There are several new trends in PR, but one that is crucial when it comes to press release writing is getting the right tone of voice. So what seems to be changing?
Many years ago advertising started to become less effective. It is because people have become more wise; they understand what the purpose of an advert is: to sell something. So people became less excited about special offers and sales announcements, and more suspicious about what the advertiser was peddling.
Something similar is happening with content.
At the heart of PR and marketing trends is social media. The way we communicate on platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook is having a sweeping effect on how people assess the written word. On Twitter we need to abbreviate our messages to 140 characters; on Facebook we chat as if we’re talking to friends one-to-one; on LinkedIn we draft posts that tend to be snapshots of our personal role in our organisation.
This more human touch has affected how we respond to sales messages. We seem to know when people are selling to us, but we can sense when they’re providing helpful information or honest comment.
If we step back 5 years, another trend emerged. Companies were using press releases to boost their search engine rankings. By drafting a press release it was possible to post it on newswires and article sites and link keywords back to your own website. This had the effect of enhancing your search engine position for that keyword. Google, in particular, has now devalued this type of optimisation – and will even penalise you for it – but there are still lessons to be learned.
A press release is no longer JUST a piece of writing that you send to a journalist and hope they’ll print it. A press release is now the starting point for a plethora of positive communications. A press release gives you content for:
• blog articles
• tweets
• Facebook posts
• LinkedIn posts
• guest blogs
• forums… and so much more.
The common thread among these tools is the ‘human’ angle. While we know that many of these communications come from a ‘company’, the social media sites are created by people within the company, and are often ‘from’ those people. You’ll see, for example, Richard Branson creating masterclasses on LinkedIn – and they’re from him, not Virgin. But are they written by him, and does that matter?
If you’re in marketing then you’ll know that people put on an authoritative or professional tone of voice because they represent a company. This must be a genuine voice – to sound like a professional person within that business and not a sales message – or to sound like the business should sound if it was that person! That way any number of people can take the reins and sound consistently like the company speaking.
You see this a lot in the packaging world – called wackaging – where packets of food say ‘eat me’ or ‘I’m delicious’. (Great article on wackaging here )
As writers, it is well worth us considering what you as a client want to do with your press release. We can write it in a more ‘genuine voice’ if we know your primary use is going to be a blog, a web article or social media. Less sales spiel, more honest advice. We do have to keep in mind that your key target newspapers, magazines and journals will have their own tone of voice, and that any press release should be as simple for an editor to edit for that audience as possible. This is slightly easier when it comes to business to consumer communication, rather than business to business.
We think you’ll see much more of this in months and years to come. We may even see newspapers and magazines adopting a more personal tone.