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Learn To Speak The Language Of Your Client’s (Many) Target Audiences

Healthcare PR and marketing agency pros work with multiple clients at a time. That’s a lot of technologies, services, business strategies, marketing messages, workflows, timelines, and personalities to understand and manage.  

It’s easy for us to feel overwhelmed because healthcare technology clients by definition are working on cutting-edge technologies that can be challenging to comprehend, never mind explain to an audience. Conversing regularly with healthcare startup founders about the clinical-grade, model-informed, reverse-engineered algorithm they developed to transform healthcare as we know it – when they weren’t working their side gig as a highly regarded neurosurgeon – is a humbling experience. My encyclopedic knowledge of BoJack Horseman episodes barely measures up.

But here’s where things get even more complicated: Not only does each client have all that stuff I mentioned in the first paragraph, they also are trying to reach multiple audiences.

That matters, because to craft an effective message you need to both identify and understand the target audience. The first question I ask clients when we’re on a call with a subject matter expert to get information for a writing assignment – a byline, a press release, a white paper – is, “Who’s the target audience?” Even if I already know, I’ll ask anyway just to make sure we’re all on the same page and to get more details. Plus it’s a great icebreaker!

Know what each audience cares about

At the most basic level, every healthcare technology company has three distinct audiences: customers (both potential and existing), investors, and the media. Let’s start with the less complicated audiences: investors and the media.

Investors view healthcare technology as, well, an investment. So while they may thoroughly believe in the technology and what it will do for patients, providers, payers or some other stakeholder, their primary interest is whether their investment pays off. Investors want to hear about the market opportunity, growth strategy, financial and growth metrics, the expertise and experience of the management team, and how the company intends to become profitable.

A media audience is looking for an interesting story. That might be the background of your client’s founders, the scope of the challenge your client is trying to address, and how many lives the client’s product or service will change. Even media outlets that drill down into the details of healthcare technology, business, and policy want to cast the content they publish in human terms.

You can best understand what type of content specific media outlets are interested in publishing by actually reading what they publish. (Pro tip!) If your client is all about the revenue cycle, you’re not likely to draw interest from a website that covers medical devices.

Customers are more complicated because many healthcare companies may be trying to reach several subsets of customers. For example, one of Amendola’s clients I write for markets its platform to hospitals, health information exchanges, labs and clinics, and health plans. Each of those target audiences has its own priorities and needs. As a marketing/PR agency, it is our job to effectively address the specific pain points of each target audience.

Listen, research, and listen some more

So how can we best understand each of the client’s target audiences? One way is to talk with someone at the client who interacts regularly with customers and prospective customers.  

For example, if the target audience is customers and potential customers, I would want to hear from sales executives. They are the people who listen to customers describe their business goals and challenges, explain what problems they need to overcome, and articulate what they need (or don’t need) from the type of solution the client is selling. Once you can identify the problems a customer wants solved, you have the raw ingredients for crafting a targeted, compelling message using the customer’s language.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s hard for a PR/marketing agency team to get time with a client’s sales exec because they’re busy selling (hopefully!). It’s much more common for agencies to work with the client’s technologists, who typically are among the founders. While their ability to explain the company’s technology within the context of various use cases is indispensable, it’s the sales team that understands challenges from the customer’s perspective. They have an outside-in perspective, rather than the inside-out view of many technologists.

A less direct way to learn about a target audience is through online research. That includes using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools to find information. (Just make sure it’s not hallucinated info.) Learning the lay of the land within a client’s competitive sphere provides more perspective to help inform the content you create. Large consulting agencies such as McKinsey and Accenture have ambitious healthcare practices that offer comprehensive market analyses.

Developing customer personas also can help marketing/PR agencies hone their messages by providing a crystal-clear picture of a target audience. What are the backgrounds, values, preferences, and pain points of the chief technology officers targeted by your client? They undoubtedly would be different to those of the chief financial officer or chief medical officer. Interviews, surveys, and feedback can be used to refine those personas.

Conclusion

No healthcare client has a single target audience. All of them at some point will need to communicate the appropriate messages to investors, the media, and various customer groups. Marketing/PR professionals must be fluent in all these languages to ensure they are helping clients achieve their goals.

Writing For Humans And Search Engines Like Google Is Not Mutually Exclusive

When I served as Content Marketing Director for a telehealth startup, I learned a lot. Mostly, I discovered it’s possible to write great content for people’s enjoyment, education, and readability, while also writing for search engines like Google. This was during the pandemic, and telehealth was taking off in a big way as a crucial and safe solution for patients to connect with their providers. 

At the time, everybody was searching for answers about telehealth – office managers at independent physician practices, IT leaders at the largest health systems in America, and consumers of all ages, from teens to seniors. It was this big telehealth pivot that provided new insights about creating readable-yet-searchable content.

I recognized it’s possible to address human readability while ensuring high-ranking content. In fact, it’s not only doable, but also necessary so that people searching for answers can find helpful, readable content.

Earlier in my career, I was told you couldn’t do both — that writing for humans and Google were mutually exclusive. That’s not true, and content creators can deliver engaging and easy-to-understand content for readers that is optimized for search engines to drive traffic to your website and raise awareness for your brand. The trick is generating high-value information that answers the top-of-mind questions from your target audience and provides easy-to-understand content incorporating relevant keywords in the storytelling. To achieve this content “holy grail,” writers should have a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices, especially for on-page SEO must-dos.

When you balance SEO with the reader experience, you can generate powerful results. All this is truer with thought leadership communications, in which content strategies aim to establish a company or brand as an expert – and “trusted authority.”  

Here are some tips to help writers create content for both humans and Google:

  • Survey Your Target Audience: If you can, conduct a quick survey of your target audience to ascertain their most urgent, burning questions. If you can’t, get with those closest to your customer/prospect organizations – such as sales leaders or customer success experts — and interview them to learn what they believe the top-of-mind questions might be.  Answering these questions can drive your content plan.
  • Create a Working Title: Draft a working headline that strategically differentiates your company or brand and succinctly articulates the storyline you believe is essential to tell your target audience. Headlines are powerful as they deliver — in a short bit of copy — the strategic intent of the story. As you write working titles, know they can and usually will improve, especially with feedback from content reviewers and experts included along the way in your collaborative review process.
  • Conduct Keyword Research: Good writers conduct thorough keyword research using tools like MozPro, SEMRush, and others to identify the keywords and phrases readers most frequently use to search for answers online. Doing keyword research for content is different than for paid ads, where you may look at the competition and identify costs for purchasing those keywords. For organic content, SEO research is inspiring because you can see which keywords are popular and used most often for searches, as well as which may hold “white space” and could be ownable.  This should be conducted for each strategic piece of content. This research helps ensure the content you are creating is relevant and of value — optimized for search engines people use every second of every day. It’s essential to limit to 1-2 keywords or phrases that make the most sense per each content piece, given the strategic intent of your storyline and your working title. This research phase also can change your working title and probably should!
  • Naturally, Incorporate Keywords. Use keywords in the content, but use them strategically and sparingly. Keywords should fit naturally in the heading, subheadings, and the first 100 words of the piece. Make sure you incorporate the keywords in a way that helps both the human reader and the search engine. After all, when we are all Googling, we want to be served up the most trusted and easy-to-review content that answers our questions. Remember to use keywords in the file names of images you post with the copy, in the alt text, and the meta tag. 
  • Think About the Reader’s Experience. As you pull your content together, focus on creating an engaging, informative, and easy-to-understand story. Use visuals like photos, infographics, and even videos embedded within the content for a superior reader experience. Keep it tight, though, as nobody has time to read 2,500 words. Go for the sweet spot of 800-1200 words, if you can.
  • Optimize for Search. Google rewards those who do this best! Your content should have internal and external links to trusted sites. Ensure that the content is well-structured and easy to navigate.
  • Deliver High Value. Make sure your content is valuable and informative for readers. You will  know when you read it and when you write it. And if you are creating Thought Leadership content, infuse a bold point of view with authenticity. As you read your first draft, ask yourself, is this insightful and useful information? Will a reader enjoy reading this? Does this content make an impact?

As content creators today, we should think about humans and about the search engines like Google that can ultimately deliver your content to a broader readership (of humans). Addressing both forces will result in online content best worthy of answering questions from top searches and telling an engaging story.

How To Keep Zombie Sentences From Infecting Your Writing

I’ve previously warned of the dangers of writing with vampire words – those useless words and phrases that latch on to sentences and bleed them dry of meaning and vitality; bloodsuckers like “focus” and “prioritize” and “process.”

In sticking with the horror theme, this post is about zombie sentences, those lifeless clumps of words that lurch and stagger through memos, emails, white papers and reports. Like zombies, these sentences drag themselves across the page, shuffling along without any real animate spark or personality.

Specifically, I’m talking about passive voice, the default construction for too much business writing. What’s passive voice? It’s when a noun that would be the object of an active sentence instead becomes the subject of the sentence. For example:

Active voice: Michonne cut off the zombie’s head. – The subject is Michonne, who acts on the object (the zombie’s head).

Passive voice: The zombie’s head was cut off by Michonne. – Here the zombie’s head occupies the usual position of grammatical subject and Michonne switches to the spot usually occupied by the object.

Well, so long as the zombie is decapitated, who cares?

You should.

In most cases, passive voice weakens your writing, robbing it of clarity, energy and momentum. It also implies a lack of ownership and responsibility. Consider the usual politician’s copout: Mistakes were made. The implication is that no one made the mistake; it just happened.

Like a solitary zombie, a single passive sentence does not pose much danger. But in large numbers, zombie sentences can overwhelm and devour the brains of any reader. Consider the following:

A meeting was held to discuss Q3 results and to plan initiatives for the coming year. Reports from the relevant committees were delivered and discussed by attendees. It was decided that the reports would be combined and presented to the C-suite in preparation for a companywide strategy. Further deliberations were postponed until the next meeting. Lastly, it was agreed that the Cinnabon order would be doubled for the next meeting.     

Horrible, isn’t it? Sentences barely alive, yet relentless in their tedium.

It’s not uncommon for vampire words and zombie sentences to come together to form some truly ghastly writing: A consensus was reached to strategically leverage the assets in a focused implementation. This sort of writing calls for mobs with torches and pitchforks.  

Passive voice can be sneaky. You know how in every zombie movie someone gets bitten and keeps it a secret and no one knows until the victim turns full zombie and attacks? Passive voice also can go undetected until the damage is done.

How to spot passive voice? Look for a form of “to be” (is, are, am, was, were, has been, have been, had been, will be, will have been, being) followed by a past participle (a form of the verb that typically ends in –ed), and you have passive voice, i.e. We have all been chased and bitten.

If that sounds too much like grade school grammar, here’s a simpler way that uses zombies to detect zombie sentences. If you can tack the phrase “by zombies” to the end of a sentence and it still makes sense, then you have passive voice.

The research was analyzed and a final report was delivered to the client . . . by zombies.

A search for the CEO’s replacement was initiated . . . by zombies.

Neat, huh? It’s like getting zombies to eat each other instead of us.

On TV, there is no cure for the zombie virus; the only recourse is a bullet to the brain. But there is a happy ending in business writing. Zombie sentences can be restored to life and it’s usually quite easy to do. The antidote? Use active voice, the old subject/verb/object sentence structure.

Instead of “The research was analyzed and a final report was delivered to the client” try “We analyzed the research and delivered a final report to the client.”

Instead of having something being done to someone, have someone do something.

“Further changes were made to the logo by the artist” becomes “The artist made further changes to the logo.” Cured! 

Of course, there are times when it’s a good idea to use passive voice, just as it’s allowed — once in a great while — to let a zombie live. (Remember the end of Shaun of the Deadwhen Shaun chains up Zombie Ed so they can still play video games?) Here’s when passive voice works:

  • When you don’t know who did something or want to de-emphasize who did it: The quarantine was put into place too late to stop the outbreak.
  • To emphasize an object: A zombie herd was spotted crossing the highway.

The outbreak of zombie sentences has reached pandemic levels. Keep your writing clean and aim for the head.

Hitting The Mark With News Releases

“The first draft is the best, and it’s all downhill from there.”

These snarky yet valid words came from a longtime friend, colleague, and mentor. They semi-jokingly referred to much of the writing we produced as the content marketing arm of a Fortune 500 healthcare IT provider. But it was most often muttered when talking about news releases.  

Working in such a large, diverse organization, we never lacked fodder for any form of content, and news releases were among the most requested form of PR. As former trade journalists with decades of agency and in-house marketing experience, we’d both been the recipients and issuers of thousands of releases and had instincts––and opinions––about what made them good or bad.

Although we applied these principles with varying degrees of success, a few core tenets proved universal. So here are a few considerations.

Should This Be a Release?

Note that I say a news release, and not a press release. Whatever you are announcing should have news value, and its primary target should be the media––whether they report for trade, consumer, financial, or other outlets. But plenty of folks default to a news release when they should pursue other communications.

If the goal is lead generation, then a news release is not your best tool. If your target audience is prospects, customers, or potential partners, then communicate directly with them. Speak their language. Be persuasive. But don’t issue a news release. There are far better direct channels to use. Be creative and go direct.

Other times, a news release is a good choice, provides a solid proof point, but is not a news generator. Most partnership releases will not be covered, but you still need an asset to point to that documents the relationship, kind of like an old-school wedding announcement. Public companies have disclosure requirements and are obligated to issue such releases (among many others). Pending trade show participation or speaking engagements are other types that simply won’t get ink. But your partners, prospects, and customers may see them. Similarly, ‘point’ upgrades to existing solutions won’t garner reportage, but you’d be remiss in not announcing them.

Once you’ve settled on a news release as the vehicle, determine what level of distribution and muscle to put behind it. Should it be an asset posted to your website newsroom only? Issued on the wire? Issued on the wire with multimedia attachments and pitched directly to target media?

The Draft

When writing a release, avoid the formulaic approach employed by most companies. Leading with, “ACME Widgets, the acclaimed global leader in innovative platforms to end the scourge of hunger and promote world peace, today announced blah blah blah …” will immediately lose readers. Keep the company descriptor minimal and factual, because anyone who doesn’t know who you are can read the boilerplate at the end.

Avoid ‘inside baseball’ jargon. Succinctly describe what you are announcing, who it impacts, and what it means to them. No need to dumb it down to the point of ‘explaining it to your grandmother in Peoria.’ Just be mindful of the audience and their level of understanding. Provide context––frame up the problem that your solution addresses, and how you help solve it. Omit needless words.

Ask journalists about quotes in releases, and many will say they don’t read them because they’re typically superfluous, self-aggrandizing garbage. They needlessly inflate word counts and are rarely reprinted. But this doesn’t need to be the case. Ditch the back-slapping adjectives and “We’re proud/thrilled/honored to…” language and opt for editorial comments that add color and emphasize your value proposition. Statistics that underscore problem statements are gold. Be bold and declarative without bragging. And avoid multiple quotes when possible. Remember, you’re paying by the word.  

Ride the Stallion, Not the Camel

It’s been said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Well, release reviews are not only a source of delays that can torpedo the timeliness of your news, but can morph a fine Arabian stallion into a flea-infested camel. Establishing ‘need-to-see’ approval chains for each release helps, as does defining each reviewer’s role. For example, marketing reviews for adherence to corporate messaging, the product lead makes sure that features are correct, the legal reviewer checks compliance, and so on. If you have 15 individuals reviewing a single release, rethink your approach.

Implement a linear, serial review process––one reviewer at a time, with edits and comments returned to the document owner and resolved before moving to the next reviewer. Start with the most basic review, such as product, then on through the food chain and finish with legal. This way, you avoid “forked” reviews with conflicting edits that are difficult to resolve and only prolong the process.

Distribution: How Much is a Cab Ride?

When it comes to distribution, you get what you pay for, and the many ‘free’ services will get you about as far as a free cab ride. You’re nearly always better off with a trusted leader like PR Newswire (Cision), which provides tailored distribution to target audiences and a host of add-on features and feeds to refine and extend your reach. But that’s a topic that can devour another post.

One glaring distribution mistake that occurs far too often is when a company painstakingly crafts a release, then spends untold agency and in-house hours on reviews and revisions, only to squabble and balk at paying an extra $600 on features that will exponentially increase engagement.

One time-tested way to boost engagement is to bundle at least two pieces of related content with each release. These can be photos, data sheets, case studies, videos, archived webinars, podcasts––you name it. It costs a few more bucks but is very effective. Video has been proven time and again to turbo-charge engagement. The bottom line is to not rely solely on the release to tell your story. Link to related reports, eBooks, white papers … even cartoons.

And if you’re still reluctant to spend on bundled content, a link to a related content repository is another way to add more to the story without attaching individual items.

The justification, development, and distribution of news releases is a topic we could discuss for days. But keeping a few of these considerations in mind can help ensure that your next news release hits the mark rather than the proverbial circular bin.

You Still Have To Write For Humans (And Not Just Eighth Graders)

Anyone who has been in marketing eventually is advised to “write like an eighth grader.” People who offer this advice may cite legitimate literacy studies showing that the “average American” reads at the level of a seventh- or eighth-grader. If that is true (especially since more than 90% of adult Americans 25 years or older have graduated from high school), I’d like to have a word with our education system.

Maybe this is unfair, but when I hear people say, “write like an eighth-grader,” it sounds a lot to me like “dumb it down.” Yes, I fully agree that marketers should express themselves simply and directly. As a consumer or B2B buyer, I wouldn’t have it any other way! Who has time for a lot of smoke and mirrors or hyperbole? We’re all busy and just want to solve our problems or enable opportunities.

Technology can be very difficult to understand, let alone explain – healthcare technology even more so. And don’t get me started about life sciences and advanced medicine. But it’s our job to make sure we’re getting our clients’ messages across in a crowded, noisy market.

Take this blog post. I am not writing this at an eighth-grade level because my target audience is marketers and healthcare professionals, and I’m supremely confident that most of the people in those jobs can handle a flashy four-syllable word or two.

Going back further, I’ve been writing about enterprise technology and healthcare technology for many years. My primary target audience has been CXOs, the people who make buying decisions or can influence buying decisions. CXOs tends to be well-educated and articulate. If they were placed back in middle school today, I’m convinced most would get gold stars for their outstanding reading ability. I believe in you, CXOs!

So while “write like an eighth-grader” is a pithy and memorable phrase that will get you lots of likes and fond references to Strunk and White on LinkedIn, understanding your audience and writing to their level is much better advice. If you do this effectively, you can connect with existing and potential customers on a human level, show you understand their problems and needs, and persuade them that you have the right solution. And that’s how sales are made and brands are built.

Resist SEO tyranny

Speaking of connecting on a human level, digital marketers also are constantly told they must “write for SEO” (search engine optimization) – almost always, incidentally, by SEO experts. (Just sayin’! 🤣) This process may require clumsily shoehorning highly rated “keywords” into the first 100 words of your text, writing “compelling” meta descriptions, inserting links in the text (but not too many), and other best practices that can change depending on Google’s latest search engine tweaks.

When I was freelancer, I worked for a content company whose platform literally wouldn’t allow you to submit an article unless it met about a dozen SEO criteria. The pain and shame of mutilating my copy to meet the exacting standards of a string of code in C++ forever will haunt me.

I don’t know much about SEO, but I do know a lot of smart people believe in its ability to help improve Google search rankings and raise a company’s visibility. But I worry that an excessive emphasis on SEO eventually can be counterproductive because the writer ends up writing to an algorithm. Not only does that feel restrictive, but you run the risk of sounding like everyone else writing SEO-driven copy.

SEO is a tool. “Write like an eighth-grader” is a concept. Don’t let either get in the way of you communicating on a human level with your target audience. Yes, you should be concise and direct, but there’s nothing wrong with showing a little personality or using humor when appropriate. These techniques might not register with an algorithm, but they will help your company or client connect with plenty of people on a human level. And that’s worth a lot.

How Vampire Words Suck The Life Out Of Your Business Writing

Imagine your boss issues the following email at the end of the day: “I’m bringing in bagels tomorrow morning.”

Yay, bagels! You make a mental note to skip breakfast tomorrow to make room for schmear.

Then your boss emails: “I’m going to prioritize bringing in bagels tomorrow morning.”

OK, a little less definite, but still a high probability of bagels. I mean, it’s a priority, right?

Then, a third email: “I’m going to focus on prioritizing bringing in bagels tomorrow morning.”

Bagels are starting to look iffy.

And, finally, she writes: “I’m beginning the process of focusing on prioritizing bringing in bagels tomorrow morning.”

Does that leave you with any hope of bagels? No, it does not. It’s just going to be you and your Cheerios tomorrow morning.

Your boss might be every bit as sincere in her last statement as in her first, but she won’t be able to convince anyone of that. Her original statement about bringing in bagels has been diluted by the addition of “beginning the process,” “prioritize” and “focus” — vampire words and phrases that drain the vitality out of writing and weaken our communications.

Business writing is a Transylvania full of vampire words that fasten themselves onto perfectly good sentences, suck them dry and leave them limp and bloodless on the page. What should have been a simple memo or email gets cluttered with unnecessary qualifying phrases until sentences collapse of their own ponderousness and lack of clarity.        

But this isn’t simply a matter of style. Vampire words also imply a lack of commitment and purpose, even a sense of self-doubt. Compare these two sentences:

Team A will analyze the results and deliver a recommendation.

Team B will focus on analyzing the results and leverage its assets to prioritize delivering a recommendation.  

Which team do you trust to deliver a recommendation? The action in Team B —analyzing results and delivering a recommendation — is besieged by vampire words and left sounding uncertain and indefinite.

But there’s good news. According to folklore, vampires can’t come into your house without an invitation. Likewise, vampire words can’t enter your writing without you allowing it.

Since that’s the case, why do we invite the bloodsuckers in?

A lot of it stems from an unmerited distrust of the simple declarative sentence. Remember those grade school sentences about Dick and Jane going out to play? Or the Hemingway you read in high school? That simple, straightforward style works in business writing, as well:

We will deliver the report by the end of the month.

We will conduct an A/B test on the competing headlines and report the results.

The test group liked the blue logo better than the red one.   

I know what you’re thinking: Those are short sentences composed of short words. What if people think I don’t know any big words or can’t write long sentences? What if people think I can’t twist incentive into a verb?   

Rest easy. Put yourself in the shoes of the recipient of a white paper or report composed of clear, direct language and free of vampire words. Wouldn’t that be refreshing? Wouldn’t it be nice to finish the text without any lingering doubt as to what parts of it meant or whether you peered hard enough between the lines?

Communicating clearly and simply with business associates and clients – with minimal jargon as my colleague Megan Moriarty would say – might astonish them at first, but they’ll come to appreciate it. And, who knows, they might even reciprocate. Think of the misunderstandings and confusion that could be avoided.

So review your business writing and drive stakes through those vampire words. If necessary, hang a string of garlic cloves over your laptop as a reminder.

5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Began Leading A Company

I’ve always felt like I was born to be an entrepreneur; leading a company is in my blood because both of my parents started their own businesses.

I was always a “go-getter.” When I was 18, I took a commission-only summer job selling Cutco knives, and within a month I broke all the sales records and was a top producer. At the age of 20, I started my first business, which was a storage company that targeted college students in Boston who needed a place to store their personal items for the summer. About 500 students signed up, and in a few months, we turned a profit of more than $8,000.

After the requisite tour of duty in Corporate America doing public relations, I took a leap of faith and co-founded Amendola Communications with my husband Ted. Within six weeks, I had five retainer clients.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Of course, it hasn’t always been easy. From a shifting media landscape to evolving client expectations to a crippling pandemic, numerous challenges have popped up over the years. To surmount these obstacles, we’ve always been nimble and able to pivot when we need to. Instead of trying to force a square peg into a round hole, we’ve gotten good at shaving the edges off the peg. 

Here are five important lessons I’ve learned along the way about leadership and leading a company:

1. Hire where the talent is: When I started Amendola, I wanted to build a workforce in Scottsdale. Well, I did it, but I quickly discovered that when you don’t hire seasoned people in your market niche, it shows. The ramp-up time is too long and the quality of the work is sub-par, which means we couldn’t move up to the next level of clients. As I shared in this post, once I took location out of the equation things got much better.

2. Don’t try to do it all yourself: I was raised as a PR person, and loved doing pitching, managing accounts, and all the other hands-on pieces of the business. But it didn’t take long to figure out that while I was working on today’s clients, no one was out finding tomorrow’s. That’s a quick way to succeed yourself out of business.  So I hired some good people and gave up doing the day-to-day work to focus on business development, which is my superpower. We instantly became more profitable, and I found myself having a lot more fun.

3. Know what your company is good at and stick with it: You can’t possibly be all things to all people, nor should you try. Instead of taking on work that doesn’t suit your organization, whether it’s the wrong type of work, or the wrong market, or the wrong size of client, figure out where your niche is and focus your efforts there. If you do get asked to do something that you are not good at, refer the person who asked to someone who can do what they need. It’s a small world, and the odds are the good you do today will come back to you later. 

4. Hire people you like, that share the same philosophy, and fit in well with your work culture: It’s easy to fall in love with someone’s talent, but if they’re not a good personality fit, it can destroy the culture. And all it takes is one bad apple to turn a great place to work into a bad one. Hire the people who fit what you want your organization to be. Every couple of years we do an all-company retreat to a non-work area. Those are some of the best times because we have such a great staff of people and enjoy working together as well as mingling and socializing with each other. We care about each other and that comes from the top down.

5. Try before you buy:  If writing is important to your business, as it is in mine, don’t take people’s word for it that they are good writers. I think 80% of the country thinks they can write, but only maybe 20% can, at least to the level we need. Test every potential writer with a writing test, even if you love their samples. You never know if what you’re reading is their work or whether what they did was propped up by a great editor. It’s like the old saw says: trust but verify.

Leading a company will always have its challenges, but I have found that following these valuable lessons has helped pave the road to long-term success.    

The Oxford Comma: Yes, No, Or Who Cares?

The Oxford comma represents the rare example of a debate among grammar nerds that has spilled over into pop culture – at least a little bit.

From Vampire Weekend beginning a song with the pressing question of “Who gives a f— about an Oxford comma?” to a court case whose outcome hinged on the lack of an Oxford comma, few questions of grammar have captured the popular imagination like the debate over the appropriate usage (or lack thereof) of this one little punctuation mark.

First, let’s examine exactly what the Oxford comma – also called the Harvard comma and serial comma – is, which is more confusing to explain than understand through an example. The debate over the Oxford comma revolves around whether to include a comma before a coordinating conjunction such as “and” or “or” in a list of three or more items.

Here’s an easier way of thinking about it: Does the last comma belong in the following sentence? “The fruit bowl included apples, bananas, and oranges.” Oxford comma supporters would say that it does.

Adding to the debate, some of the top “authorities” on writing offer differing opinions on the Oxford comma, with the Chicago Manual of Style recommending it, and AP Style generally opposing it, except for cases in which omitting it would lead to confusion or misinterpretation.

And that is what really gets us to the crux of this debate. Grammar is about clarity, not memorizing seemingly arbitrary rules to separate “right” from “wrong” in writing. Here, the often cited “Ayn Rand” example can be instructive.

Consider the sentence: “This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”

In this case, the lack of Oxford comma seems to indicate that the writer’s parents are (somehow) Ayn Rand and God, while inclusion of the Oxford comma would more clearly illustrate that the writer is referring to three distinct entities.

To me, this seems to be the most compelling argument for the Oxford comma, while most arguments against it claim that it is often “unnecessary and pointless.” Indeed, in some cases the Oxford comma may be unnecessary, but because it doesn’t detract from the quality of writing or its clarity, I advocate for its usage.

Ultimately, what’s more important than deciding whether to use the Oxford comma is consistency in application. The worst Oxford comma-related outcome is when the same piece of content sometimes uses it, and sometimes doesn’t.

Unfortunately, in the end it’s somewhat of an unsatisfying answer, but it is also the one that makes the most sense when it comes to the Oxford comma: Decide whatever you like but make a choice and stick with it.

Press Release Headlines: When Short Is Just Right

A famous saying in my family is, “Our family is SO short, our family tree is a bush.” Ba dum bum.

Seriously, there are certain times when being short and sweet is right on point. Example: press release headlines.

My colleague Brandon Glenn recently wrote a blog about the 2021 State the of Press Release report from PR Newswire (a Cision company). Point 3 specifically states that for headlines, less is more. Cision recommends keeping headlines fewer than 70 characters. Not words…characters (including spaces.) Why? Email applications and Google’s search engine will cut off any text over that amount.

PR Newswire offers editors and journalists the option to subscribe to their wire service based on keywords that interest them. Subscribers are only emailed press releases with the applicable terms. Imagine how frustrating it would be if they missed relevant news because key words weren’t included in the first 70 characters of the title.

We all have a limited amount of time in our day, which is why a list of shortened titles that grab our attention is useful for helping us to decide what we will spend our valuable time reading. A clear example is the daily news feed from Becker’s Hospital Review. Not only do you see headlines comprised of just a few words, for each article you also get a one-paragraph synopsis that provides enough information to help you decide if you should open the article for a deeper dive.

Now I’m going to pick on a press release that fails to be short and sweet. Note that this is not one for our clients, but the release did make me flinch when I ran across it:

Sandoz launches authorized generic of Narcan® (naloxone hydrochloride) Nasal Spray 4 mg in US to help reverse opioid overdose, expanding access during surge in overdose deaths”

This poor headline is 175 characters. Do we really need the generic name in the headline, as well as the dosage? Again, keep in mind that email platforms and Google will cut off after 70 characters, so all anyone will see is “Sandoz launches authorized generic of Narcan® (naloxone hydrochloride).” Journalists looking for important keywords like “opioid” and “overdose” would not see this release.

If I were writing this headline, I would say, “Sandoz unveils generic Narcan® to help surge in opioid overdose deaths.” My version is exactly 70 characters and succinctly communicates the company’s general message. The rest of the details could then be included in the sub-headline or body of the release.

A headline is meant to catch readers’ attention – and it is important to do it quickly. When it comes to writing a press release headline, remember that a short and sweet 70 characters is the magic number.