will help you gain additional organic traffic. They will give you recommendations for topics based on your existing search traffic and their algorithm to identify the best opportunities.
Also apply the same approach that you use for developing content for your other social media sites.
What platform do I use?
There are a lot of free/or mostly free platforms available with ready-made templates.
The most popular platform by far is WordPress. Google’s Blogger platform is also popular. Most have easy tutorials, and offer custom domains. Your website provider may also have a blogging facility built into its website templates.
Frequency
You should aim to publish on your blog about once a week (this could increase to two a week or decrease to once a fortnight depending on how you are inclined). There is no need to post daily unless you really want to and people are engaging with your blogs on a daily basis.
Key tips
+      Ensure your blog and posts clearly link back to your website, especially if your blog is hosted separately from your website. You should also link from your website to your blog.
+      Use images/video/audio as it gives the user something to pin to or share and it ranks higher in SEO. Also tag or name your image with keywords that may also come up on search engine results.
+      Submit your blog to search engines (see more below)
+      Submit your blog posts to social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit and blog community sites. Bizsugar is one of the top free Blogging Communities. Check out the community though before you submit to it. You only want to be associated with credible or reputable sites.
+      Comment and interact – respond to comments left on your blog (appropriately) and leave your own comments on other reputable blogs (where you can add value), leaving a backlink/URL linking back to your own blog. You should then acknowledge and/or respond to valuable comments on your own blog, in order to engage conversation. Even better, you may sometimes pose a question to your readers to engage them.
+      Don’t comment for comment sake – only comment on other sites when you can add a comment of value.
+      Follow other influential blogs – the blogging community is all about helping each other out and supporting each other as everyone will win out.
+      Set up an RSS Feed such as Feedburner so users are easily aware of new content (it is usually built in to the template)
+      Use keywords in your content. However the keywords must be relevant otherwise Google will penalise you for keyword stuffing, use Google Trends to identify popular keywords being searched.
+      Create labels for your keywords so users can search your blog for related topics.
+      Promote your blog – on your web, in conversations, on other social media, on business cards and other promotional material, in email signatures, at networking events, to journalists, to other bloggers, to friends and family
+      Ensure spelling and grammar is correct
+      Make sure there are no broken links in your content or in comments. Especially in older posts, regularly check it for links which no longer work or lead back to questionable sites. You will be penalised by Google otherwise. You can clean up broken links using CommentLuv Link Cleaner.
+      You can setup Google+ Authorship distinguish and validate your content in search results.
+      Embrace guest bloggers – partners, experts, employees are always great sources to ask to submit blogs for you. You should review the content though before you publish it.
+      Do not take criticism personally. You will receive opinions, or feedback, and if somebody is nasty, there are options to block users or blacklist them. Take on board constructive criticism and respond to it swiftly and appropriately, and ignore the troublemakers.
+      Stay on topic – once you have chosen a key theme for your blog post or for the whole blog, try and stick to that theme.
+      Use internal links – link to previous relevant posts especially if they were popular ones.
+      Use simple easy-to-navigate layout – avoid Flash or unnecessary coding on a page, ensure the loading time for images and pages is not too long by making the template simple and compressing the images.
+      Use Google Analytics to track the visits to your blog. Most platforms also have statistics built into the platform dashboard for you to track.
+      Be patient and persevere because the time you invest will eventually pay off. If you build it (and provide valuable content and promote it) they will come!
Submitting Your Blog to Search Engines
You should submit your blog to search engines including Google, MSN/Bing and Yahoo.
Otherwise search engines may not recognise your blog. All you need to do in this case is to submit the URL of your blog to them just to notify them of your newly created blog.

Comment SPAM­

Occasionally you may receive a notification that someone has commented on one of your posts. The post may not appear to make any sense grammatically and is unrelated to your blog’s content. It is annoying and can lead to your blog being penalised by Google.
It usually involves links to another website. This is an out-dated and automated tactic used by marketers to try and improve website ranking in search engines. While search engines are onto this, the practise is still used as it is relatively simple to post comments enmasse to many blogs at the same time.
You can avoid these SPAM comments in the following ways:
+      disable commenting on your blog all together (generally not recommended)
+      moderate and delete comments as they appear (this would need to be done regularly and can be time consuming depending on the number of comments). You could also moderate first time commenters and after that allow them to post un-moderated.
+      A third-party spam filter such as Askimet or Defensio, which examines comments and either holds them for moderation or deletes them. It may not stop all spam.
+      A spam blockersuch as Bad Behavior which stops the comments from reaching your blog and can even prevent them from finding your website in the first instance. It may however indiscriminately discard legitimate comments along the way.
+      CAPTCHAs(Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) use challenge-response tests to ensure comments are coming from a person and not a computer. This may ask the commenter to re-type some text, symbols or answer a question. Some blog platforms have this facility built-in.
+      Nofollow Comment Links mean spammers will gain no search engine result benefit.WordPress and most other blogging platforms do this by default or is offered as an option.
+      Blacklist and block troublesome spammers by their names, email addresses, URLs, or even their IP addresses. Your blogging platform eg WordPress should have some advice on how to do this 
+      Disable comments on older posts. Older posts are often targeted by spam as they are less moderated. Many blogging platforms allow you to delete comments on posts after a set time period.
If you do start a blog, don’t be disheartened if it takes time to build a following or for people to engage with your blog. Remember Keep Calm and Blog On and most of all ‘have fun’.
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Get the biggest bang for your marketing (or no) bucks in 2014

Kylie Fennell
It’s time for your new year’s marketing resolutions.
The new year is a great time to review your marketing strategies and plan ahead for the remainder of the year. 

marketing 2014 Kylie Fennell small business marketing
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/freedigitalimages.net

Take time to review what has worked for you, what hasn’t and what you should focus your efforts on when marketing in 2014.
So what are the hot trends in marketing for 2014? The two biggest marketing trends in 2014 are a carry-over from 2013. They are digital marketing, which includes social media and content marketing.
The great news for small businesses is both of the these trends can be leveraged for little cost.
Beyond that there are a few simple things small business can do to get the biggest bang for their marketing buck or in some cases no bucks.
Here are five tips to maximise your 2014 marketing efforts.
1. Digital marketing
Your onlineand social media presence should form one of your biggest marketing priorities in 2014.
Revisit your website and check whether it is still helping you achieve your marketing goals. What do you want users to do once they get to your site? Do you want them to make a purchase? Do you want to encourage customers to visit your shopfront? Do you want them to sign up to a newsletter? Is the website achieving this, and if not change it and keep it up-to-date.
Make sure the user can get what they need from your site in the easiest and quickest way possible.
Review your social media accounts in a similar way. Are you achieving your objectives through social media? Have you been keeping your social media account up-to-date? If not, perhaps consider paring back the number of accounts to the ones most relevant to your business and focus your efforts on them. Otherwise you will need to be disciplined and devote more time to social media.
Remember to be active and engage, deliver value to your connections and evaluate your success through free analytics and built-in tools such as Facebook Insights, Followerwonk for Twitter and Google Analytics.
2. Content marketing
Content marketing does not need to be terribly complex. In its simplest form it is about providing content that is relevant and valuable to your target audience.
Ensure your content is tailored to your target market and packaged and delivered in a format, style, frequency and timeframe most relevant to them. Focus on giving away lots of value in your comment.
3. Be a problem solver
It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, or what products or services you sell, we are all in the same business.
We are in the business of solving problems for our customers. There is also a difference between being a good problem solver and a great problem solver. The difference is brilliant customer service.
Go the extra mile for customers when you can. They will remember it, appreciate it and hopefully reward you with repeat business or word-of-mouth support.
Have a positive attitude to difficult customer requests. Instead of saying ‘No I can’t do that’, use the phrase ‘What I can do is…’. Anticipate customer needs and aim to exceed their expectations.
Know you customers inside out and speak directly to them. Consider creating a customer persona to better understand them.
4. Review your brand story
Once you are confident you fully understand your customers, you may want to review your brand story.
What is your business’s story? Have you got a one page story about your brand that clearly articulates who you are, what you offer and your point of difference?
If you don’t have a story, it’s time to write one with the writing tips found under tools on our website. If you do have one, it is time to review it to ensure it is still relevant to your target audience.
Once you have your brand story clear, make sure your key messages flow through all of your communication and marketing materials.
5. Don’t be afraid to try something new
There’s no harm in trying something new when it comes to marketing – provided you have the budget and resources you need and you stick to any relevant laws and regulations.
One of the best avenues for trying something different is via social media.
There are always new platforms and tools and most of them are low or no cost. You can immediately gauge the success of these activities via engagement and analytics. Venture out and try new features and platforms and have fun. Stick with what works for you and discard what doesn’t.
Just remember like any marketing activity, you need to have clear goals in mind and your marketing needs to support these objectives.
So now all you need to do is come up with your marketing resolutions – easy – the hard part is sticking to them. Just know you can always turn to an expert to help with your marketing in 2014.
Happy New Year and may all of your marketing dreams come true in 2014 – Kylie Fennell

How to write brilliant social media content

Kylie Fennell 2 comments
So you have set up a business Facebook page that you diligently monitor and update once a day with snippets, pictures and videos, which may or may not feature a cat playing a piano.
You may have ventured out further and have been tweeting your thoughts on the latest reality TV show.
If so, you are probably congratulating yourself on taming the social media beast. And so you should.
What happens though if you start to notice that people are not engaging in your posts or updates? What happens when hardly anyone is liking/sharing/commenting/re-tweeting or clicking on your updates? More importantly how do you fix it?
By far the most important component of any marketing activity is content. Content marketing is more than a buzz word, it is the foundation of all marketing activities.

The same rule applies to social media marketing. Your social media content must be relevant and valuable to your target market.
Without this, your social media marketing efforts will be largely wasted.
Here are some tips on developing brilliant social media content.
80/20 rule
It is terribly tempting to blast your followers with promotional copy, promos, offers and sales.
While there is a place in social media for promotional opportunities, especially if they are well managed, by far the majority of your posts should be non-promotional.
Remember when most people are using social media, they are using it in a “social” sense. They are not in the headspace for hard-selling.
A 80/20 rule of thumb can be used as a guideline for posts. That is, for every self-serving promotional post, you should have at least four relevant and interesting content posts. These should be a mix of your own content and re-posts of relevant content written by others.
Posts can be purely entertaining (such as cats playing piano), or personal (such as personal images or anecdotes), but will be most effective if they connect with someone and elicit an emotion, whether that is laughter, empathy or gratitude. It should also have some connection to your business and its products or services. For example, a boutique may post a photo of the owner in their daggiest prom dress.
You should like or follow similarly minded pages that feature content that will be relevant to your target audience.
Content ideas
Here are some tips to help you identify content relevant to your target audience.
+      Think about your audience as people or “personas” rather than demographic profiles
+      Tailor your content and approach – ensure your content is tailored to your personas and packaged and delivered in a format, style, frequency and timeframe most relevant to them.
+      Focus on giving away lots of value – some call this giving away the secret sauce. Don’t always ask for something in return. Why give away the secret sauce? Remember you are in the business of solving problems. Your potential customer has a problem and your content may help solve it, at no cost to them. When they need more help hopefully they will come to you and share the information or experience with everyone they know.
+      Stockpile content – squirrel away content ideas and trends as you come across them. You never know when something may come in handy, especially if it is not time critical. You may come up with ideas anywhere from on the bus, in the shower or driving. It may be something as simple as a road sign, an anecdote a friend has told you or a news feature. Have a pen and paper on hand, or use voice memo on your phone (handy when in the car), or type notes into your phone. Tear out pages from newspapers or magazines as you see something that interests you. Compile your ideas in a hard copy or electronic folder. You may even like to input them into a spreadsheet with specific columns so you can search by particular fields
+      Ask your audience – ask your followers what kind of content they would like to see. This doesn’t make you sound stupid, it demonstrates you really want to engage with your customers.

Finally, be concise – as with any writing keep your content to the point, especially with Twitter where you have limited characters. If you are posting links, take advantage of free url shorteners that create a super-short link for you. Google’s and bitly’s url shorteners are probably the most common.

Call-to-action
Regardless of your overarching social media goal, one of your objectives is likely to be to get people to click it/view/like/share/re-post/comment in some way, shape or form. This would be in the hope it would lead to further awareness, increased traffic and hopefully sales. It also has the added benefit of increasing the likelihood of someone seeing your post (since the more people who comment or share it, the higher up it moves in a feed) and improve search engine optimisation (SEO).
Getting people click it/view/like/share/re-post/comment is a good basis for engaging your audience, and if it isn’t, it is time to review your objectives.
To achieve the above objective there needs to be a clear and persuasive call-to-action.
Keep in mind people share or comment on content based on how they want to perceived by others. So they want to look good/funny/intelligent/caring by liking or sharing something. Certainly high quality and valuable content will go a long way in achieving this. So you may simply go with adding a simple “like this post” or event a question at the end of your post with the hope people will engage with it.
This is a great starting point, but what else can you do to improve engagement? Momentus Media conducted a study of 20,000 Facebook profiles which found that asking a stand alone “question” will result in 23% less engagement that no question at all.

This does not mean questions should be avoided – it means you have to craft your questions more carefully. In fact you need to demand an answer. Sounds pushy right – well it works.
Here is an example:
Question only: “Coffee or Tea. Which is better?
Question with a demand: “Coffee or Tea. Which is better? Tell us in comments”
You may not believe this but research has shown that people are more likely to go to the effort of doing something, if they are told to do it.
Blogger Ryan ‘Haight’ Mail explains further:
“Look at any of the top 100 YouTube channels. They all end with:
“What do you think about turtle racing? Tell us in the comments! And remember to hit subscribe!”
They do this because it doesn’t matter how funny you are, the majority of people will finish your video and go, “Ha! That was funny– omg a cat playing piano. *click*”
And then they’re gone.”
By adding their call-to-action and couching it in a demand, they may have just got some more engagement, possibly even a lead for their email distribution list and SEO.
Let’s explore this concept a little further by using conditionals, such as ‘comment/like IF [condition]’. Eg. Comment if you think tea is better than coffee, or ‘Like’ if you think tea is better than coffee.
Have you noticed again how we are ‘telling’ rather than ‘asking’.
Now time for a little reality check, from Haight Mail who explains why aiming for a ‘Like’ is also a great option.
“People are Lazy. Comments are great on Facebook. They usually include words — sometimes they’re spelled correctly,” he says.
“But ultimately they’re a lot of work. So even with a call to action, people are less likely to interact the more work they have to do. So use this to your advantage and make it easy. You are 216% more likely to get people to click ‘Like’ than you are to have them actually write a sentence.” [Momentus Media]
So in summary, have a call-to-action, and let it demand or tell the audience what to do. 
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Writing for business ­– 10 tips from the experts

Kylie Fennell

Over the years many of my clients and students have asked the same question.

“What makes good writing?”

This question shouldn’t come as a surprise to businesses out there.
We all want fabulous business and marketing content that will connect with our audience. We want to know how to best write for business.
Most of us know the importance of understanding our target audience and writing for them, but many despair because “I’m not a writer”. Ideally you would hire an expert to help with writing or editing, but this is not always possible with limited marketing budgets.
You wonder if there is a secret to writing for business.
Well there is. You can write any marketing or business communication material and make it effective, if you understand the fundamentals of writing.
The fundamentals never change, and for me the fundamentals are explained in an anecdote where Ulysses author James Joyce explained his day’s work. He had spent the day painstakingly writing two sentences. “I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence,” he is quoted as saying.

Good writing in its most basic form is having the right words in the right order.

Not terribly helpful advice I hear you say. Well perhaps bestselling author, the late Bryce Courtenay said it better with his mantra of  “keep it simple”.
Courtenay was well-educated with a formidable vocabulary, yet he never set out to be too “clever” with his writing. He was a proponent for keeping writing simple, clean, direct and honest. He hated long-winded and unnecessary description and it paid dividends throughout his career, first in advertising and later as an author.
Here are 10 other tips from acclaimed writers and authors that anyone can apply to writing for business.
1. George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty Four
“Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech, which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

2. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby author

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Cut out…exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”

3. James Patterson, author of Alex Cross series.

 “Pretend that you are sitting across from somebody, telling them a story and you don’t want them to get up until it’s finished.” 
4. Stephen King, acclaimed horror and suspense author
“If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot… If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write. Simple as that.” 
5. Ray Bradbury, science fiction author.
“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things you’re doomed.”
6. Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea author
Ernest Hemingway threw out many drafts before he was happy
“The first draft of everything is sh*t.”
 7. Joshua Wolf Shenk, best-selling author and essayist
“Get through a draft as quickly as possible. (It’s) Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft…the old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly.”


8. Ken Follett, Pillars of the Earth author

“My aim in constructing sentences is to make the sentence utterly easy to understand, writing what I call transparent prose. I’ve failed dreadfully if you have to read a sentence twice to figure out what I meant.”
9. David Ogilvy, iconic businessman
  • Write the way you talk. Naturally.
  • Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
  • Never use jargon words like reconceptualize,demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
  • Never write more than two pages on any subject.
  • Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.
  • If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
  • Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.

Highlights from a now famous internal memo, Ogilvy sent to all employees at Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency.

10. Just write
My tenth tip is to write, write, write. Like any skill, it’s something you need to practise. Write every day if you can. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, it could be an email to a friend, a cover letter for a job, just write. It will all help you in writing for business.
The good news is that there are hundreds of free tools out there to help you. You can access a bunch of free writing tips under tools and resources on our the mypr+ website or use any of the free following online tools. However beware when using some of the tools shown below as they may use United States English rather than Australian or British English. For reference, here is a great site with US vs British English word lists.
Improve Readability with MS-Word – this tool is built-in to MS Word and uses the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests designed to indicate how difficult a reading passage is to understand. Using simple calculations, it is able to break down text to gauge the level of education (or school grade) needed to grasp the writing, and how hard it is to comprehend overall. A score 90 and above means it is easily understood by an average 11-year-old, 60 to 70 is for 13 to 15-year-olds and 30 or under is best understood by university graduates. Don’t forget to use your spelling and grammar checks in MS Word as well.

The onelook dictionary search indexes more than 1000 dictionaries and allows reverse dictionary and keyword searches

This wiki is a guide on using punctuation correctly and has great cheat sheets.
Useful grammar lessons and tips can be found at the University of Ottawa site, Grammar Girl and the Capital Community College Foundation, which also has good general writing tips.
Other general writing resources can be found at betterwritingskills.com and infoplease.com

Common errors in the English language are outlined at this site and a great general Style Guide can be found at the Economist’s site.

So now there are no excuses. Let’s get writing.
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