Free Whitepaper Helps Public Relations and Marketing Pros Improve Online PR Programs

PR and marketing professionals looking to kick start or improve their online communications programmes now have a valuable new free guide thanks to the publication of the latest whitepaper from Daryl Willcox Publishing (DWPub).

The whitepaper, entitled "Online PR in action – an introduction to implementing and measuring a digital PR programme," sets out the basic steps required to get results from digital media.

The whitepaper was written by digital PR veteran Andrew Bruce Smith, founder of online PR specialist consultancy escherman. It was inspired by a lack of detailed information about how to pull together all the various elements of a successful online PR campaign - despite huge volumes of information available on specific aspects of the subject.

According to Smith: "PR and marketing professionals are spoilt for choice when it comes to information available on niche features of online PR such as press release distribution or search engine optimisation (SEO). It occurred to me that much of this material was being produced by search marketing specialists rather than PR practitioners. And no one had really put together a practical guide that looked at the subject from the perspective of the PR professional - whether in-house or agency - as well as looking at the entire PR process from planning through implementation to analysis and reporting. This new whitepaper aims to provide a solid framework for allowing PR professionals from SMEs to larger businesses to begin making rapid improvements to their online PR campaigns."

DWPub chairman Daryl Willcox said: "There are tons of people out there blogging about how important online PR is, but there is very little in terms of actual guidance - especially for those who have limited online PR experience. This latest whitepaper seeks to address that imbalance and give people a practical introduction to digital PR techniques."

In the whitepaper's foreword, Willcox warns that if PR professionals do not adapt to an increasingly digital media, they risk being sidelined by other marketing disciplines. Willcox first made this prediction in his 2007 whitepaper entitled "PR versus Search" - a forecast that is showing signs of coming true.

"Online PR in action" is the latest in the Public Relations Whitepaper Series from DWPub which covers such topics as press release writing, getting coverage in feature articles and working with freelance journalists. All the whitepapers can be downloaded at www.dwpub.com/whitepapers

Fifty Years of The Elements of Style

Fifty years after first making its mark as the definitive guide to writing style and usage, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is now available in an anniversary edition from Longman Publishers, an imprint of Pearson.

The best-known and best-selling book about writing ever published, more than 10 million copies of The Elements of Style have been sold since its first publication in 1959. The original Boston Globe review, quoted in the front of the commemorative edition, still holds true today: "No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume."

In 1957, E.B. White rediscovered the brief guide to clear English writing style that had been self-published by William Strunk, Jr., a favorite writing teacher during White's undergraduate years at Cornell University. White, an acclaimed editorialist and essayist at the New Yorker and the author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, expressed his admiration in a New Yorker article. When an editor at Macmillan persuaded White to revise and expand Professor Strunk's 43-page book, that essay served as its introduction, and the book often known as "Strunk and White" was born. White later revised the book twice, in 1972 and 1979, and a fourth edition appeared in 2000 with a foreword by White's stepson, writer Roger Angell.

The Elements of Style 50th anniversary edition is a black leather-bound, gold-embossed reprint of the fourth edition. New commemorative material includes a publisher's note outlining the book's publishing history, and "fifty years of acclaim" from leading literary figures past and present, including Dorothy Parker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Jim Lehrer, Ann Patchett, Richard Ford, Robert Pinsky, Dan Rather, Jonathan Lethem, Julia Alvarez, Roy Blount, Jr., Thomas Mallon and David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker.

The Elements of Style has influenced generations of writers, and indeed may be more relevant than ever in today's world of blogs, wikis and other online communication and expression. As E.B. White said in his introduction: "... it still seems to maintain its original poise, standing in a drafty time, erect, resolute and assured."

The official 50th anniversary of The Elements of Style is April 16, 2009, and an event to celebrate the occasion will be held in New York City with a panel of writers and journalists discussing the power of the "little book," featuring acclaimed writers Roger Rosenblatt, Roy Blount Jr. and Barbara Wallraff, columnist for The Atlantic. In addition, the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University, keepers of the papers of E.B. White, will host an exhibit in Olin Library to coincide with the anniversary. Materials include White's typewriter, handwritten notes, photographs and more.

"Not until I started teaching writing and I reread The Elements of Style did I realize that most everything I would be teaching young writers, and everything I would be learning myself as a writer, was contained between the covers of this slim, elegant, wise little book," said Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garc`Girls Lost their Accents and In the Time of Butterflies.

"The Elements of Style never seems to go out of date," said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. "Its counsel is sound and funny, wise and unpretentious. And while its precepts are a foundation of direct communication, Strunk and White do not insist on a way of writing beyond clear expression. The rest is up to the imagination, the intelligence within."

7 Steps to Better Business Writing by Stephen L. Moss

Sales letters. Web pages. Memos. Reports. While people and profits drive business, the written word is its road. Does your writing take you where you need to go or are you lost without a map on the wrong side of town? Follow these steps to make your business writing shine.

Consider your audience. Who will read what you're writing? Your workforce? Your prospects? The public? Different audiences call for different styles of writing. If you're writing a procedural manual for your employees, consider their education level. Line workers in production will have one vocabulary; your sales associates will have another. If you're marketing to prospects within your industry, they will understand (and expect) industry-specific terms and jargon. The general public will not. Press releases and other documents for public consumption must contain plain language or clearly define industry-specific terms.

Know your purpose. What do you want to say? What result do you want to obtain with the document you're writing? As you're making notes, state your goal for the work at hand. Type it out at the top of your document or in a header. You can remove it later, before anyone sees your work. Refer to this goal frequently as you outline and write and your writing will stay on target.

Organize your thoughts. Business writing is about producing results. Pulling a response, closing a deal, selling units of product. Organize your key points in an outline prior to drafting your document and your finished product will be stronger. Outlines don't have to be the Roman-numeral-and-capital-letter format you learned in school, though they can be. They can also be bulleted lists or just a series of notes in a given order. They can even be non-linear. If you're familiar with mind maps, these can be an effective outlining tool as well.

Write like you talk. Do you have a colleague whom you understand just fine when you talk face to face, but when she tries to communicate with you in writing you have no idea what she's saying? A lot of people have the idea that writing is a completely different form of communication than speech. They attempt to formalize their written discourse, spruce it up with gratuitous multi-syllabic words, or work around the points they want to make without ever making them. As a business writer, your first goal should be clarity, and the best way to be clear is to write like you talk, plainly and to the point. The people you wish to communicate with will thank you for it.

Re-read and revise. While writing is like speech on paper, unlike speech you have the chance to edit writing before anyone reads it. You can eliminate awkward passages, unclear statements, and tangential points. After you've drafted your document, read it over. Is what you want to say clear to you? Read it out loud if possible. Are there passages that are difficult to verbalize? They will probably be difficult to read as well.

Get feedback. It's a great idea to cultivate a writing ally, someone who can take a look at your work and give you some constructive feedback before you publish or otherwise distribute it. This can be a coworker, your boss, a friend outside your company, even your spouse. When you write about a topic you spend your days immersed in, sometimes you forget that terms or concepts that are clear to you might need additional explaining to someone else, and your ally can bring these to your attention. He or she can also flag parts of your work that are confusing or alert you to a tone of voice you didn't realize you were using.

Proofread. Check your work. Slowly. Then check it again. Then have someone else check it. It doesn't matter if you have an MBA from Harvard and a rack of salesmanship awards. Distributing work with misspelled words or other errors will harm your credibility. It's a sign of carelessness, and who wants to trust someone who is careless? Your word processor's spell check helps, but it won't catch every error. Check it yourself. There's nothing worse than spotting a mistake after your writing is distributed.

Whether you write to sell, to inform, or to manage others, your words should communicate clearly and effectively. Follow these seven steps and keep your writing on topic, on task, and on target.

Stephen L. Moss is a freelance writer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. He provides writing and editing services for businesses worldwide. Visit him at http://www.stephenlmoss.com/

Former Journalist Offers Practical PR Advice via Blog

Mopwater PR + Media Notes (http://millerlittlejohnmedia.com/) is a new online meeting place for journalists, public relations professionals, small businesses and artists looking for practical marketing and PR advice.

Mopwater PR + Media Notes is the brainchild of DC-based Amanda Miller Littlejohn, a former journalist who now provides marketing and public relations services to businesses and organizations. Littlejohn saw the need to create Mopwater in December of 2008.

"We're in the middle of what appears to be an ever-deepening recession," Littlejohn says. "Now more than ever, entrepreneurs, non-profits and artists need to find affordable ways to get the word out about their projects, products and services. We're helping people do that everyday at Mopwater PR + Media Notes."

Tips to Clarify Your Message and Engage Your Audience

"How to Clarify Your Message and Engage Your Audience" is now available as a free e-Course at the Working Smarter blog (http://blog.smartdraw.com/), part of the Working Smarter Network (WSN), an exclusive consortium of websites and blogs that provide varied, useful and relevant information to help businesspeople be more effective. This e-Course is perfect for all businesspeople making presentations to decision makers.

"How to Clarify Your Message and Engage Your Audience" is divided into five parts and is delivered by email to those who register directly at http://www.smartdraw.com/ecourse-windsor-clarify/signup.htm. The e-Course provides useful tips on:

* Making the you-me connection with the audience
* Avoiding information overload to keep the audience wanting more
* Giving the audience a roadmap to help them engage in the presentation
* Getting out the way of your own message by simplifying your information
* Radically changing your presentation format to spice up your message and ensure that it's memorable!

"How to Clarify Your Message and Engage Your Audience" is authored by John Windsor and follows his previous WSN e-Course, "Foundations of Persuasive Presentations." He is an award-winning marketer, columnist for Sales & Marketing Management, and creator of the You-Me Framework™ and The YouBlog. Windsor has held executive-level positions in marketing, sales and business development throughout his career. He holds an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School of Management.

WhiteSmoke Releases 4th Generation Grammar Engine

Today WhiteSmoke released a new grammar engine for its world-leading English writing software. The 4th generation engine brings a wealth of improvements, including additional error detections, improvements to grammar algorithms, and faster server response times. The release pushes WhiteSmoke technology even further in the correction of English grammar and spelling, and intelligent suggestions on English writing style.

"The new grammar engine delivers on our goal to be the 'first word' in software for English writing. We are continuing to expand the net of WhiteSmoke's detections and corrections, to the point where we now have an impressive, and unparalleled, feature set," claims Liran Brenner, VP R&D at WhiteSmoke.

A new feature of the 4th generation grammar engine is the correction of "glued verbs". A common error made by native and non-native speakers, WhiteSmoke now detects many glued verbs and separates them into their proper forms. For example, "I want to pickup [pick up] my luggage this afternoon." Other changes include improvements to the subject-verb agreement algorithms, and new style corrections for informal writing. A wider range of run-on sentences are now detected and corrected accordingly, and further refinements have been made to the spell checking algorithm. The update is effective immediately for all WhiteSmoke users.

"Our customers tell us, time and time again, that they want a grammar checker they can trust their writing with," says Hilla Ovil-Brenner, WhiteSmoke CEO. "People want a program that will fix their grammar, punctuation, and spelling with minimal user interaction; they want to know that they can trust the corrections that are made." Amit Greener, VP Marketing at WhiteSmoke, continues, "WhiteSmoke is providing writers everywhere with a tool that meets their needs - a tool that works with all text-based applications, and ensures a high standard of English, wherever they write."

Website: WhiteSmoke Software

PR Pros: Understand What the Media Really Wants

PR Newswire has launched its Meet the Media website http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/meetthemedia/. The website has been produced to help PRs develop a greater understanding of how to most effectively reach key media contacts, appropriately position stories, and gain press coverage.

Re-launched in association with PR Week in 2007, the Meet the Media series of events has become so successful it boasts a database of over 600 PRs that have proactively signed up to receive information of future events. The purpose of the events is to provide a forum in which public relations and communications professionals can engage key media contacts to find out how their respective publications work and to receive advice on gaining coverage and effectively targeting journalists within their sectors.

The Meet the Media website allows the viewer to watch edited video from previous events, with speakers from the Financial Times, Reuters, The Economist, The British Medical Journal, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, Sky News and Third Sector, as well as a tutorial from a social media expert, a panel of bloggers and freelance journalists. The site also hosts the Paris event featuring the editor of one of France's most popular healthcare publications, Le Quotidien Du Medecin. To find out more about the speakers and view each editor's top tips visit the site http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/meetthemedia/.

New Look Free PR Advice Web Site for Businesses

Technical and on-line public relations specialist Ainsworth Maguire has re-launched their marketing advice site http://www.free-pr-advice.co.uk/. With 33 checklists on topics as diverse as making the most of exhibitions, crisis management, managing green agendas and exploiting the web, the site is designed to provide easy access to straight forward PR advice for companies.

Partner at the Bury based company, Kevin Ainsworth explained, "Each of the checklists deals with a different issue and follows a simple formula with ten positive actions to take and five things to avoid doing. At the end of the checklists we give recommended further reading and have now added links to other writers to add further interest."

Topically, the latest addition to the site is a checklist on 'Marketing and PR in Tough Times'. Other checklists are under development and the company plan to extend the full suite to around 50 checklists as well as updating and extending the existing material.

Another new addition to the web site is a company blog freepradvice.wordpress.com. "We wanted to keep the core site simple, but we also wanted an avenue to comment on current events and their PR implications - such as the inauguration of Barack Obama. Linking a blog to the Free PR Advice site gave the perfect balance," added business partner, Adrian Maguire.

"As business to business PR specialists for over 20 years we have seen many changes in the PR industry and the business world at large. The purpose of the Free PR Advice site is to share our experience with other people by providing a free business resource - like a virtual consultant. We started our first web site back in 1996; the web is an incredible business resource that allows smaller companies like ours to punch above their weight. We urge all our customers to build web marketing into their PR programmes, this adds value and is a great way of building goodwill and developing a useful conversation with their customers," concluded Kevin.