PR Writing - Writing Email, Memos, & Proposals
Recommendation
A clear, concise statement of what is suggested and how it is to be implemented.
Body (Proposal)
A complete, detailed statement of what is proposed.
Summary
A condensation of the proposal, which gives the reader the general idea and tells them whether they want to proceed.
Table of Contents
A list of all items in the proposal.
Tables & Exhibits
A list of illustrative elements and where they can be found.
Content
A memo should be specific and to the point. The subject line, as in email messages, should state exactly what the memo is about. They should be specific about the coarse of action.
It's Unwise to Send Angry Emails
If you have a bone to pick, do it in person or by phone. While writing an angry email may be therapeutic, it seldom does anything to solve a problem and may escalate it.
Use Numbers
If you have a series of questions or points to be made, break them out with numbers or bullets?
The Challenge of Information Overload
Information overload is pervasive in our society; public relations professionals contribute to it and should be aware of the overload of messages from Facebook, email, Twitter, and other media.
Four U Approach
Is the message useful to the target reader? Is the subject line ultra specific? Is the message unique? Is the message urgent; if so, does the subject line reflect that?
Exhibits & Bibliography
Items substantiating the proposal and assuring the reader that it is based on studies or facts.
Communication Briefings
Kevin Donaldson and I recommend that we cancel the Carstairs account. Kevin Donaldson and I recommend that we cancel the Carstairs account for these reasons.
Correctness
You must be accurate in everything you write. If an item in the mass media contains an error, the blame maybe spread among many people. An error in a personalized communication, however, reflects solely on you and your abilities. Be sure that what you prepare is accurate, and you will get credit for being a professional.
Give a Response Timeframe
If you can't get a particular response back quickly, shoot back an email saying the timeframe in which you'll respond, a day, a week, a month...
How to Manage Your Email
Allocate ten to fifteen minutes daily to organize your inbox. Create folders for email categories. After an email is two weeks old, it should go into an old email folder and eventually be discarded. Don't copy lots of people on your emails; the more copies you send out, the more replies you are inviting.
Salutation
An email is somewhat informal, so it is unnecessary to include the sender's full name, title, organization, and address as you would in a business letter. You need to exercise some judgement when crafting your greeting.
Call For Action
Ask for a decision.
Responsibility
Be prudent and think about how your communication will be perceived by the recipient. A letter, text message, tweet, or email is a highly visible record of what you say, so be careful about setting the right tone. Do you come across as flippant, arrogant, or defensive? Or do you come across as helpful, sympathetic, and concerned? You are representing your employer or client, so your statements must be in accordance with their guidelines.
Traditional Letters
Business letters are personalized communications that should be professional, concise, well organized, and to the point; they can prevent misunderstandings and serve as a paper trail for communication. For mass mailings, templates and boilerplate text are often useful.
Email Etiquette
Consequently, it is important to know some techniques that can improve the readability of your email.
Email bulge is overwhelming many organizations and individuals; use wikis, text messaging, RSS, and applications such as Twitter to reduce the flow. Email is rapid and cost efficient; it is not, however, a substitute for personal one on one communication. Email is less formal than a letter, but more formal than a telephone call. You can increase the effectiveness of your emails by addressing key information in the subject line, keeping them to 25 lines or less, and using proper grammer, spelling, and punctuation.
The Challenge of Communication Overload
Email users send 204,000,000 messages, YouTube users upload 72 hours of new video, Facebook users share 2,460,000 pieces of content, Twitter users send 240,000 tweets.
Format
Every memo should contain five elements, date, to, from, subject, and message.
First Sentence Or Opening Paragraph
Get to the bottom line right away, so the recipient immediately knows what the key message is and what you want him or her to do with it.
Identify Non Action Emails
Glei says in their office they use FYI in subject lines of emails that contain information but nothing urgent. The label provides a quick winnowing mechanism.
Brevity Matters
Glei writes that email authors should aim to keep their email to one sentence whenever possible. For example, when working out simple logistics, clarifying a point, seeking cinfirmation, or acknowledging retrieval of information.
Don't Reply All
If you are responding to an email that was sent to a group, respond only to the sender unless asked to do otherwise. He or she can forward it to the group if its percieved to be relevant.
Conciceness
Less is better. Conciceness means brevity. Your objective is to be as brief as possible, because people don't have the time or the patience to read through long messages. This means that you need to carefully select words that get the message across in a concise manner. If you can summarize a message in a 140 character tweet, why not transfer that skill to other media?
Purpose
Like an email, a memo can serve almost any communication purpose. Many public relations firms require staff to write a memo whenever there is a meeting, or even a telephone concersation because it creates a paper trail of what was said and what decisions were made.
Briefing & Position Papers Summary
Many organizations offer briefing and position papers on some aspect of the company. Such papers can have several objectives; they can subconsciously promote a product or service and establish the organization as an opinion leader.
Memorandums
Memos are generally used as internal methods of communication; they should be one page or less and convey the messafe immediately. A memo has five components; date, to, from, subject, and message.
Deadlines Are Our Friends
Most busy people welcome deadlines as a way of forming their to do list.
How to Write a Position Or Briefing Paper
On a cover page, use a title that tells exactly what the paper is about. Keep it short; a position paper should be five pages or less; if the paper is ten pages or more, use a table of contents or an index. Include an executive summary at the beginning of the paper, which is a succint summary of the findings of the paper; it enables rapid readers to understand the crux of the position paper. Place any supporting materials in an appendix at thr end of the paper. Use subheads, boldface, or underlining throughout the paper to break up blocks of copy. Use simple graphs, bar charts, and pie charts to present key statistical information. Use pull quotes from higher ups and executives to persuade the public. Be concise; don't use excessive words; check for repetitious information. Check for clarity; is it clear what you want to say or communicate? Avoid overt marketing of the company's products or services. Give appropriate websites and other sources for those who want to know more about the topic. Post the position paper on your website and make it printer friendly.
How to Write Effective Letters Efficiently
Produce courdeous and repetitive forms of communication for repetitive replies, such as requests for printed material or knowledge of inquiries. Develop standard replies for solicitations to seem business like. Develop standard formats for common messages so inexperienced writers can write more efficiently. Prepare a correspondence guide for vocabulary and how to keep the message concise. Place a brief heading on the letter after the salutation, indicating the letter's subject; the heading will give the reader an idea of the subject and cause effeicient filing. Use subheads if the letter is more than two pages long, thereby giving the reader a quick grasp of the major subjects and where they are located. To personalize printed material, attach your card with a brief, warm message. If a letter requires a brief response, it is acceptable to mail a letter and send it back to the repeat sender; retain a photocopy for your files.
Developing Expertise In Business Communication
Professional business correspondence should be written, formatted, and distributed with an eye for efficiency. There are five key points to writing effective emails, memos, and letters; completeness, conciseness, correctness, courtesy, and responsibility.
Proposals Summary
Proposals must follow a logical, well organized format; they are prepared to generate new business, convince management to approve a plan or give money for a plan, or request funding for a business or non profit.
Body
Provide background to the problem situation, criteria for a solution, the proposed solution, a schedule for implementation, personnel assignments, budget, and some background on the proposal's authors.
Briefing & Position Papers
Providing talking points and main ideas when executives or personnel are talking to the media. Advancing an organization's views on a trend or issue. Using the papers as tools to promote products or services. Establishing the organization as a thought leader in the industry.
Get the Assignments Up Front
Rather than opening with a summary of a meeting or a conversation, get right to the action steps. What do you expect from the reader or readers?
Conclusion
Request approval or the signing of a contract.
Writing a Professional Email
Respond to relevant, work related email messages in a timely manner. Keep messages short; remember that many people now read email on their smartphone. Give details at the beginning of the message or even in the subject line. Use language that falls halfway between formal writing and spontaneous conversation. Blunt statements inform more importance in an email than a telephone conversation; temper your language. Use standard English and abbreviations; don't use a lot of cryptic symbols as shorthand; kids, not businesspeople, use acronyms like IMHO. Use spellcheck to proofread every outgoing email; poor spelling reflects poorly on yourself and the organization's credibility; but realize that spellcheckers are not foolproof; remember, they don't differentiate correct usage of there and their.
Sending a Professional Email
Send emails without attachments whenever possible; an attachment drastically decreases the likelihood of your messafe being read. Copy only necessary people when responding to a group message; avoid the reply to all syndrome. Double check who will recieve your message before sending it. Don't be an email junkie; don't clutter up inboxes with inane chitchat or forwarded jokes; it's irritating to receivers. Although email is a form of one on one communication, it is not a substitute for phone conversations and meetings; they are important for maintaining personal relationships. When emailing messages to the media, use blind carbon copy sending so recievers won't know its a mass mailing; use of blind carbon copy distribution is also best when sending to large groups of people who don't know each other; it protects their privacy. Always reread an email message before sending it; will the tone or choice of words offend the reciever; are you coming across as friendly and courteous,or brosque and pompous?
Closing
Sign off with a brief word such as regards, best, or even cheers.
Proposals By Public Relations Firms
Staff at public relations firms must constantly write proposals for new businesses. Organizations often pitch a proposal that calls for something specific from another business. The competition for business is intense among public relations firms; proposals must be thorough, be well written, and offer creative ideas to perspective clients.
Introduction
State the purpose of your proposal.
Show Benefits
Stress how the event would improve employee morale, increase media coverage, or improve reputation among key figures.
What's Next?
Suggest a direction. Rather than running something by an executive, say what steps you would take. This limits the back and forth because preliminary next steps have been taken.
Satisfy the Need
Suggest how the event would be set up to meet the needs of the organization or the readers.
Transmittal
Summarize why the proposal is being made.
Show a Need
Tailor the opening to your readers' needs.
Proposals By Public Relations Forms
The background and capabilities of the firm. The client's situation. Goals and objectives of the proposed plan. Key messages. Basic strategies and tactics. General timeline of activities. Proposed budget. How success will be measured. A description of the team that will handle the account. A summary of why the firm should be selected to handle the program.
Introduction (Proposal)
The scope, the approach, how information was obtained and evaluated, and limitations and problems to help the reader guage the impact.
Cover Page
The title of the project, date of submission, and either the department or individuals making the submission.
Courtesy
These are personal communications. Personal names are used extensively, and both senders and recievers have considerable interest in the material. You might think it advisable to make the messages as personal as possible, but don't go overboard. The writing should be polite, but not effusive. Personal, but not overly familiar.
Body of Message
Think of an email as a memo, which is discussed in the next section. Most experts say the best emails are short. That is about twenty to 25 lines, single spaced. It is also recommended that there be no more than 65 characters per line. When appropriate, you can use boldfacing, underlining, and bullets to highlight key pieces of information as you would in a news release.
Subject Line
This is the opportunity to say succently what the email is about. The growing reliance on phones for emails only heightens the need for concise subject lines. Though the research showed that, overall, shorter subject lines often correlate with higher click and read rates, subject line word order, word choice, and brand and audience awareness are also key factors.
Proposals
To present a new public relations effort to management for approval, and to help the organization or client get fundings from other organizations or groups.
Formatting a Professional Email
Typing in all capital letters makes people feel like you're shouting at them; furthermore, it makes your email more difficult to read. Break out points or questions as numbered items; it helps recipients answer them in a sequence.
Purpose of Proposals
What is the purpose of the proposal? Who will read the proposal? What are the pertinent interests and values of the readers? What specific action can be taken on the basis of the proposal? What situation or problem does the proposal address? What is the history of the situation? How much and what kinds of information will make the proposal persuasive? What format is most effective for the proposal? How formal in format, tone, and style should the proposal be?
Thanks Are Unnecessary
When endeavoring to declutter inboxes, eliminate the one word thanks emails. Don't view it as rude ingratitude. Giel writes, "At this juncture, we're all probably grateful for one less email."
Completeness
Whether you are writing a ten line memo or a 32 page annual report, you must be sure it contains the information needed to serve its purpose.