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Moving communication campaigns into action |
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A simple way to make rapid progress if you need to write some new marketing materials Here is a back issue of Marketing Booster, the email newsletter that Richard Groom writes and sends free every fortnight to subscribers. You can subscribe here or read over 60 back issues using the back issues index page. If you ever struggle to get started on writing new marketing materials then the technique explained in this article might help. It's actually the opposite of the way I normally work, but sometimes doing something different is what's needed to get the creativity flowing. The way I normally work is to concentrate on the content of what I'm writing, and worry about the format later. So I work hard on the issues that we want to get across, the things that readers will be interested in and so on. Only when I have most of the content together do I usually start work on the format. But sometimes, working the other way can be very effective. For example, if you are writing a case study then working out the main section headings might be a good start. You might decide that your headings are: * The situation. * Finding a solution. * The chosen product. * The results. Once you come up with your headings it may get a lot easier to start writing, because you already have clear and distinct themes on which to write. You can even decide how many words to write for each section by creating a template using dummy text to establish the available words. Knowing in advance how many words are available can help you when you write. Another recent example of this technique in action was when I was writing the 'about us' page for a new client's web site. (I'll call it 'XYZ company' here to protect confidentiality.) Now I don't know about you, but I usually find that 'about us' pages are just about as dull as you can get. I wanted to do something a bit different, and something that would get me writing instead of thinking. So I wrote a heading, in this case: "Ten facts about XYZ company." Suddenly it was easy to write as I had a clear objective in mind. It wasn't hard to come up with ten things that would be of interest to web site visitors, based on the briefing and research that I'd already done. I don't know whether we'll keep the 'ten facts' format in the published version, but at least it got me started and I'm sure that most of what I've written will make it through to the site itself. The last example I want to share is about an annual report that I have just finished writing for a local not-for-profit organisation. Right at the start, I decided that each page would have the following elements: * A main title. * One picture in the top right-hand corner, with a caption. * A paragraph in bold to introduce the page content. * No more than 400 words of text. * At least one subheading per page to break up the columns of text. * A footer to each page with an interesting statistic about the work that the organisation did during the year. Once again, by coming up with a format at the beginning, I knew exactly how much information I needed for each page. It made the process a lot easier than starting each page from scratch. And to finish, a little secret if you are ever struggling to come up with a suitable format: copy someone else's ideas, including mine if you wish. Copyright 2005 Richard Groom |