Knowing how to write powerfully can help propel your issue to the headlines and build power behind your position. But keep in mind that great prose writers are not necessarily great public relations writers – writing for PR requires a different approach than writing an essay or a piece of fiction. PR writing is goal driven and directed toward a specific strategic audience. Rather than taking time to set a scene, PR writing must get to the most important information right away and only afterwards fill in the details. In that spirit, here are the cardinal characteristics of effective PR writing:
• Goal-oriented: aims strategic messages at target audiences through their preferred media outlets
• Contains news: meets criteria of newsworthiness as defined by target media outlet’s editors
• Inverted pyramid: built on an upside-down pyramid, placing the most important information at the top
• Has been edited and commented on by more than one person: a piece of writing will almost never be as good as it could be if it is passed around (but avoid getting weighed down in a painful process of writing by committee)