Seventy-one percent of high-performing organizations focus their messaging on audience’s point of view. Just 45% of average organizations do.

Or so says Stephen Welch, president of IABC UK and an independent consultant.

Welch worked with Michael Ambjorn, director-at-large at NearDesk, to develop a benchmarking database that correlates communication practices with organizational performance. They looked at 81 organizations with some 390,000 employees across 10 countries.

High-performing organizations communicate better.

In the study, Welch and Ambjorn learned that high-performing organizations are:

• 60% more likely to think about communication from the audience perspective. Five in eight high-performing organizations say they like to talk about themselves; seven in eight average organizations do.
• Twice as likely to make emotional connections to their audiences.
• 40% more likely to limit the number of messages in their communications. Average organizations are more likely to pack a lot of messages into their pieces.
• Twice as likely to keep language simple and jargon-free. Only 21% of average organizations say they keep their language simple and jargon-free, compared to half of high-performing organizations.
• 80% more likely to have a process for creating great corporate stories.

Are you on an SOS team?

Half of organizations say that senior executives generally devise corporate messages. However, only 20% of benchmarked organizations think their leaders are good at communicating.

This approach turns some communications departments into SOS — “Send Out Stuff” — teams. But perhaps that’s best.

Only half of communicators surveyed said they align their work to corporate strategy and goals. And only a third ranked their level of business know-how and understanding high.

“Two-thirds of communicators,” Welch writes, “need to improve their business understanding if they want to advise business people.”

The post Top organizations use reader-centric approach appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

It feels so good to talk about ourselves.

Talking about yourself activates the same pleasure centers in the brain as food, money or sex, according to Harvard neuroscientist Diana Tamir and her colleague Jason Mitchell, whose research on the topic was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

No wonder some 40% of everyday speech is devoted to telling others about our favorite subject.

Some 40% of everyday speech is devoted to telling others about ourselves. — Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell, Harvard researchers
Click To Tweet

For the study, Tamir and Mitchell used an MRI scanner to see which parts of the brain responded when people talked about themselves. When participants were sharing their own pizza preferences and personality traits, researchers saw heightened activity in regions of the brain associated with the rewards we get from food, money or sex.

Avoid institutional narcissism.

I don’t know whether institutions also have pleasure centers, but they certainly seem to suffer from the same self-centeredness that afflicts we mere mortals. Consider their messages:

• XYZ Company today announces that …
• Our ABC is the leading doohickey in the blah-blah market …
• At LMNOP, we believe …

The problem with writing about us and our stuff is that, as Tamir and Mitchell’s research shows, your readers don’t want to talk about you. They want to talk about themselves.

So stop We-We-ing on your readers.

Readers don’t want your We-We.

We’ve known since 1934 that readers don’t respond to We-We. That’s the year Ralph Tyler and Edgar Dale conducted a study that proved that first-person pronouns (I, me, we, us) reduce readability.

First-person pronouns (I, me, we, us) reduce readability. — Ralph Tyler and Edgar Dale
Click To Tweet

Fast forward to 2015, when Return Path proved the same thing: People are less likely to open and click through emails with first-person pronouns (I, me, our, mine) in the subject lines.

(I love how we keep “discovering” the same readership habits the classic researchers learned back in the day. These reader traits remain the same — over the decades, across media, throughout channels — because whatever else changes, our readers remain human.)

Top companies 57% less likely to We-We on readers.

No wonder high-performing organizations avoid We-We-ing on their readers. According to IABC UK’s research into how top organizations communicate:

• 71% of high-performing organizations focus on the audience’s point of view in their messaging. Just 45% of average organizations do.
• Top organizations are 60% more likely to focus on the audience perspective in communications than average organizations.
• Some 88% of average organizations say they like to talk about themselves; just 63% of top organizations do.

Focus on the reader’s favorite subject.

Instead of writing about your favorite subject, write about the reader’s.

They’ll love it. They’ll read it. They’ll open it, click through it and retweet it.

And that feels so good.

___

Sources: Robert Lee Hotz, “Science Reveals Why We Brag So Much,” The Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2012

The post Writer centered vs. reader centered writing appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

At Wylie Communications, we believe that writers should write and that approvers should check the facts and leave the headlines alone.

At Wylie Communications, we understand that it makes you sick when nonwriters garble your beautifully constructed headlines.

At Wylie Communications, we know that you sit up at night, dreaming of ways you can go all Joffrey Baratheon on those damned approvers’ asses.

At Wylie Communications, we realize that that’s why you drink too much Chardonnay and come to work late and with a headache.

Stop we-we-ing on the reader.

It’s time to can the “At XX, we …” construction.

Why? Because it’s:

• Patronizing. At Wylie Communications, we don’t believe our insurance company really understands us.
• Formulaic. At Wylie Communications, we feel that this cliché might make us vomit.
• Off target. At Wylie Communications, we prefer that you write about us instead of about your organization and its beliefs, feelings and realizations.

What shall we write instead?

What if, instead of writing about us and our thoughts, we focused on the reader and the reader’s needs? Try this little editing trick:

At Wylie Communications, we …

You …

At Wylie Communications, we think that’s a much better approach.

What do you think?

The post How to craft reader-focused writing appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

If you wanted to keep teens from smoking weed, what message might you communicate?

One health organization, reports Guy Kawasaki in his book Enchantment, used the message that young people who smoked weed were five times more likely to engage in sex.

Have you ever met a 17-year-old football player? For that matter, have you ever met a 58-year-old writing coach?

Many humans — except perhaps for those who work for this one particular health organization — actually enjoy sex. I myself have met several people who feel their lives would be much less interesting without it.

One group tried to cut teen weed use by saying that weed smokers were 5 times more likely to have sex. … Have you ever met a 17-year-old boy?
Click To Tweet

Not to say that the five-times-less-sex message wouldn’t work on a different audience. If you were trying to convince parents, teachers or school board members to campaign against teen weed-smoking, then that data point might be compelling.

For most other audiences, though, the promise of five times more sex might just convince the most sober among us to wake and bake, nod off on the couch during all-day “I Love Lucy” marathons and come to surrounded by empty Cherry Garcia cartons.

And that’s the problem with this message: It has a WIIFM, or a “What’s in it for me?”

It just focuses on the wrong M.

Answer your reader’s No. 1 question.

The first thing your reader wants to know from your message is “What’s in it for me?” Advertising writers long ago shortened this term to WIIFM, pronounced “wiffum.”

So think like your readers:

• Your customer readers don’t care that your organization is putting $100 million more into R&D this year. They want to know whether that means their computer will be faster and easier to use.
• Your employee readers don’t care that your organization is adding $10 million to the profit-sharing coffers. They want to know whether that means they’ll be able to retire early.
• Your media contacts don’t care that your organization has launched a revolutionary new toothpaste. They want to know whether it’s going to reduce their own readers’ dental bills.

So answer the reader’s No. 1 question: “What’s In It For Me?”

But first, you need to know who Me is.

Whatever happened to Step 1B?

You remember Step 1B of the five-step communication planning process. It’s “Target your audience.” It comes right after identifying the business challenge and before setting goals for, developing, implementing and measuring the success of your communication plan.

So whatever happened to Step 1B?

I’ll tell you what happened to Step 1B. The internet happened to Step 1B. All of a sudden, we weren’t targeting our readers — our readers were targeting us.

Which meant that instead of targeting anybody, we were suddenly targeting everybody. (And remember what Mom said about trying to please everyone.)

There is a solution to this problem, and it is to have readers target themselves:

• Offer separate doorways on your website. For a health care site, for instance, you might offer doors for patients and doctors — and never the twain shall meet. Understand that if I stumble onto my doctor’s web pages, I will decide that your site is not for me. And if my doctor finds herself on web pages targeted at my level of medical expertise, she will decide that your site isn’t for her. Target each of us, separately.
• Offer separate social media feeds. A river runs through my city, and 14 bridges connect the east and west sides of town. If my bridge is closed, I want the DOT to tweet urgent updates every five seconds. But if your bridge is closed, I never want to hear about it at all. The solution: Offer separate Twitter streams for each bridge.
• Offer separate news releases, tag intranet articles for certain departments, segment email blasts. That doesn’t mean you need to multiply your work. Just finesse the headline, deck, lead and nut graph of each piece to focus on your targeted audience’s needs.

But every day, I work with communicators who don’t do that. Instead of targeting audience members or helping audience members target themselves, they target everyone.

Their every web page is for all comers. Their all-in Twitter streams drown disparate followers in irrelevant messages. Their e-zines and newsletters go to employees, to customers, to legislators.

Even if the WIIFM that would compel one audience would repel the rest. (Remember: sex.)

We need Step 1B. Help me bring back Step 1B!

Because not all of your Me’s are the same. The rich, for example, are different.

The rich are different.

I’m not just saying this. It’s true: While most parents tend to teach their kids to prioritize the needs of the group over their own needs, wealthier parents tend to teach their kids to succeed on their own.

It shows up in charitable giving: Wealthy adults are less likely to share what they have with others.

So how do you get the wealthy to give? Frame their giving as a personal accomplishment, say three researchers.

They found in one study that wealthier people — those with incomes higher than $90,000 — were way more likely to click “Donate today!” when giving messages stressed individual achievement (“You = Life-Saver”) instead of emphasizing a common goal (“Let’s Save a Life Together”).

In another study, alumni from an elite business school gave $150 more on average when asked to “Come forward and take individual action” than when they were asked to join their community to “support a common goal.”

That’s their WIIFM.

That message won’t work for everyone. And that’s OK. It doesn’t have to. You can use the common-goal message with your less wealthy givers.

But do target your audience members and focus on what’s in it for them. That’s how you put the M in WIIFM.

___

Sources: Guy Kawasaki, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, Penguin Group (USA) LLC, March 8, 2011

Ashley V. Whillans, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Eugene M. Caruso; “How to Get the Wealthy to Donate”; The New York Times; May 12, 2017

Ashley V. Whillans, Eugene M. Caruso, Elizabeth W. Dunna; “Both selfishness and selflessness start with the self: How wealth shapes responses to charitable appeals”; Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; volume 70, May 2017, pp. 242-250

The post Use WIIFM marketing to persuade appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

You know that the topic is never the topic: The reader is the topic.

You’ve acknowledged that readers don’t care about “us and our stuff”; they care about themselves and their needs. You buy into the notion that the first thing your reader wants to know about your message is WIIFM, or What’s In It For Me.

Now what?

The next step is to find some great WIIFM copy to model. And have I got a piece for you. Here’s Briefings Publishing Group’s promo for a how-to video. The WIIFM copy is well worth modeling.

Here it is — with, of course, my notes:

Say Goodbye to the 60-hour Work Week

The headline starts with the imperative voice — aka the implied “you.” That’s great.

Plus, it’s specific. Not “long hours at the office,” but “the 60-hour work week.” Don’t forget to quantify and specify your own marketing copy.

Here, we move back from the second person to the third. Not a great choice.

A braver, more benefits-oriented approach would be to speak directly to “you,” as in, “You can’t do your sharpest, most creative work when you’re burned out …”

It’s a smart choice to lead with the problem in the first paragraph and follow up with the solution in the second.

But instead of moving into first person plural (“we’ve created”), keep focusing on the reader (“Now you can make time to relax and recharge and ensure that your time spent in the office is creative and productive with our new video …”)

The second sentence is a masterpiece of you-focused benefits writing.

This is a nice list of benefits, but a verb list would highlight the WIIFMs more effectively — and unload 14 words in repeated “How to’s.”

To create a verb list, set up the “how to” in the intro to the list: ” … you’ll discover tips and tactics guaranteed to help you free up your time and get your life back, including how to:”

Now you can start each bullet with a verb. See how much stronger this list is with bullets that begin “Liberate,” “Streamline” and  “Avoid.”

Guideline: Start your lists with verbs whenever possible. It will condense your copy, activate your language and bring the benefits to the front of your list. Here’s how it works:

All right: You’ve got your model; now use it. Reach more readers and sell more ideas when you write in WIIFMs, not about “us and our stuff.”

The post Steal from this <em>What’s In It For Me</em> example appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

People in one study rated a disease that kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000 as more dangerous than one that kills 24.14% of the population (Yamagishi, 1997). But in fact, it’s about half as dangerous.

Why? The way you present, or frame, the information changes the way people — even experts — perceive it.

“If you tell someone that something will happen to one out of 10 people, they think, ‘Well, who’s the one?’” Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychologist, told Money.

Trying to help readers make a complex decision? Reframe the data so people can more easily see its meaning. Here’s how:

1. Choose frequencies, not probabilities.

People process frequencies (2 out of 100) better than percentages (2%) (Kaplan, 1986). Frequencies are effective because they:

• Demonstrate the importance of data. People weigh frequencies as more important than percentages when making decisions (Lipkus, Samsa and Rimer, 2001).
• Help people make better choices. In one study, faculty members and students at the Harvard Medical School made much better decisions when they received information about diseases and symptoms in the form of frequencies instead of probabilities (Huffrage, Lindsey, Hertwig and Gigerenzer, 2000).
• Help even experts see the situation more clearly. Forensic psychiatrists and psychologists judged a patient’s risk of being violent as much greater when it was communicated as a frequency instead of a probability (Slivic, Monahan and MacGregor, 2000).

2. Frame as a loss (or gain).

Give readers new ways to think about information by highlighting the potential gain or loss. You can frame your data as:

• Mortality vs. survival rates. The effect of dying seems to be greater when it is framed as a mortality rate of 10% than when it is framed as a survival rate of 90%. And both patients and doctors found surgery less attractive than radiation therapy when risk information was presented in terms of mortality rather than survival, despite surgery having better long-term prospects (McNeil, Pauker and Sox, 1986).
• Risk vs. reward. Consumers understood information much better, valued it more and gave it more weight in decision-making when it was framed as a loss or risk than as a reward. So “protect yourself from problems in health plans” is more effective than “get the best quality” (Hibbard, Harris-Kojetin, Mullen, Lubalin and Garfinkel, 2000).
• Loss vs. gain. In six out of seven studies, framing information as a loss was more effective than as a gain in communicating prevention, detection and treatment (Edwards, Elwyn, Covey, Matthews and Pill, 2001).
• Consider the message within the frame. Framing your message as a loss is more effective when promoting screening. Framing it as a gain is more effective when promoting prevention (Rothman, Martino, Bedell, Detweiler and Salovey, 1999).

3. Generalize a little.

In order to be as “correct” as possible, communicators often include too much information — six decimal points of precision, for instance, or data about confidence intervals.

But that actually makes important details harder to suss out. As a result, people weigh this information lower when making a decision (Hsee, 1996). So, for instance, offer an average point estimate (a score of 8) instead of a more correct one (7 to 9).

But don’t pile on the data.

To help people make better decisions, reframe the data — don’t just offer more data.
___

Source: Judith H. Hibbard and Ellen Peters, “Supporting Informed Consumer Health Care Decisions: Data Presentation Approaches that Facilitate the Use of Information in Choice,” Annual Review of Public Health, 2003, Vol. 24, pp. 413-33

The post What’s the effect of statistics in persuasive writing? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Social scientist Anthony Greenwald and his colleagues asked potential voters on the eve of an election to predict whether they would vote and why.

Nearly 87% of those who made a prediction turned out to vote vs. 62% of those who didn’t. That’s a difference of 40%.

Making a commitment makes a difference.

Promise keepers

Call it the Commitment Rule: Our audience members want to act consistently with their commitments and values.

Commitment is one of 6 principles of persuasion outlined by Robert B. Cialdini — the emperor of influence — in his seminal book Influence.

It’s the human condition to keep commitments.

“Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment,” Cialdini writes. “Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.”

Take the pledge.

That’s why a restaurant owner reduced no-shows by 67% by asking “Will you please call if you need to cancel?” instead of saying “Please call if you need to cancel.” No-shows dropped from 30% to 10%, report Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Cialdini in Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.

Commit your audience.

Commitments are most effective when they’re active.

Students who filled out a form saying they wanted to volunteer for an AIDS education project were more likely to show up than those who left blank a form saying they didn’t want to participate, according to the authors of Yes!

Nearly half of these active volunteers kept their promise in this study by social scientists Delia Cioffi and Randy Garner. Only 17% of passive volunteers showed up.

So instead of, say, having your receptionist write down the time and date of the next appointment on a reminder card, have clients fill out the card themselves.

You can also gain commitment by asking people to take the pledge.

Bottom line: Asking for commitment — and making that commitment active — can help you move people to act.

___

Sources: Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Robert B. Cialdini, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, Free Press, 2008

The post Promises, promises appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Don’t you love the way H&R Block reframed tax season as refund season this year? So do I.

Take a tip from H&R Block: Got a negative story to tell? Reframe it.

How P.T. Barnum reframed a truckload of white salmon

Listen in as campaign advisor Bruno Gianelli schools White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler, on The West Wing:

Is there another way to look at your bad news story? How could you reframe it?

The post Reframe the problem appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Trust saw some big changes in 2011:

• Trust in credentialed experts (70%) and company technical specialists (64%) is on the rise. It’s the “Authority Rule” of persuasion.
• Trust in “a person like myself” and regular employees has declined, possibly because of “over-friending.”
• People need to hear messages three to five times to change behavior.
• To stand out and build trust, communicators need to communicate across several spheres of media.

Or so says the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual study of global opinion leaders.

Trust me.

People are most likely to trust:

• Credentialed experts — 70%, up 8% over 2011
• Company technical specialists — 64%

They’re least likely to trust regular employees, who are down to 34% from 42% in 2006.

Bottom line: Identify your internal experts
and showcase their expertise in your marketing materials.

Breach of trust

“Over the last several years there’s been a decline in trust in ‘a person like myself,'” writes Steve Rubel, senior vice president and director of insights for Edelman Digital.

Some 47% said they trust this group, which is down from 68% in 2006.

Why?

“I believe the reason for this is that, as more of us join social networks, there’s been a devaluation in the entire concept of ‘friendship,'” Rubel writes. “A separate survey found that people don’t know 20 percent of their Facebook friends. Consider that ‘unfriend’ was Oxford’s word of the year for 2009.”

Bottom line: Don’t rely on individual employees
or “a person like me” to make your case.

Break through the clutter.

People need to hear things three to five times from three to five sources before it sinks in, Edelman’s data shows. In the most developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, that number is even higher — a staggering nine times or more.

Bottom line: Get the word out with multiple impressions.

Communicate across the cloverlead.

Repeat your message across multiple media formats — mainstream, new, owned and social — to get heard, the Edelman study suggests.

And don’t rely on advertising to get the job done: It’s the least trusted form of communication, according to the study.

Bottom line: Communicate across diverse media sources to be heard.

___

Source: Steve Rubel, “A Devaluation Of ‘Friends’ May Be Driving Trust In Thought Leaders,” Steve Rubel blog, 2011

The post Authority rules appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..