4 key thinking styles you need to have when writing public relations copy!

This is an era of information explosion, and it is also an era of information miniaturization. This is an era of extremely fragmented attention, and it is also an era of extremely scarce attention. Every day, countless information floods into our world, and countless businesses are eager to grab our attention.

Our time, information, and attention seem to have been cut into tiny pieces in the Internet age.

In the era of information explosion, the most important thing a copywriter can do is to grab the user's attention. Public relations copywriting is no exception. However, unlike advertising copywriting, public relations copywriting is more subtle and silent. If advertising copy is strong whiskey, then public relations copy is soothing tea. So what are the characteristics of good public relations copy? How to write public relations copy? If you want to write an excellent public relations copy, you need to have three major thoughts.

1. Audience thinking - accurate scene replacement

Before writing public relations copy, we must first understand who our users are? What are their needs? What are their emotional appeals? To accurately understand the needs of the audience, we must first understand who our audience is, that is, to accurately target the audience.

Trout, the father of positioning, has been emphasizing that brands have spent more than twenty years writing the four-step positioning theory, which also applies to the positioning of public relations copywriting.

The four-step positioning method is as follows:

Step 1: Integrate the external environment and identify competitors. Who are the competitors? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors? What are our advantages and disadvantages compared to our competitors? How to expand advantages and avoid disadvantages is the question we must answer.

Step 2: Avoid the established advantages of your competitors and establish your own advantages. “Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated in a hundred battles.” If you want to succeed in brand operations, it is very important to establish a deep understanding of yourself and other brands. The key point is to avoid the limelight of competitors and find your own advantages in their disadvantaged areas or blank areas.

Step 3: Further confirm your strengths. Confirming your own advantages cannot be accomplished simply by shouting a few slogans. You need to provide effective evidence of your advantages to convince consumers.

Step 4: Integrate positioning into business operations. Finally, companies need to successfully integrate positioning strategies into all aspects of their operations, including internal and external operations.

After accurately positioning the user, the public relations copy should accurately target user needs and analyze user psychological demands. And here is a simple method, which is to replace the scene with the user.

Imagine if you were a user, and if you were in the user's life scenario, what kind of emotional appeal would you have?

For example, when Luckin Coffee first entered the market, it took into account the coffee needs of office white-collar workers and envisioned the scenario of white-collar workers drinking coffee. What are the pain points of the Chinese coffee market? Luckin Coffee's operations team believes that "high prices" and "inconvenient purchasing" are the two major pain points in the coffee market. To address these two major issues, Luckin Coffee has adopted two major strategies: reducing coffee costs and “self-pickup + takeout” operations.

At the same time, Luckin also put itself in the shoes of users and considered their psychological needs for drinking coffee. For white-collar workers, they would prefer to order a cup of coffee in the morning, pick it up at the company entrance, and then enjoy the morning while drinking coffee and working in the office building. Therefore, "refined" and "bourgeoisie" became the public relations direction of Luckin Coffee. In the subsequent writing of public relations articles, Luckin Coffee has been constantly strengthening this impression and has hired a brand spokesperson who fits this image.

2. Logical thinking - grasp the PAST principle

The purpose of public relations copywriting is to convey information and express emotions to the public, so public relations copywriting requires more logic than other copywriting. The main reason why people don’t want to read many public relations articles is that they are too long, have unclear attitudes and confusing logic.

The sentences in public relations copy must be tightly connected, one link after another, like an iron chain that leaves no gaps. Excellent public relations copywriting must not only comply with the “5W” principle of general article writing, but also comply with the PAST principle of news writing.

What is the PAST principle? In The Art of News Writing, Naveed Saleh proposes four principles of copywriting, namely purpose, audience, scope and subject matter.

Purpose: What is the purpose of writing the article and what effect needs to be achieved?

Audience: Who is the audience for the article and what do they want to see?

Scope: What is the scope of the article?

Subject: What is the topic of the article? Is the theme clearly expressed?

Here, we take the apology copy after Wang Yuan’s smoking incident as a sample. Wang Yuan’s smoking incident once caused an uproar, but after his apology, he gained the understanding of the people. In contrast, Zhai Tianlin's apology after the plagiarism incident was met with public backlash and attacks from public opinion. Why did Wang Yuan’s apology public relations copy save the incident?

The following is Wang Yuan’s apology after smoking:

"I'm sorry! This incident made me reflect deeply on my behavior. I feel very sorry and guilty for the negative social impact it has caused. I'm sorry that I set a wrong example. I will take the corresponding responsibility and accept the punishment. As a public figure, I will pay more attention to my words and deeds in the future. I hope everyone will not imitate my wrong behavior. I apologize to everyone again. I will definitely learn from this and become a better adult."

First of all, this copy clearly states the theme - apology, and accurately expresses one's attitude after the apology and one's determination to bear the consequences. The most important point is that Wang Yuan accurately grasped the audience's hearts in this copy. In fact, the spectators and unrelated passers-by did not have any strong aversion to Wang Yuan’s smoking incident. The ones who were really touched and angry were the fans who had been fans of Wang Yuan for many years.

In their minds, Wang Yuan’s “youthful” and “childish” personality is a major factor in attracting fans, and it is also how they position Wang Yuan’s image. Therefore, when fans see Wang Yuan’s social behavior, they cannot accept it and “quit being his fans in anger.” Therefore, the biggest highlight of this public relations article is "I will definitely learn from this and become a better adult."

Through such expressions, Wang Yuan's smoking incident can be downplayed as a small mistake that Wang Yuan accidentally made during his growth. Therefore, Wang Yuan’s “boy” persona has been maintained, and most of his “mom fans” and “sister fans” are also understanding about this. Therefore, the incident was resolved safely.

It is conceivable how important it is to write a logical public relations article that complies with the "PAST" principle. In many cases, it can even help to avert some crisis events.

3. Refine your thinking

There are two reasons why public relations copywriting is difficult to read. One is that the logic is not clear enough, and the other is that the text is too lengthy. Therefore, public relations copywriting should have refined thinking. When writing, the main theme and logic of the article should be extracted. After writing, the article should be checked carefully to remove unnecessary expressions and redundant text.

Before writing a public relations copy, you should extract the logic of the entire text, draw a mind map of the article, and use a tree structure to express the logic of the article. Here, the logical writing of copywriting can follow the "general-specific-general" structure and the three-step approach of "what, why, and how".

What is it: What is the topic we are writing about? The interpretation of the new definitions and new content involved in the copy should be clearly explained.

Why: Why do we write this PR article and who is it written for?

What to do: How will we resolve such an incident and what will be the consequences?

Extracting the logic first can avoid the defect that the copy makes readers unable to find the key points and don't know how to continue reading.

In copywriting, another thing that needs to be refined is the language of the article. Avoid too much nonsense and overly complex expressions, try to cut out unnecessary information, and retain the core theme. This will not only allow readers to grasp the key points better, but also enhance the artistic expression of the article.

4. Empathy

The so-called empathy refers to achieving emotional commonality in copywriting. As long as we can achieve emotional commonality with users, we can better make the public become our comrades-in-arms, stand on our side and speak for us.

A major feature of the Internet era is the dispersion and sinking of traffic. The development of self-media and the advancement of the Internet have led to the continuous dilution of social discourse power, which has gradually sunk to the audiences of marginalized groups. Everyone can become an independent information stream, and small information streams gathered together can form a huge force. The "Visual China" crisis event actually has no direct relationship with most of us, but the development of the event has aroused people's resonance and triggered public discussion.

In such discussions, information flows continue to converge and dissemination is formed. The amount of information flow continues to increase dramatically, forming a force that can compete with the big media. Understanding marginalized groups is particularly important. Cleverly utilizing the power of the crowd can bring more allies to corporate public relations and achieve the good effect of "surrounding the city from the countryside."

Therefore, it is crucial to mobilize the empathy of the masses. As long as the masses are willing to participate, public relations events will undoubtedly show viral fission. So how can public relations copy resonate with users?

1. Understand the user's pain points and needs

Such as "A child who can play the piano will not become a bad child"

2. Gather vertical groups of people

For example: Tmall's "Plaything Ambition"

3. Grasp the hot spots

Zhihu: "Fill in your application form on Zhihu"

Conclusion:

If advertising copy sells steak, then public relations copy sells the “sizzle” of the steak, a silent invasion of the user’s mind. Why do people have a low level of awareness of public relations and their impression of public relations is not as deep as that of advertising? The reason is that public relations has the characteristics of "subtle influence and silent nourishment" that advertising does not have.

When your audience knows you’re doing PR, you’ve failed. How to write excellent public relations copy? Just grasp the four thinking aspects: audience thinking, logical thinking, refined thinking, and empathetic thinking.

Author: Fang Yun

Source: PR Home