What's your writing style? Mine is garbage!

Okay, so you know well enough that I am a huge geek. No hiding it, I love writing, I love reading, and I love spending hours and hours on the Internet reading absolutely pointless nothing. I'm fortunate enough that my job completely caters to my geek-dom. Today we had a PR writing class to learn how to become more effective writers. Now, I'm going to give you some tips that he gave us, but you must promise me not to read what I just wrote in this paragraph and judge me for not implementing these techniques. I'm tired, and I just really want to make sure you have this pertinent information. So take it and quick judging me.

Ahem.

Five simple rules for clear writing (which you think you knew, but may have forgotten):
1. Focus on key messages
2. Fewer and shorter words
3. Use visual verbs
4. Active voice...weeee.
5. REVIEW AND EDIT

After going over key messages and trying to write an entire op-ed piece in just one syllable words, I realized how verbose my writing has become. What's funny is I feel like I always make exceptions for the client thinking, "Oh, no this is just their style, how they like it." Then it hit me: that's just because that's how I supply the writing.

One of the coolest things I got from the workshop was a super handy link.... BullFighter. The service looks at sentence structure in Microsoft Word (it only works in XP, not Vista and not Mac) and flags where complicated words should be simplified for readers. It's based on the Flesch-Kincaid readability scale which you can test by dropping in your written documents, releases, etc. here.

So I went to back to my desk after the class to a release open on my desktop that was in progress only to find out that I'm the worst writer, ever. The good news is now, however, that I have a 25 page booklet from the class teaching me how to improve.

So as always, look for great things.

How to become awesome

Since I've begin to spend a fair amount of time in the Twitterverse I've been brushed by a lot of social media awesomeness and its put a little fire under me to become more informed (which means even less sleep) and help find interesting and new content that will be pertinent to my agency and my clients.

Tonight I had the opportunity to speak with @PRSarahEvans who is really leading the way in the social media/digital PR realm. She provides great content and runs a weekly dialog on Twitter on Monday nights (7pm CST) called #journchat which allows bloggers, PR folks and journalists to collaborate on a number of issues from social media to pitching to media dying, etc.

I asked her straight out how to become awesome, and while I knew most of this, the affirmation certainly lit a fire. Here's what she suggested:

Follow @themediaisdying, @skydiver, @breakingnewson and of course @mashable. All of which I am proud to say were already on my list.

Check out great sources multiple times a day:
Mashable - All That's New On The Web
TechCrunch
All Top -All the Top Stories in PR

Ahhh, so much work to be cool. Alright, I have to get to it. Have a good night.

The afternoon crash...

For those of you who are particularly familiar with my daily schedule (actually come to think of it you don't have to be that familiar at all) you know these things about me:

1. I love the mornings. Really do. Puffins, coffee, new start
2. I don't sleep much which is taking its toll day by day
3. I am a freaking brat in the afternoon. Kindergartener without their nap, kind of brat. Or as my mother calls it "Bratty McPhee."

Starting the day at 4 am yesterday morning brought my afternoon brat syndrome into the 11 am hour full force and I started to become emo to the nth degree. Someone unfollowed me on Twitter and it set me into orbit and kicked into gear my inner Debbie Downer and negative self-talk(which I am REALLY good at). Getting unfollowed in Twitter is like getting picked last in kickball, proof that you provide no real help to the group and they are probably better off with out you. Then after a firm handslap at work, I started to crash and decided the only thing I could do was step out to a nice lunch with a close friend.

The lunch kicked off with me venting every single thing that was wrong in my world, which surprisingly only took about 20 minutes, and then that's when the handslap went to a slap across my face. US Airways flight 1549 went down in the Hudson River with 155 passengers on board and I realized, "Jess, things could be a lot worse. Unfollowed on Twitter does not equal plane crash into frigid river."

The contempt I had for Twitter yesterday morning soon turned back into love as my phone lit up with tweets from my favorite Tweeple about the latest information on the crash and suddenly that one person, the morning handslap and the exhaustion I felt from waking up at 4 am didn't seem like that big of a deal and everything was up hill from there.

New start, new year, social media, I <3 you

So I've been gone quite awhile, an embarrassing amount of time actually. I have a confession, sweet blog-o-mine....I fell in love with microblogging.

But then with all good things guilt eventually sets in. "I've been neglected my readers and my blog for so long, how could I ever consider myself a 'social media manager.' It's just so hard to maintain. So very, very hard." The guilt landed me in a long conversation with co-founder of luckystartups.com
Aronado (who if you don't know I completely admire in the social media space), who gave me some great tips on blogging. While some of these might not be his words exactly, this is what I took away from the great conversation:

*Keep it shorter, more likely to write more often
*Write about things you're passionate about
*Make it fun
*Change it up to keep you and your readers interested.

So, with the start of year of the OX I resolve to become a better blogger. Lots of great content coming your way...stay tuned. In the meantime feel free to entertain yourself with Jackson Pollock.