High performers focus on readers 71% of the time — IABC UK study
Seventy-one percent of high-performing organizations focus their messaging on audience’s point of view.… Read the full article
Persuasive writing
Writer centered vs. reader centered writing
Stop We-We-ing on reader
It feels so good to talk about ourselves.
Talking about yourself activates the same pleasure centers in the brain as food, money or sex, according to Harvard neuroscientist Diana Tamir and her colleague Jason Mitchell, whose research on the topic was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.… Read the full article
What is reader-centered writing?
Avoid Institutional Narcissism
Richard Roll, an economics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, studies narcissism in CEOs. Turns out the more narcissistic executives are, the more likely they are to overrate their skills and make bad business moves.… Read the full article
How to craft reader-focused writing
Stop it with the ‘At XX, we …’ construction
At Wylie Communications, we believe that writers should write and that approvers should check the facts and leave the headlines alone.… Read the full article
Learn reader-centered business writing from Dale Carnegie
Take a tip from the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People
I was coaching a communicator for a California health insurance plan the other day.… Read the full article
Use WIIFM marketing to persuade
Focus on what the reader wants
If you wanted to keep teens from smoking weed, what message might you communicate?
One health organization, reports Guy Kawasaki in his book Enchantment, used the message that young people who smoked weed were five times more likely to engage in sex.… Read the full article
Steal from this What’s In It For Me example
‘Say goodbye to the 60-hour workweek’
You know that the topic is never the topic: The reader is the topic.
You’ve acknowledged that readers don’t care about “us and our stuff”; they care about themselves and their needs.… Read the full article
7 persuasive writing techniques to try
‘Make ’em sick, make ’em well’ & 6 other ways to move people to act
Start with the problem.
Communicators are often too eager to rush in with the solution — the product, service or idea.… Read the full article
Promises, promises
We want to act consistently with our commitments and values
Social scientist Anthony Greenwald and his colleagues asked potential voters on the eve of an election to predict whether they would vote and why.… Read the full article
Make it F-A-B
Translate features to advantages to benefits
Quick! Which would you rather have: Apple’s new incredibly responsive A9X chip? Or the ability to perform complex jobs like editing 4K video quickly and smoothly via your iPad?… Read the full article