PR Industry: Improve Your Writing

The serious headline is for a fun, Friday post. Most folks visiting this blog earn their keep, in part, through writing. We all know our writing can always improve. Taking a new approach to the craft every so often is healthy. Today let’s focus on word choice. No structure or format, like a Haiku news release, just words. Visit the following sites for a quick workout:

oneword: You are given a single word, along with sixty seconds, and you write about the word. After you post, you can review other submissions and a new word is chosen daily.

onecaption: One word not enough for you? Try a thousand at onecaption. Same concept...with a picture to inspire you.

My Favorite Word: Review visitor-submitted content, listed in alphabetical order of course. My favorite word is penultimate. It means second to last. Placing second to last in a competition could be the worst spot of all in which to finish. Even dead last has some level of celebrity attached to it – albeit unwelcome. IMHO, the word sounds cool to help soften the blow.

Speaking of visitor-submitted content, Wikipedia should start ranking their most popular entries and the entries with most contributors/edits. This would offer readers another way to browse the site.

UPDATE: Here are two more sites that fit into the word choice exercise discussed above.

50 Word Fiction: Stop by to see the shortest of stories. Better yet, create your own.

Mobile Phone Writing Contest: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House just held a contest requiring contestants to create and submit their written work via SMS. The challenge is that each submission must be 350 words of less. A typical, short message can carry 70 Chinese characters. Hat top to Piers Fawkes at PSFK for the link.

tags: Wikipedia, public relations, PR, consumer generated media

Comments

[Dan York]

Kevin,

FYI, Wikipedia actually has several pages along the lines of what you suggest (although perhaps not precisely what you are seeking). They have general pages on statistics at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics

And a list of wikipedia users with the most edits at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits

There's also an external site analyzing the logs to get the list of most-visited pages:

http://www2.knams.wikimedia.org/logwood/logwood.php?site=en.wikipedia.org

The list of "special pages" also has a range of other options that might be of interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Specialpages

Regards,
Dan

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[Coleman]

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