|
Welcome to Econnect Communication’s June 2006 newsletter –
‘Short and sweet’.
We hope ours is one of the 19 per cent of e-newsletters that you
read and we hope you spend more than the average 51 seconds
reading it. And if you’re reading this bit, it appears you are
quite unusual…more below.
Regards,
Econnect Communication
Jenni Metcalfe, Michelle Riedlinger, Lynne Goodwin, Mary
O’Callaghan and Sarah Bartlett
In this issue: Short and sweet
Media releases - one second to
impress
Executives like their summaries
short
Put a
sparkle in your speech
E-newsletters
- 51 seconds and skip the intro
Surf club
Quotation of the month
Subscribe
to our free monthly e-newsletter
Contact us
Media releases - one second to impress
By
Jenni Metcalfe
News rooms around the country get hundreds, sometimes
thousands, of media releases each day. Releases are
faxed and, increasingly, emailed. Chiefs of Staff and
journalists generally only give them a second before
hitting the delete button or filing them permanently in
the bin.
So your headline needs to grab their attention. And your first
sentence must be short and keep them reading further!
Here's one media release headline that worked well for us in
gaining national media coverage: ‘Sex change barramundi cause
headaches’.
Executives like their summaries
short
By Michelle Riedlinger
It’s official! A government department we are working closely
with announced this week: ‘Our managers will not read more than
one page of a report’s executive summary. They just don’t have
the time.’
Start the trend and resist going over the page.
Put a sparkle in your speech
By
Jenni Metcalfe
There's an exercise we do when training young scientists in how
to speak to the media, a general audience or to politicians.
We hand them a sparkler and ask them to explain their work and
its importance while the sparkler burns. No jargon is allowed
(we identify it in advance).
This exercise, first developed by Dr Andi Horvath of the
Melbourne Museum, highlights the importance of getting your
message out clearly, simply and quickly.
E-newsletters - 51 seconds and skip the intro
By Mary
O'Callaghan
New research from usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows that 51
secs is all we spend, on average, scanning an electronic
newsletter (stay with me, now). Mostly we scan, not read
(hang on, you missed a bit…). And 35% of the time, we
only skim a small part or glance at the content (and another
bit…). We are unlikely to read the introductory text at all
(Jenni who?). And we fully read only 19% of e-newsletters
(come back… please…this one’s really good…)
For more:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html
Surf club
Here's a site that not only gives ideas on how to keep your
newsletter 'short and sweet' but is useful for those of you
going solo in your science communication endeavours.
Quotation of the month
‘Good things, when short, are twice as good.’
Baltasar Gracián (1601-58) |
