UPCOMING COURSES
- Innovation Through Design Thinking: Techniques and Processes to Create User-focused Solutions in the Workplace
In 2012, an IBM CEO study informs us that being collaborative, communicative,…
- Effective Business Writing (CEBU)
Almost everyone in the workplace today is required to regularly write…
- Leading Effective Meetings: Optimizing your Time and Resources
- Copywriting Essentials: Create Clever and Compelling Copy
- Leading Digital and Culture Transformation: Unifying Technology and Culture for Impactful Change
- Effective Writing: Writing with Impact
In this digital age where messages can be instantly delivered through…
- Effective CSR Programs: Planning and Executing Relevant Programs with Social Impact
- Crisis Communication: Dealing with Media in Times of Crisis (CEBU)
- MACE: Crisis Communication - Dealing with Multimedia in Times of Crisis
- MACE: Developing Content & Building Connections with Media - Ensure your Brand Image Internally and Externally
This interactive workshop will provide participants with a crash course on PR…
- MACE: The Essentials of Social Media Management - Amplify Your Brand and Engage Your Customer
- Mindfulness in the Workplace: Improving your focus, creativity, and decision making
We live in a busy world and often move quickly from one task to another…
- Tourism Marketing: Creating a Marketing Plan for your Tourism and Hospitality Business
- Speaking with Confidence: Overcoming Anxiety in Public Speaking (CEBU)
- Practical Labor Relations: Useful Advice and Tips on Employee Discipline
The world of labor relations is an intricate and complex web that those…
- Graphic Design Basics: Creating Artwork for Multiple Channels
- Process Management: Documentation, Mapping, and Analysis - Improving Business Processes for Effective Execution and Output
- Social Media Analytics: Drive results to your business through a data-driven approach
This course is designed to empower brands & businesses in driving…
- Effective Workload Management: Everyday Techniques to Get Things Done
Have you ever felt stressed and exhausted at work without seeing the expected…
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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.