In the PR world, a common problem is that “We keep pushing ‘send,’ and less and less happens in response — despite the great amount of effort that we put into our work,” Ann Wylie said. With so many messages competing for people’s attention, “How do we get heard?”
Wylie, president of Wylie Communications, was the August guest for Strategies & Tactics Live, PRSA’s monthly livestream series on LinkedIn.
By one estimate, people only focus on a single screen for about 47 seconds. But as PR professionals, “we’re still writing as if we have all the time in the world,” she said.
No matter the type of communication, “are we thinking about ourselves too much, or are we thinking about the reader? Over and over again, when I look at public relations messages and internal communications, I see what one researcher called ‘institutional narcissism.’ It’s the belief that we’re so important and interesting that everybody’s going to care about us,” Wylie said.
“We’re making a huge assumption that people don’t care if we’re boring,” she said. “The sad truth is that [readers are] just not that into you.”
PR messages seldom consider the reader.
How can PR practitioners take the reader’s interests into consideration? “My experience is that we almost never do,” Wylie said. “We need to write something interesting.”
To that end, “Spend a little more time on your leads so they’re not generic-sounding. But it’s not just your lead and then, ‘See you later.’ You’ve got to maintain that interest.”
Wylie urged PR practitioners to write copy that’s easy to read. To hold the reader’s interest, “Get more storytelling into your messages,” she said.
John Elsasser, editor-in-chief of PRSA’s monthly publication Strategies & Tactics and host of S&T Live, asked Wylie how communicators can persuade audiences to act.
For PR professionals to remain relevant in the age of artificial intelligence, “We need to be thinking about how they will do what we want them to do,” she said.
“A properly written and organized message gets people to read what we want them to read, so they think what we want them to think and do what we want them to do. And the only measure of that is, ‘Do they push the button?’ Does your call to action tell the reader why to act, or does it simply tell the reader to act?”
PR pros persuade.
Within many companies, people who don’t work in communications approve copy and change it, often by committee. As a result, “in most organizations, communications is run by amateurs,” Wylie said. “And that is not the best way to communicate.”
Even as communicators persuade outside audiences, they’re not always persuasive to the leaders of the companies they serve. “It’s a matter of your own reputation within your organization,” Wylie said. “When you talk, show them that you know what you’re doing.”
Watch the entire session for more insights on reaching readers.
Illustration credit: jk_kyoto
