Workshop: Writing for Digital with Jon Bernstein
Standard £165
Freelance/Student £140
Members £115
*Tickets include lunch
Writing for digital is exactly the same as writing for print. And completely different. This practical workshop teases out the differences between the two; familiarises participants with the principles of good writing and the fundamentals of storytelling; and explores the best ways to approach digital forms of communication including social media and blogging.
The principles of writing
- Why writing for digital is exactly the same as writing for print. And why it’s completely different
- What George Orwell can teach us about language and readability
- EXERCISE #1: Simplifying language
- EXERCISE #2: Decoding the press release
- Understanding online reading habits
- 6 more tips for writing online
News writing and the fundamentals of storytelling
- The Inverted Pyramid of news. And why it still matters
- The Five Ws (and the H) of news
- How to define an audience
- Establishing length
- Defining tone of voice
- EXERCISE #3: Reworking the press release
Social media: best practice
- 6 ways social media can help your communications
- 11 examples of social media in action
- EXERCISE #4: How to tweet
How to blog
- How to blog: the ‘atomised’ Inverted Pyramid
- 3 blogging archetypes that work
- EXERCISE #5: Writing a blog post
Crafting powerful headlines
- Why headlines matter more on the web
- Tailoring headlines for the web
- Newspaper headlines that probably don’t work online
- Headlines that do work online
- EXERCISE #6: Writing a killer online headline
SEO: a brief introduction
- A practical guide to keyword research
About the trainer
Jon Bernstein is an award-winning journalist, editor and digital strategist. He was deputy editor, then digital director, at the New Statesman; multimedia editor at Channel 4 News; ran the Channel 4 FactCheck website during the 2005 general election; editor-in- chief of Directgov, working in the Cabinet Office’s eGovernment Unit; and editor-in- chief of dotcom start-up and technology website silicon.com. In 2011, he was named Website Editor of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors for Newstatesman.com.
