Lecture 13 Karen Morath June 6, 2013
WRITING FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION – Review and reflect (and gift with purchase*)
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Lecture 13 (of 13)
• Review and reflect • One key ‘take away’ from each lecture
Lecture 1 – Role of writing in strategic communication • Writing underpins many strategic
communication strategies, eg speeches, newsletters, blogs, Twitter, media releases, Facebook, websites
• It is a core skill of many strategic communicators
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Lecture 2 – Great Writing
• Great writing moves people • Great writing meets a strategic
objective • Great writing writes for an
audience
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Lecture 3 – Strategic Communicators
• Fast growing occupation/industry • Work for organisations or as consultants • Manage communication for organisations
or individuals
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Lecture 4 – Tone, style and punctuation • Tone is how your piece of writing ‘sounds’
and it is extremely effective in helping you to meet its objective
• Style is the set of ‘rules’ for how words are used in a publication or organisation – ie news style, house style, etc
• Punctuation. Learn apostrophes. Urgently. And it is contracts to it’s and EVERY other time you use its it does not have an apostrophe. Page 6
Please learn this
• It’s is used as a contraction of it is (so when you could read the same sentence as it’s or it is, then it’s is correct)
• Its is used ALL OTHER TIMES • It’s has nothing to do with plural or
possessive
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Lecture 5 – Writing for social media • Requires genuine engagement and
conversations • Not being about ‘on message’ • 24/7 • Requires communicators to live and
breathe the different platforms
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Lecture 6 – Writing for print
• Print not dead yet • Print has impact or ‘land’ • Harder to ignore or to not open than
email • Well-crafted letters can sizzle (and
achieve more than sexier tactics)
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Lecture 7 – The professional writing process (from brief to publication) • Starts with a brief • Research/interviews/synthesise existing info • Write draft • Amendments/corrections/approvals • Revise and seek approvals again • Publish or distribute • TRAPS – writing for the right audience/writing by
committee
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Lecture 8 – The writer’s toolbox
• Interviewing • Note taking • Quoting • Feature articles • Profile pieces
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Lecture 9 – Media releases
• Inverted pyramid – most important info first • 5Ws and a H • Quote someone • Bullet points OK • Provide contact information • Date of issue
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Lecture 10 – Writing as thought leadership • Writing-based activities such as blogging,
tweeting, writing books and giving speeches create platforms that create reputations for people as leaders in their fields
• Eg, Ken Robinson, Seth Godin, Tom Friedman
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Lecture 11 – Visualisation and gamification • Gaming is the big new trend in
strategic communication • 56 million people play games
daily • That number cannot be ignored
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Lecture 12 - Speechwriting
• Speeches can reach audiences like no other tactic can
• Listen to some great speeches and great speakers and consider their impact
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Lecture 13 – Review and reflect
• One critical thing in writing for strategic communication
• To be effective, every piece of strategic communication writing needs to have a communication objective
• If it doesn’t, then it is unlikely to fulfil it (and therefore will not achieve anything intentional)
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Contact me
• [email protected] • LinkedIn – Karen Morath • Twitter – karen_morath • www.karenmorath.com
* If you were in Melbourne for this lecture today, you would have received a free copy of my book PRide and PRejudice – Conversations with Australia’s PR legends (Nuhouse Press, 2008)
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Example presentation title Page 18
Thank You