UPCOMING COURSES
- Coaching Skills for High Productivity: Developing a Coaching Culture in your Organization
This virtual program is designed to equip supervisors, team leaders and managers…
- Managing Change: It Matters More Than Ever
Someone said that all management is the management of change. That…
- Agility for Business Recovery: Delivering Results through Agile Tools and Principles
- Social Media Analytics: Drive Results to your Business Through a Data-driven Approach
- Effective Workload and Time Management: Work Smarter and Achieve Results in the New Normal
Our life today has gotten extremely complicated with the evolving challenges…
- Lessons in Crisis Leadership: Lead and restore your Team’s Confidence
- Getting Things Done During The New Normal: Ensuring Execution in Spite of Adversity
The objective of this course is to provide the participants with…
- Mindfulness at Work: Improving your Focus, Creativity and Decision Making
It's been stressful for most people during the pandemic, and we are…
- Better Writing for College: A Senior HS and College Student's Guide to Write with Clarity and Confidence
There is a huge transition to make regarding the writing and composition…
- Essentials of Business Communication: Written and Oral Communication for Everyday Use
It is imperative for companies to establish effective communication…
- Crisis Communication in the New Normal: Best Practices on How to Prepare, Handle and Recover from a Social Media Crisis
- Process Management: Documentation, Mapping & Analysis - Improving Business Processes for Effective Execution and Output
- Project Management Skills for Everyday Tasks: Adopting the Mindset from Planning to Execution
- Creating Content & Building Connections: Ensure your Brand Image Internally and Externally
This interactive virtual workshop will provide participants with a…
- Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: Analyze and Implement Effective Solutions
Help your employees make better-quality decisions by engaging the way…
- Effective CSR Programs: Planning and Executing Programs with Social Impact in the New Normal
This virtual workshop focuses on reviewing the intersection of business,…
- The Essentials of Social Media Management: Amplify your Brand and Engage your Customers
- QuaranTEEN: A Virtual Mindfulness Workshop for Teenagers to be Self-Aware, Confident, Empathic and Resilient
The landscape of parenting and education has changed dramatically through…
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WHY GOOD WRITING IS ALWAYS RELEVANT
Although many of my Gen-X contemporaries lament the writing ability of the younger generations, we also wonder if such a skill is still relevant in today’s twitter-sized media bites world. Shouldn’t everything be expressed in 140 characters or less? We asked our colleague at Philippine Daily Inquirer, Sports Editor Francis Ochoa, who conducts a workshop on effective writing applicable even for those in the corporate world, for some of his thoughts on this matter.
1.) We live in the age of bite-sized, social media ready information. Is it still relevant to learn to write paragraphs or lengthy reports?
While digital and social media penetration is at an all-time high, this is no excuse to neglect long-form writing. Often, it is this type of writing that you can actually keep and reread. In the digital age, the news and information cycle refreshes at breakneck speed that the details people pick up there lingers only until the next cycle. Long-form writing provides context, analysis and layered depth to the way information is shared, thus the need for such type of writing.
Also, for future reference, in-depth and long-form articles provide more zeitgeist and historical context for information one intends to produce with a longer shelf life. For a piece of information to stand the test of time, it has to be written to stand the test of time.
2) How do we keep people engaged, given the shorter attention span of today’s media consumer?
Grab their attention right away. We are in the age of the omni reader, a reader so powerful that he has the ability to do the one thing no generation of readers have had: Decide to stop reading. An omni reader chooses when he wants to read, where he wants to read and what he wants to read. If we don’t lock in their focus right from the start, your article is a goner.
But a good hook is only the start of the challenge. The next phase is to sustain that interest, to create writing that hews as close to actual spoken communication as it can. Writing is just another form of message delivery and obviously, the most effective way to reach an audience is to talk in front of them. Learning to write in a way that produces some sort of tone and rhythm in the way readers read your work is the key to prolonged engagement.
3) How could good writing add credibility and enhance the image of a brand?
For people with no actual or visual experience of a brand, their first introduction to it is mostly literature. If you put out literature about a brand that’s vague and bland, people will either get turned off or have little interest in giving the brand a chance. To get to an audience whose introduction to your brand is some form of literature, you want to have writing that’s full of impact and does justice to your brand.
4) Can great writing be learned, or do you have to be born with the talent?
I have never believed that people are born writers. Writers are made. Writing is a skill that is developed with hard work and repetitive—to the point of boring—practice.