And 6 more tips for writing right now
When asked how she’s doing during the pandemic, a friend of a friend replies, Good enough.
Your audience members might not be feeling good enough this week.
We may have grown accustomed to fearing a deadly virus right out of a sci-fi movie, to distancing and masking and isolating and locking down.
Now, in the United States, institutionalized and deadly racism has reared its brutal head again. We’re livid about and exhausted by the senseless death of George Floyd. While our hearts and feet may be with the protesters, we fear the fauxtesters who feed on chaos and wreak havoc on businesses and communities already hit too hard by the pandemic.
All of which is to say that your audience members may be down a few rows on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs right now. Keep that in mind as you write compassionate, confident, clear communications this week.
Here are 7 more tips on writing during the pandemic — or any time.
1. Turn numbers into things.
That’s the question David C. Roberts answers in “Putting the Risk of Covid-19 in Perspective” in The New York Times.
“We are awash in statistics about Covid-19,” Roberts writes, “Number of deaths, fatality rates, contagion rates. But what does this all mean in terms of personal risk?”
Take a note from Roberts: When you’re writing about numbers, you need to put them into perspective. To turn them into things.
Every time you feel your fingers reaching for the top row of the keyboard, ask, “What’s it like?”
Roberts uses a “micromort” — a one-in-a-million chance of dying — to compare Covid-19 to other risks. A single skydiving jump, for instance, is 7 micromorts. Then he does the math:
- Living in New York City? You’re twice as likely to die of Covid-19 as you would have been to die serving in the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan in 2010 — a particularly deadly year.
- Living in Michigan? Your risk of dying of Covid-19 is equivalent to driving a motorcycle 44 miles a day.
- Living in Maryland? Your risk is about the same as if you went skydiving once a day.
Numbers are abstract. People need comparisons to understand them.
So take a tip from Roberts and put numbers into perspective: Every time you feel your fingers reaching for the top row of the keyboard, ask, “What’s it like?’” Then turn numbers into things.
Want more techniques for clarifying numbers through comparison? Join at our Master the Art of the Storyteller Master Class.
2. Best Covid-19 infographic ever …
Here’s another brilliant, beautiful graphic story from the folks at The New York Times:
What up/down story could you display graphically, linking each item to the stories behind the numbers?
How can you rewrap the banana on your recurring or dull pieces? Learn to rethink your same-old story at our How to Write Better, Easier & Faster Master Class.
3. ‘Circle back and kill me now.’
“If there’s anything corporate America has a knack for, it’s inventing new, positive words that polish up old, negative ones,” writes Olga Khazan in the February issue of The Atlantic.
“Silicon Valley has recast the chaotic-sounding break things and disruption as good things. An anxious cash grab is now a monetization strategy, and if you mess up and need to start over, just call it a pivot and press on. …
“[A] buzzword is a profound-seeming phrase devised by someone important to make something sound better than it is. …
“With each repetition and slide deck, the term grows more hackneyed, and many of its speakers grow more nauseated at its mention. Does anyone actually say disrupt with a straight face anymore? …
“Like everyone’s loud tipsy uncle, the buzzwords people know best tend to be the ones that irritate them most.”
Amen, Olga.
Are you irritating the reporters and other readers with buzzwords? Learn to write media relations pieces that don’t make your readers say “Huh?” at our PR-writing workshop.
4. Use the magic word.
It’s the most retweeted word in the English language: You.
For compassionate communications, tap You’s superpower to engage readers and simplify messages.
Here’s a Covid-19 update that could have benefited from more of a focus on the reader — and less branding and chest-pounding from the organization. You’ll see my rewrites in red.
Dear Customer,
As the No. 1 ranked rental car company for Customer Satisfaction by J.D. Power, we are committed to going the extra mile for you today – and – always. When you’re ready to travel again or have other transportation needs, please know that our focus remains on getting you can get where you need to go safely and confidently with Hertz. Here are a few things we’ve been working on to continue building your trust and confidence. Next time you ride with us, you’ll be able to:
Introducing Hertz Gold Standard Clean Drive in a new standard of clean
In addition to our following social distancing best practices at our locations, you’ll find we are a new standard of raising the bar on our high standards for safety and cleanliness in our cars. We are proud to introduce Hertz Gold Standard Clean, an enhanced vehicle disinfectant and sanitization process designed to give you total confidence when you rent a car. Every vehicle will be sealed and certified ‘Hertz Gold Standard Clean’ after undergoing is a 15-point cleaning and sanitization process that follows U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.
We are rolling out Hertz Gold Standard Clean now in the U.S. and planning to launch in other countries. Learn more about Hertz Gold Standard Clean, here.
Extending Loyalty Status Keep your loyalty status
To give you our Hertz Gold Plus Rewards® members more time and opportunity to enjoy their your membership benefits, we’ve recently announced we have extended their your current loyalty status through January 31, 2022. Additionally, members with And if you have points that were set to expire between March 13 and June 30, 2020, have the opportunity to you can claim them now here.
Flexibility and Convenience Don’t come to us; we’ll come to you
We know that flexibility and convenience are more important than ever. That is why we’ve offered Get your vehicle deliveryed and picked up at almost 3,000 U.S. Hertz neighborhood locations. and made the following changes and enhancements In several countries and regions, you can also:
- Lowered our rental age requirement to Rent a car if you’re at least 18 — without paying a special fee
- Waived fees for young drivers
- Introduced low Make a one-way rental rates trip at new low rates
Caring for Our Communities
Now more than ever, our communities need us and we want to help. Here are a few ways we are proudly serving our communities during this time:
- Helping Healthcare Workers by providing complimentary vehicles in several cities around the world, including $2 million worth of free month-long vehicle rentals to 2,000+ New York City healthcare workers.
- Supporting Small Businesses through the American Express Stand for Small coalition to offer exclusive benefits to small business owners.
- Teaming up with Team Rubicon , a veteran-led disaster response organization, by providing vehicles to deliver food and healthcare supplies to people in need.
- Hosting Blood Drives with OneBlood at select Hertz locations in May.
We look forward to getting you on the road again soon.
With gratitude,
Jodi Allen Hertz
Chief Marketing & Customer Care Officer
P.S. Are you interested in learning how Hertz is helping health care workers, small businesses, patients and other people in need? Find out about our partnerships with Stand for Small, Team Rubicon and OneBlood.
Want to write compassionate, reader-centric messages that grab attention and move people to act? Find out how at our Catch Your Readers Master Class.
5. Get to the point faster.
Web visitors spend 57% of their time above the fold, or on the first screen of a web page, according to the Nielsen Norman Group. They spend 74% on the first two screens. (And remember, the screen they’re looking at most often now is on their phones.)
To reach web readers where their eyes are on the small screen, get to the point faster. Communicate the key part of your message above the fold.
How? Get the gist of your message across in the first four elements of the page:
- Headline
- Deck
- Lead
- Nut graph
And weed out the top: Don’t bury your message under sharing buttons, bylines and chrome.
Because when it comes to making your web page tops, what you take off of the first screen is as important as what you put in.
Learn more techniques for reaching readers where their eyes are at our Reach Readers Online Master Class.
6. Need a break?
Me, too.
Check out my new favorite blog, MyMomHasDementia.com. It’s Lynn Wylie’s — yes, we’re related! — sweet-sad-funny tale of loving and caring for our brilliant mother during her mental decline.
If you have a friend or family member with dementia, or if you just appreciate a writer and photographer who can find the love and humor in almost any situation, this blog is for you.
Tell Lynn I said Hi!
7. Check out these Covid-19 communication tools.
Here are more places to score Covid-19 communications resources:
- NEW! “How to Write During the Pandemic: Make Messages Compassionate, Confident and Clear,” a June 18 webinar by me, with IABC. (This is substantially revised from my previous C-19 webinar.)
- Dr. Craig Smith’s Covid-19 messages to colleagues at the Columbia University Department of Surgery
- Siddhartha Mukherjee’s “How Does the Coronavirus Behave Inside a Patient?” essay for The New Yorker — speaking of brilliant doctors who are also brilliant writers
- Covid-19 resources from IABC
- Crisis communications resources from PRSA
- Daily coronavirus updates from PR News
- How to Write During Covid-19. Watch this webinar from PRSA and me free with coupon code WYLIE420.
- How to write during Covid-19. Crisis communication guru Molly McPherson interviews me for her podcast.
- Upskill during your downtime with our online Master Classes.
Please hit reply and let me know your favorite Covid-19 resources.
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What do you need from me during the pandemic? Please hit reply to email me your questions, examples and ideas, I’ll try to address them in the next issue.
See you next week!