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

•  K.morath@latrobe.edu.au •  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