The internet coffee pot. Word of the year. The Dust Bowl.

Details like these grab attention and help readers see your big idea.

To use this approach, take a tip from William Carlos Williams, and turn ideas into things —like these PRSA Silver Anvil Award-winners do:

Choose one image to stand for the whole.

Marie Hatter chose a single detail to stand for her point atop the Cisco blog post “Internet of Everything“:

So choose an example to stand for the whole.

Internet of Everything? Too big.

Internet coffee pot? Just right.

Binge watching in a detail

Netflix uses the same approach for “Netflix Declares Binge Watching is the New Normal”:

What we think about binge watching? Too broad.

Binge watching as runner-up to word of the year? Just right.

Bringing dirt down to size

PR pros for World Soil Day bring soil health down to earth in their Op/Ed “Soil Conservation: The Next Generation”:

All the soil in all the world? Too big!

The top six inches? Just right.

Go tiny.

For a specific-details lead, choose a part — a tiny part — to illustrate the whole.

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Research shows … that nearly half of commuters text and drive … that one in three patients enters the hospital malnourished … and that 66% of women won’t kiss men with moustaches.

Startling statistics can make a good lead.

Let’s pause and ponder that for a minute too.

Underline “startling.” This doesn’t mean that you can pack your first paragraph with a bunch of boring numbers. But one surprising statistic can set up your PR piece beautifully.

But you don’t have to tell PRSA’s Silver Anvil Award winners. They use statistics to sell their ideas:

From the sad …

AT&T uses startling stats in its release “Nearly Half of Commuters Admit to Texting While Driving”:

And Visa, in this Reading Is Fundamental lead:

… to the sick …

Alliance to Advance Patient Nutrition leads with the numbers in its release “Leading Healthcare Organizations Launch Interdisciplinary Partnership: The Alliance to Advance Patient Nutrition”:

So does Novartis Animal Health, in this Deramaxx lead:

… to the sublime …

Cisco starts with compelling numbers in its blog post “The Internet of Everything is the New Economy”:

… to the ridiculous.

Gillette uses startling stats in its media alert “Gillette asks Houston couples to ‘Kiss & Tell’ in live national experiment and tell the world their preference — a smooth shaven or stubbled kiss”:

Next steps

Learn to add startling statistics to your next PR lead.

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Paint a picture in your lead through description like this, from a Pfizer Animal Health release.

Description makes a great approach for a PR lead. Here, Silver Anvil Award-winning PR pros show how it’s done.

‘Thick with the smell of fast food …’

This lead helped win support for the nation’s first statewide menu labeling law, sponsored by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy:

‘Tongs and spatulas flew …’

PR pros for PAM used description for this Silver Anvil winner:

Most obsolete office …

Xerox relied on description to show what the “most obsolete office” in America looks like in this Silver Anvil-winning press release lead:

Belligerent driving…

Nerves of Steel, a coalition of steel producers, leads by describing belligerent driving in this Silver Anvil-winning release:

Next steps

Learn how to add description to your copy.

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One way to pitch a story that reporters want to catch: Start with an anecdotal lead.

Anecdotes make your PR pieces easier to believe, understand and remember. So use an anecdotal lead whenever possible to illustrate your key idea.

As they rounded a bend on the country road …

Take a tip from this Department 56 Silver Anvil Award-winning release lead, and tap the power of storytelling:

Buddy was hit by a car …

And this Deramaxx Silver Anvil Award-winning release lead is one of my favorites. Note the story in the quote:

Tell me a story.

Want to stand out from the crowd of “today announced” and fact pack PR leads? Try storytelling instead.

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Lede or lead?

You won’t find it in the Oxford English Dictionary. But the alternative spelling lede was supposedly created during the linotype era so as not to confuse lead with the strip of metal that was used to separate lines of type.

The word lede still looks weird to me. But even if you prefer the spelling lede, remember: Leads lead the reader into the body of your piece.

So what types of web content leads should you try?

4 types of web leads to try

Web content’s not a newspaper story. So instead of news leads, try these four types of web leads:

1. Snappy synthesis

Don’t bury the lead under all of the W’s and H’s. Instead, steal a trick from The New York Times, and try snappy synthesis. Synthesize your subject matter into a short, snappy sentence like this:

2. Stakeholder benefits

Don’t write about us and our stuff. Instead, draw readers in by focusing on how they can use, or benefit from, our products, services, programs and ideas. Here’s how that looks:

3. Data point

Can you illustrate the gist of the story with a startling statistic? If so, try a lead like this, from Visa’s Reading Is Fundamental program, for your web content:

4. Illustration

Show, don’t tell. Illustrate your essential point with an example like this, from an H&R Block survey of kids about taxes:

3 types of web leads to avoid

Don’t treat your web content as a news story … but don’t bury the lede, either. Here are three types of leads to avoid:

1. Abstraction

To draw readers into your web content, write web leads that are concrete, creative and provocative. That means dry, boring, abstract leads like this aren’t a good choice:

2. Background

The background section — aka the blah blah — belongs in the third paragraph. So keep definitions, history lessons and other broader context like this out of the opening paragraph:

3. Welcome text

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, nonessential introductions like this one cause readers to skip your lead:

Ledes should lead

Whichever lead approach you choose for your web content, make sure it’s concrete, creative and provocative. Make sure your lede leads readers into the story — instead of leading them astray.

Regardless of how you choose to spell it.

Learn more

• Learn more about lede (or lead) writing.
• Find out how to organize your message.
• Perfect the paragraph that comes after the lead: the nut graph.

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Screenwriter Nora Ephron long remembered the first day of her high school journalism class.

Ephron’s teacher announced the first assignment: to write the lead for a story to appear in the student newspaper. He told them the facts:

Ephron and the other budding journalists condensed the who, what, when, where and why of the story into a single sentence:

“Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead, and Robert Maynard Hutchins will address the Beverly Hills High School faculty Thursday in Sacramento …”

The teacher reviewed the leads, then paused for a moment.

“The lead for this story,” he said, “is ‘There will be no school next Thursday.’”

Not ‘just the facts, ma’am’

What’s the point of your news story? It’s probably not really the five W’s and the H. Instead of focusing on the event, focus in the impact, or how the news affects your readers.

Covering a:

• Speech? Write about the most valuable thing the speaker said, not the fact that she spoke.
• Event? Focus on what people will be able to see and do at the event, not the time, date and place.
• Meeting? Center the piece on what was decided at the meeting and how it will affect the reader, not on the logistics of the meeting itself.

What would Miss Piggy do?

To reach readers, think like Miss Piggy and write about MOI, counsels management consultant Alan Weiss. That’s “My Own Interests,” from the reader’s perspective.

One way to do that is to shift your focus from event — what occurred, when, where and why — to impact. That will make your copy more interesting, relevant and valuable to your readers.

___

Sources: Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Random House, 2007, pages 75-76.

Lorraine Glennon and Mary Mohler, Those Who Can…Teach! Celebrating Teachers Who Make a Difference, Wildcat Canyon Press, 1999, 95-96

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It’s counterintuitive, but true: The product is never the topic. The program is never the topic. The plan is never the topic. The topic is never the topic.

The reader is always the topic.

Here’s how six PR pros made the reader the topic in their PRSA Silver Anvil Award-winning campaigns.

Use the ‘Y word.’

The easiest way to write about the reader, in PR as well as in other pieces, is to use the magic word: You. That’s what PR pros did for these award-winning leads:

Use the imperative voice.

Here’s another approach to leading with the reader: Use the imperative voice.

We learned in third grade to call the imperative voice the command voice. And it can be a command: Do the dishes. Make your bed. Clean your room.

When we use it, though, it’s the invitation voice: Grab a spade … prepare your senses … dig a little … learn a lot.

Use a placeholder for ‘you.’

I actually prefer to avoid you and the imperative voice in media relations pieces. For one thing, who’s you — the reporter or the end reader? For another, I still like to retain an objective, third-person voice in PR pieces.

The solution? A placeholder for you: Community members. New drivers. Farmers throughout the state. Teens who commit to safe driving.

That’s how these Silver Anvil award-winners set up their stories:

Put the end user first.

Sometimes, the topic is just one or two members of the reading community. In this case, start with a placeholder for you anyway. Here, instead of leading with CHS Energy or its Tanks of Thanks rewards program, brilliant PR pros lead with the award winners:

Want reader interest? Take a tip from these Silver Anvil winners and write about the reader and the reader’s needs, not about “us and our stuff.”

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When I was editor of an executive magazine, I received dozens of press releases every day.

This was back in the day when releases moved on paper, so I read them over the trash can, giving myself just a few seconds from the time I picked the release up off the stack to the time it hit the circular file.

In that time, I could usually read five words of the lead. The five words I read most often?

XYZ Company today announces that …

Announces what?

I’ll never know; your release is already in the trash.

If you have something to announce, announce it! Don’t announce that you’re announcing it. Remember, the press release itself is the announcement.

Get to the verb quicker.

“A story should be a verb, not a noun,” says Byron Dobell, former editor of Esquire and American Heritage.

One problem with announcement leads is that they make the verb “announce” the story.

Another problem is that they upload the story with nouns. It’s never really “XYZ Company today announces that …,” after all. It’s:

XYZ Company, the leading maker of petroleum-based pet-feeding solutions and a division of ABC Conglomerate, today announces that …

Whatever verb comes after the “that” is the real story:

• Announces that … we’re launching a new product.
• Announces that … we’re taking this position on an issue.
• Announces that … we’re making a hostile takeover bid for Google.

In these announcements, the verbs “launch,” “take” and “make” are the real stories. So one way to check the strength of your lead is to count the number of words that come before these verbs. The more words, the further you’re delaying the story.

Drop ‘today announced.’

I’m not the only communicator who’s bored by “today announced” leads.

Internet World’s “Blah, blah, blah” column used to excerpt and annotate the worst releases the editors had received that month. My favorite:

The annotation:

Don’t wear your readers out. If you have news to announce, announce it.

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Are you still using the fact pack — cramming who, what, when, where, why and how into the first paragraph of your news release? Are you still married to the dated “XYZ Company today announced …” approach?

These conventional formulas to release leads are formulaic, old-fashioned and — let’s face it — dull. Both approaches slow the story down, appear unsophisticated and are too stereotypical to stand out from the competition.

Instead, choose from these three more effective approaches.

1. Benefits leads

Launching a new product or service? Focus on how it solves customer problems instead of on the product or service itself with this model, which I developed for my clients:

Here’s how it looks in action:

2. News leads

Do you have news to report? Instead of covering the five W’s and the H, appeal to reader interest by leading with the two most interesting elements to readers:

• What — as in “What happened?”
• Why — as in “Why should I care?”

Here’s how it works:

3. Feature leads

Feature leads show instead of tell. They attract readers by illustrating your key message instead of just stating it. Feature lead approaches include:

Description. This lead helped win support for the nation’s first statewide menu labeling law, in a Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy:

Startling statistics, like this lead from a Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign by Visa:

Compression of details, as in this lead for an H&R Block survey story by Fleishman Hillard’s John Armato:

Other feature lead approaches include anecdote, analogy, wordplay, concrete details, human interest and examples.

Surprise and delight your readers.

Whichever approach you use, write a lead that appeals to your readers’ self interest or that makes your story interesting.

Can’t do that with a fact pack.

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Are you still using the fact pack — cramming who, what, when, where, why and how into the first paragraph of your news release? Are you still married to the dated “XYZ Company today announced …” approach?

These conventional formulas to press release leads are formulaic, old-fashioned and — let’s face it — dull.

Make sure these PR 101 leads don’t find their way into your releases:

1. Abstraction

Show, don’t tell. When writing news release leads, choose concrete details, not abstract ideas.

2. Announcement

If you have something to announce, announce it! Don’t announce that you’re announcing it:

3. Background

Background — also known as the blah blah blah — is no way to draw readers into a piece. Instead, leave the definitions, history lessons and broader context for the third paragraph.

Don’t start like this:

4. Fact pack

Instead of a “suitcase lead” — one you try to cram all of the story elements into — aim for a bikini lead. Cover just the interesting essentials.

After all, if you lead with all of the W’s, what do you put in the second paragraph?

5. Question

Planning to run a question lead? What if the reader doesn’t know — or care — the answer to your question?

I don’t know. Have I? Maybe start by illustrating some situations where my personal interests are in conflict with my employment contract, instead.

6. Quotation

As anyone who’s ever interviewed an engineer knows, quotes aren’t necessarily riveting. And quotation marks don’t magically make them so.

What to use instead?

Instead, make your release lead compelling with reader benefits, synthesizing the news or illustrating the idea with a feature lead.

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