When Ian Jones needed to craft a — yawn! — diversity story for employees at Columbia Gas of Virginia, his first instinct was to go with a fact pack.

You can see Ian’s natural creativity peeking through with the concrete details in the headline and — buried deep but still breathing — in the lead.

But by the end of a recent Catch Your Readers Master Class, Ian had totally rewritten his piece from an inverted pyramid to a feature story. That basic structure lets the concrete details rise to the top.

Here’s his before and after:

1. Lead

Like (too) many of us, Ian was taught to cram all of the facts into the lead, so readers would get the key details before they stop reading after the first paragraph. Here’s how his opening paragraph looked:

You can see the problem with that: a lead that is so thick that most readers will stop reading before the first paragraph. Plus, Ian’s delightful concrete details get smothered in all of the not-so-interesting facts.

Instead of a fact pack, write a lead that draws readers in with a concrete detail or three. Don’t tell the whole story in the lead — that’s what the whole story is for — but write a lead paragraph that entices people to read the second paragraph.

Here’s how Ian handled that in his rewrite:

2. Nut graph

Inverted pyramids don’t have nut graphs, so neither did Ian’s original story.

When you don’t feel compelled to put all of the W’s in the lead, they need someplace to go. Ian moves them into the nut paragraph:

At 57 words, that’s still a little thick. What can you do in 25 words or less?

3. Background section

No background in the original story. But in the rewrite, Ian provides context for the story — the reason the diversity initiative is so important:

4. Body

In his first version, Ian emphasizes the event — what happened during the kickoff — in the body of his post:

In the second, he focuses on the impact: what the attendees learned that might be helpful to you, too:

Note also the crisp paragraphs in the final version compared to the 100-plus-word-long ones in the original.

5. Wrapup

The great thing about inverted pyramids is that you don’t have to craft a conclusion. When you’re finished, you just stop typing. That’s what Ian did in his original.

But the feature-style story structure demands an ending. In his revision, Ian summarizes the story in the wrapup, or the penultimate paragraph, topped as it should be with a subhead to separate the body from the ending:

6. Kicker

Ian ends with bang and circles back to the top with a concrete details kicker that leaves a lasting impression:

Focus on the reader.

“Thinking about the reader from the start really changes everything — from story angle to story structure to sentence length,” Ian says. “Instead of approaching writing from the perspective of a writer, I now think about whether I’m writing a story I would want to read.’”

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When I teach the feature-style story structure, communicators nod. It seems reasonable that readers would prefer concrete, creative stories to a hierarchical blurtation of facts.

BUT — and as Pee-Wee Herman said, there’s always a big but — they wonder, is the feature-style story structure for everything? Even for writing an email? Even for writing event invites?

Yes, Virginia, the feature structure works for almost everything — email messages included, event invites include. And here’s proof, thanks to Sarah Herr, employee communications manager at Sensus.

In my Think Inside the Inbox workshop, Sarah rewrote her company’s holiday party invitation, transforming it from blah to brilliant, using the feature structure. Here’s how she did it:

1. Lead

The job of the lead is to grab readers’ attention and draw them in. But too often, writers get down to the nuts and bolts in email invitations.

Here’s Sarah’s original just-the-facts-ma’am approach:

But the key to a good invitation lead is to make folks want to attend the event. So tell them what they can look forward to in a concrete, creative, provocative feature lead.

Sarah visited my BFF and research assistant, Google, to find out what her colleagues could do at the science museum. Her revision whets my appetite with specific details about the party:

Remember, you’re covering the topic in the subject line. If you mention the holiday party there, you don’t need to lead with it.

2. Nut graph

In the nut graph, you’ll tell readers where you’re taking them.

Inverted pyramids don’t include nut graphs, so Sarah’s original email invitation skipped this element too. But in her revised piece, Sarah encapsulates the main point in one quick, informal sentence:

3. Background

The background section gives readers information they need to know before they dive into the body of the story. That might be a definition, bit of context or history lesson.

But background is also known as blah-blah. Don’t let blah-blah get between your readers and your story: Keep this to one short paragraph.

In her first version, Sarah has a quick paragraph of background after the lead:

Her revision pares that down a bit:

4. Body

The body is where you develop the story. In this case of an email invitation, you’ll give a few more details about what people will be able to see, learn or do at the event.

Sarah’s original was already pretty good. She had me at heavy hors d’oeuvres and carving stations!

In the revision, she adds a few more details about what attendees will be able to see and do:

If you have a series of three or more activities to showcase, you might use bullet points to make the body a list. The line breaks and extra white space make these activities stand out.

5. Wrapup

In the wrapup, you’ll draw to a conclusion.

Your call to action goes here. That means the wrapup — not the lead — is where you put time, date, place, contact information and the reserve button. Something like:

6. Kicker

The job of the kicker is to end with a bang, to leave a lasting impression. Inverted pyramids don’t include kickers, so Sarah’s original doesn’t, either. But in her revision, she ends with a bang in a concrete, creative provocative final paragraph:

Now that sounds like a party!

Congratulations, Sarah, on a great email!

How to structure an email invitation

The feature structure increases reading, sharing and more. (Download our free e-book chapter on why the feature outperforms the inverted pyramid.)

For that reason, features work for virtually all media, channels, topics and audiences. Choose this structure when you write a formal email, professional email or business email, as well as an email invitation. It’s also a good idea to use a feature approach for social media and other business communications. Next time you find yourself composing an email invitation, double-check this list before sending the email.

Learn more about writing emails:

• What email address should you use?
• How can you write a compelling subject line?
• How else can you make your email programs more effective?

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I love it when my clients send me their rewrites after I present a writing workshop.

For one thing, it’s gratifying to see that people’s writing actually improves after I visit! For another, these pieces make great case studies in good writing.

Workers Compensation Board-Alberta writer Caren did a wonderful job rewriting an article during my Catch Your Readers workshop. Notice how her rewrite:

• Focuses the angle on reader benefits. Caren moves from event to impact. Her original story angle was WCB’s new opioid claim rollout. The rewrite focused on how employers can help save employees from addiction and overdose by using the board’s new resources.
• Uses the feature structure. This approach has been proven in the lab to be more effective at reaching readers. It also allows writers to plug and play their information into an existing format, saving time and effort.
• Keeps the piece short. The revised piece weighs in at fewer than 200 words — a one-minute read. So you can use the feature structure even when you don’t have a lot of space.

Here’s how she did it, with a great blog-post structure that works every time:

1. Lead

The original lead focused on background — in this case, a history lesson:

There’s a reason the feature structure places the background in the third paragraph, not the first. Background — otherwise known as the blah-blah — doesn’t grab readers’ attention.

Instead, write a lead that hooks the reader with a startling statistic or another concrete, creative, provocative lead. That’s what Caren did in her rewrite:

2. Nut graph

Caren didn’t include a nut graph in her original news story, because inverted pyramids don’t have nut graphs.

But in her rewrite, she puts the story “into a nutshell” — and shows readers how they’ll benefit from the piece:

3. Body

The original angle of the body is how the sausage was made. It’s not very interesting to clients whose employees are abusing opioids.

Readers want to know, “What’s in it for me?”

The revised body focuses on the readers’ needs with a list of tips for dealing with the crisis:

4. Wrapup

There’s nothing wrong with this call to action, but it isn’t very rousing:

In Caren’s rewrite, on the other hand, the wrapup is nice, neat and sweet:

5. Kicker

Here Caren ends with a bang and comes full circle by referring back to statistics in the lead:

How to structure a blog post

Next time you start writing your blog post or social media post, try the feature structure. It’s been proven in the lab to get a lot of people to read your post and share your post. It’s the best writing skill you can use to write successful blog content.

Learn how to write feature stories, do keyword research for search engine optimization and more in our online courses.

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“Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph,” said Time magazine reporter Paul O’Neil. “Sink your thumbs into his windpipe in the second and hold him against the wall until the tag line.”

How do you keep attention from the first paragraph through the tagline? Writing structure makes all the difference in how riveting your story can be.

Just ask Kathleen Sullivan, communication manager at Local Government Federal Credit Union. During my Get Clicked, Liked & Shared workshop, Kathleen reorganized a blog post from the inverted pyramid into the feature structure.

The feature approach convinces lots of people to read your post — and share your post. Plus, it’s a step-by-step structure that shows writers clearly what goes where.

Want to write successful blog content? What can you learn from Kathleen’s original and rewrite?

1. Lead

The job of the lead is to grab readers’ attention and draw them in.

In the original, Kathleen focuses on how the sausage was made … the abstract process behind the findings. Yaaaawn! Who cares about these interviews? Not me!

But Kathleen’s revision gets me, the reader, into the story. Moreover, she sets up a surprising scenario that grabs attention and pulls readers into the piece.

2. Nut graph

The job of the nut graph is to tell readers where you’re taking them.

Inverted pyramids don’t include nut graphs, so Kathleen’s original story skipped this element too.

But in her revised blog post, Kathleen encapsulates the main point in one quick, informal sentence:

3. Background section

In the background section, give readers information they need to know before they dive into the body of the story. That might be a definition, bit of context or history lesson.

But background is also known as blah-blah. Don’t let blah-blah get between your readers and your story: Keep this to one short paragraph.

In her original version, Kathleen delivers too much background, at 270 words.

And it’s too technical: Adaptive regulation? A combined perceptive and cognitive integration of emotions? Correlated to a positive orientation? Negative early engagements? No, thank you!

Kathleen’s revised background section is still a little long for my taste. But at 109 words, it’s 60% shorter than the original.

Her words are also shorter — about 10% shorter — and easy to read and understand. Now it sounds as if she’s telling me about this story on the elevator on our way to lunch.

Even better: It’s about me!

4. Body

The body is where you develop your story.

In Kathleen’s original, the meat of the story — the tips — are buried under 296 words of abstraction.

Plus, do’s and don’ts usually have a format: DO do this. DON’T do that. But instead, Kathleen used nouns. Those aren’t tips.

In her revision, Kathleen gets to the meat of the story faster and adds more detail. She also formats the tips as tips, not as things:

5. Wrapup

The job of the wrapup is to draw to a conclusion. Do you have a call to action? It goes here.

Here’s Kathleen’s original, packed with technical language:

Her revised piece is shorter and easier to read:

6. Kicker

The job of the kicker is to end with a bang, to leave a lasting impression.

Inverted pyramids don’t include kickers, so Kathleen’s original doesn’t, either.

But in the revision, she ends with a bang in a concrete, creative provocative final paragraph. Notice how she comes full circle back to the top.

So what’s the best blog post structure?

Writing structure is such one of the most important writing skills. Before you start writing a blog post or other social media piece, spend a few minutes organizing it into this structure.

Whether you’ve just started blogging or are already a pro:

• Start your content marketing piece with keyword research.
• Use the feature structure.
• Optimize your copy so search engines can find you.

Whatever your topic, create a blog post that keeps readers riveted from the first paragraph to the last line.

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Here’s the good news: You already know how to organize your copy.

Just think back to what your third-grade English teacher taught you. Most pieces of writing have three sections:

1. Introduction: the beginning
2. Body: the middle
3. Conclusion: the end

That makes writing a feature story as easy as 1-2-3.

Feature structure works well for blog posts, social media posts and other types of content.

A fill-in-the-boxes structure

Draw these three sections on a piece of paper, and your piece of content looks like this:

OK, so it’s not quite that easy. Because each of those sections has its own parts.

So what goes into each box?

Introduction

The introduction has three parts: the lead, the nut graph and a background section.

1. Lead

The lead’s job is to grab attention and pull readers into the piece. The best way to do that is to write a lead that’s concrete, creative and provocative.

In one of my favorite befores-and-afters ever, here’s a lead by Elizabeth Tadman-Kickham, a communication specialist for Strathcona County, Canada, before applying the feature-style story structure:

But by the end of my Catch Your Readers Master Class, Elizabeth had totally rewritten her piece. Here’s that lead after mastering this approach:

Nut graph

Once you grab attention in the lead, you need to tell readers where you’re taking them. Do that in the nut graph, where you put the story into a nutshell.

There’s no nut graph in the before example, because there’s no nut graph in an inverted pyramid.

The nut graph in the after version puts the story into a nutshell:

Background section

The background section — aka the blah blah — is the boring but necessary information in the story. It might include broader context, a definition or a history or trend.

Keep the background to the third paragraph. Don’t let it bubble up to the lead.

Elizabeth Tadman-Kickham’s original story didn’t have a background section. Inverted pyramids don’t have them, and she’d used up all of her background in that (definition) lead.

Here’s the background section in her rewrite:

Body

In the body, you build out the story into clear, logical parts. To help web visitors find what they’re looking for, label the parts with subheads or bulleted lists with bold-faced lead-ins.

Here’s the body of Elizabeth Tadman-Kickham’s original piece:

Her rewrite is much tighter and invites readers in:

Conclusion

The conclusion has two parts: a wrapup and a kicker.

Wrapup.

In the wrapup, you will call readers to action or summarize the key message.

Elizabeth Tadman-Kickham’s original wrapup:

Her revision is a bit more streamlined:

Kicker.

To leave a lasting impression, go with a kicker that’s concrete, creative and provocative.

The great thing about inverted pyramids is that when you get to the end, you just stop typing. That’s why Elizabeth Tadman-Kickham didn’t include a kicker.

But features require an ending. Here’s the kicker from Elizabeth’s rewrite:

This to me is the least satisfying part of Elizabeth’s rewrite. I wish instead she had circled back to the top and quoted Florence Storch, that 101-year-old woman who’s running around with a pointed stick and knows how to use it. Maybe something like:

How to organize content

Regardless of which social media platforms you use or where you publish content, make the feature structure part of your content creation process. It’s one of the best content marketing strategies there is.

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It was a good story: More than 1,000 New Englanders would soon have safe, decent, affordable places to live, thanks to the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston’s Affordable Housing Program.

But PR convention demands that we reduce good stories to hierarchical blurtations of fact. And that’s what Mark Zelermyer, the bank’s vice president and director of corporate communications, did with the first draft of his news release covering the story.

But by the end of my NOT Your Father’s News Release Master Class, Mark had totally rewritten his release, taking the story from blah to brilliant. What can you learn from his before and after?

Get a refresher on the feature-style structure.

1. Headline and deck

Mark started out focusing on “us and our stuff”:

FHLB BOSTON AWARDS $30.3 MILLION FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING THROUGHOUT NEW ENGLAND

48 Initiatives Will Result in More Than 1,000 Units in Six States

But his rewrite focuses on the impact, not on the event, of the program.

MORE THAN 1,000 NEW ENGLANDERS TO GAIN AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston Awards $30.3 Million to 48 Projects

2. Lead

In his first draft, Mark crams all of the W’s into a fact pack lead:

The second version shows instead of tells, focusing on specific details about the program’s outcomes. That pulls readers into the story, and it communicates better than a wall of abstraction. Plus, at 24 words, it creates a bridge into the story instead of an obstacle to reading:

3. Nut graph

Mark didn’t write a nut graph for his traditional news release, because inverted pyramids don’t have nut graphs. But in his revision, Mark puts the story into a nutshell in a short nut graph:

4. Background section

In the first draft, Mark gives some context in the quote, then shares perhaps more background information than anyone who doesn’t work at the bank cares to know about how the program works:

In the second version, Mark streamlines the “how it works” section into a short paragraph, then follows up with the context in a more manageable quote:

5. Body

The juicy details are buried in the body of Mark’s first version:

The following communities will benefit from FHLB Boston AHP funds:

The body in the revision covers just the facts of importance to people — and, OK, Google — who may be seeking information about housing in their own communities:

6. Wrapup

Mark ends with a call to action in each version:

But wait! There’s more …

In addition to making his story more compelling, Mark also make it more than 30% more readable. To do so, he:

• Slashed the length of the lead paragraph by 70%
• Cut word count by 37%
• Streamlined sentences by 25%
• Reduced passive voice by 77 percentage points

It’s no surprise that Mark suggested we change the name of our PR-writing Master Class to “The News Release Makeover.”

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The feature-style story structure attracts 300% more readers and increases reading by 520%, according to an A/B test by Groove HQ.

Simply adding an anecdotal lead — the team didn’t change any other content — caused nearly three times as many people to scroll to the bottom of the post. It also increased time on page by more than five times.

Alex Turnbull, founder and CEO of Groove, suggests, among other things:

• Starting with a scenario
• Adding dialog to an anecdote
• Focusing on emotions

____

Source: Alex Turnbull, “The Power of Storytelling: How We Got 300% More People To Read Our Content,” Buffer, March 22, 2016

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“Prose is architecture,” said Ernest Hemingway. “It’s not interior design.”

When you write, you’re building something. Specifically, when you’re writing corporate communications, content marketing or public relations messages, you’re building an argument.

So what organizing structure would make the best foundation for your message?

Many of us learned early on that the inverted pyramid was the only way to organize information. Because of that, most communicators are so committed to the inverted pyramid that we married it in college, have sustained a monogamous relationship with it over the years and have made lots of babies with it.

Friends, it’s time to start flirting around with some other forms.

Why topple the inverted pyramid style?

Why do away with the pyramid — and choose the feature-style structure instead?

More than 25 years of research tells us that the inverted pyramid works beautifully for distributing information over a telegraph wire, it does not work so well with a little subset of your audience known as humans.

Here’s a quick survey:

• The inverted pyramid was invented during the Civil War — for use on the telegraph wire. Does this 150-year-old hierarchical blurtation of facts really make the most sense for your contemporary blog posts, webpages and online content?
• The pyramid does “not work very well with readers,” according to the Ways With Words study. It reduced readership, understanding and engagement, among other things.
• Feature-style stories outperform traditional news stories in readership, satisfaction and image, according to the Impact study. “There is strong evidence that an increase in the [number] of feature-style stories has wide-ranging benefits,” write the researchers.
• The Associated Press is backing away from the inverted pyramid. The godfather of the pyramid is embracing the feature and foregoing its classic Joe Friday “just the facts, ma’am” style. The feature delivers more context — and attention, AP leaders say.
• Feature stories get shared more often, according to the Reuters Institute. While news stories make up the bulk of the content on three European news sites, most of the most-shared stories are features.
• Features increased reading by 520%, readers by 300% in an A/B test by Groove HQ. Simply adding an anecdotal lead caused nearly three times as many people to scroll to the bottom of the post and increased time on page by more than five times.
• The inverted pyramid is ‘the worst form ever invented for explaining something to another person in words,” according to a Poynter Institute scholar. That’s because it’s so hard to understand and remember.
• The inverted pyramid is the “anti-story,” akin to starting Cinderella with the wedding scene. “It tells the story backward and is at odds with the storytelling tradition,” experts say.

Don’t count on the pyramid.

So start seeing the inverted pyramid as one approach, not the approach.

“The inverted pyramid is one more tool in my toolbox, right for some jobs but by no means all,” writes Todd McAdam, public affairs reporter at the Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, New Hampshire). “In particular, it’s a hammer. I use it when I need nothing more to get the news out than brute force and ignorance. Not subtle, not pretty, not very flexible, but very useful in the right circumstance.”

Which, for corporate communicators, is not very often.

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Feature-style stories outperform traditional news stories in readership, satisfaction and image.

That’s according to “The Impact Study of Newspaper Readership” (PDF).

It was sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. For this study, researchers:

• Analyzed a representative sample of 100 newspapers from across the country
• Asked 37,000 readers 450 questions about their reactions to their newspaper
• Conducted a content analysis of 47,500 stories from the newspapers

The result: In “one of the most thought-provoking discoveries” of the study, researchers found that feature-style stories outperformed traditional news stories in readership, satisfaction and image.

What’s a feature-style story?

The Impact researchers make a strong distinction between feature stories and feature-style stories. If your chief technology officer has a huge collection of Disney figurines, and you decide to take a photo of him surrounded by plastic princesses for an intranet profile, that’s a feature story. Not a feature-style story.

But when you cover hard business, environmental, political, economic, scientific and other serious topics in the feature-style story structure, that’s a feature-style story. Feature-style writing, according to the researchers, is:

• More narrative, with a beginning, middle and end
• Often illustrates points through characters or anecdotes
• Likely to use more colorful language and a more playful writing style 

“A concern editors commonly express is that feature-style writing means ‘softening’ or ‘dumbing down’ the news,” said the researchers. “‘Feature-style’ is not a euphemism or proxy for ‘soft news.’ Writers can use feature-style writing to cover hard news stories without compromising the stories’ informational value or focus. We’re not describing a story type but a writing style.”

Feature-style stories, according to Impact:

1. Increase readership

Feature-style stories seem easier to read than the traditional inverted-pyramid news structure. (In this study, easy to read includes is relaxing to read and makes it easy to find what I’m looking for.) Making a message easy to read is one of the best ways to increase readership, the study found. That is, according to the study, the higher the score on easy to read, the more likely people are to:

• Read an information source more often
• Read it more completely
• Spend more time reading it

“Considering that only 5% of all politics stories are written in feature-style,” researchers wrote, “even one additional feature-style politics story per week would make a difference.”

What kind of difference could you make by adding features to your communications?

2. Increase satisfaction

The feature-style story structure boosts satisfaction in stories on topics including politics, sports, science and health. Newspapers with more feature-style political stories, for example, have readers who express higher satisfaction with their political coverage. Yet only 5% of all political stories are written in the feature style, according to the study.

Are you missing opportunities to boost your readers’ satisfaction with your messages?

3. Improve brand perception

Organizations that run more feature-style stories are seen as more:

• Fun
• Honest
• Intelligent
• Personable
• Neighborly
• In the know
• Thought provoking
• In touch with the values of readers

“There is strong evidence that an increase in the [number] of feature-style stories has wide-ranging benefits,” write the researchers. “It’s the [organizations] that incorporate feature-style writing in a broad range of topics that see the most benefit in brand perception.” That’s a pretty big impact.

___

Source: “The Power to Grow Readership: Research from the Impact Study of Newspaper Readership,” the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 2001

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If I told you there was a communication tool that reduces readership, diminishes understanding and causes engagement to take a nosedive, would you use it?

Friends, there is such a tool, and you are using it every day. It’s called the inverted pyramid.

That’s what researchers learned in the  “Ways With Words” (PDF) study, a collaboration of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the St. Petersburg Times and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For the study, St. Petersburg Times beat reporters covered their regular beats, writing four versions of each story:

• Inverted pyramid, the traditional news structure
• Narrative, or storytelling with a beginning, middle and end
• Opinion piece, offering a visible point of view
• Radical clarity, where the reporter explains everything that might possibly be explained. So if you mention dog, for instance, you might add “a four-legged canine domesticated for human companionship.”

Then, in phone interviews, researchers asked subscribers:

• How much of the story they read
• Whether they followed the jump
• What they understood, using true-or-false questions
• How fair and balancedthe story was
• Whether they cared about the subject — including whether the stories connected with their own experiences and made them want to find out more or get involved

The results?

The pyramid tanks

The inverted pyramid does “not work very well with readers,” researchers concluded.

Specifically, the inverted pyramid:

• Scored lowest in readership and getting the reader across the jump. The inverted pyramid starts out boring and “gets more boring as the reader reads down,” researchers said. Who needs to stick around for the rest of that?
• Scored lowest in understanding.“Journalists put background and context in the second half of the pyramid, so the reader who does not know that background cannot understand the top of the story,” researchers said. “As a result, only journalists and sources can fully understand inverted-pyramid stories.” Is that your audience?
• Made a mediocre showing in “involvement,”or whether the story made readers connect with and want to get involved in the topic. In our business, we call involvement “engagement.” Note that engagement and the inverted pyramid are mutually exclusive.

Why are we still using this thing?

The feature structure soars

The feature, or narrative, structure, on the other hand, tended to outperform the other structures in the study. Features scored highest of all of the formats in reading and getting readers across the jump. They also made a good showing in understanding.

Instead of sticking with the inverted pyramid, a story structure that’s been proven in the lab not to work, you’d think writers would stick a fork in it, then go experiment with other story structures. But no.

“The basic conservatism and frantic pace of our profession keeps us from enlarging our repertoire of forms,” the researchers lamented. “So … we keep boring and confusing our readers, and driving them away. … We should think of the inverted pyramid as A form, rather than THE form.”

___

Source: “Ways With Words: A Research Report of the Literacy Committee,” American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1993

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