A friend recently told me about an article going viral on LinkedIn. I thought, “This is great for her.” And then I read the article. The piece was confusing, unformatted and had no structure. On top of that, it was entirely self-promotional with no real value to someone reading the article.
We all want our brands to go viral or at least have a bunch of eyeballs on them, but creating terribly written content just doesn’t work in the digital era.
That is why it’s up to us as marketers to communicate clearly and effectively. No matter what subject your article covers or what audience you’re trying to reach, there are basic principles that will help you write a quality piece of content every time.
In this post, I’m showing you how to master the inverted pyramid style of writing that journalists use when crafting news stories.
Use these steps to write your next great news announcement!
Your Brand Is One Of The Most Important Assets In Your Company
After all, what’s the point of having a company if no one knows about it?
Keeping your brand relevant and fresh is key to continuing its growth. You need to find creative ways to keep your readers interested in reading your regular content and news articles. Doing this will help you grow your audience for new leads and future business partners.
Creating news articles is an effective way to do this.
By educating your target audience about the latest news in your industry, you can establish yourself as an authority within it. It also gives you a chance to control how your company is perceived by the public at large, which leads to increased sales and other benefits down the road. It doesn’t just promote your company and highlight some of its many advantages; it also helps you retain existing customers, promote new products, and connect with new leads.
When it comes to reading news, people tend to gravitate towards articles that are short and easy to digest. Readers want to quickly scan new information in order to make sense of the world around them.
The Inverted Pyramid and the 5 Ws
Writing an in-depth news article takes time and effort. This is where inverted pyramid writing comes in handy.
The inverted pyramid approach is used by most journalists when writing articles for newspapers and magazines. It means that the most important parts of the story are at the top of the article, followed by secondary information in descending order of importance. This is a great technique for keeping readers engaged with your content and making sure that they don’t miss any crucial facts.
This approach emphasizes the most important details first, with subsequent information delivered in decreasing order of importance. This allows readers to glance at your article and get an idea of what it’s about without having to read every word. It also makes sense from a practical perspective because it allows you to focus on what’s most relevant and interesting, rather than wasting time on extraneous details that may bore or confuse your audience.
The inverted pyramid structure, also known as the “news lead”, has been around since the 1800s, but it’s still useful today because it helps you organize your content in a way that will grab readers’ attention. This means you can focus on delivering content that will be valuable to them.
The general rule of thumb is: start with the most important information and end with less-important details while responding to the most important W-questions: what, who, where, when, and why.
The Five Ws are:
- Who is the main subject of your article?
- What happened? This can be a single event or a series of events.
- Where did it happen? Be specific and use proper names if possible.
- When did it happen? Again, be as specific as possible here—knowing when something happened will help you include other elements in your writing later on.
- Why did it happen? Think about this from both sides: why would someone want to do something like this, as well as why someone might not want to do something like this (or an alternative).
Some writers also like to talk about the “how” to provide more relevancy to the story.
- How does it pertain to me personally or professionally? This is another way of saying “what does this mean for me?”
And don’t forget to choose your keywords carefully: Google places a lot of emphasis and weight on keywords that appear towards the top of your article, and within the title, the first paragraph, and the first sentence.
If you’ve never written anything before, this may seem obvious—but when writing about complex topics (like politics or science), writers often get distracted by irrelevant facts that aren’t interesting to their audience. The trick here is knowing what information readers want from the very beginning of your story!
News articles have a reputation for being challenging. They require your news organization to be at the top of its game, versed in the latest research and trends, and able to write with clarity and confidence. But they can also be rewarding. News articles offer your organization an opportunity to share its expertise with its audience. And, if you ask us, there’s no better way to do that than through a news article.
