How much is enough?

Enough to do what you may ask? Well, for you communications people out there, how much is enough to get the message across?

Let's take media releases as an example. As I've written more times than I've had hot dinners - and believe me, I don't miss too many meals; these can be summed up in two words - TOO LONG! I've told numerous companies this, who have even paid me to tell them this and then who carry on sending out massive missives.

It's the subject that grabs

So the big PR question right now is: can you get your client's message across in 140 characters? Possibly not. But therein lies the answer. Either someone, preferably the media, are interested in your message or they're not. And in fact when you think how they receive your message via email it's down to even less than 140 characters. It's down to whether your subject line interests them or not.

Let's face it when we open our inbox the first thing most of us do is go through the new emails deleting the ones that we don't want to read. It's so easy to push that delete key. At least in the 'good old days' of PR you sent physical letters or at best had them delivered. That way they at least had a chance of being opened and read before being dumped in file 13...

This relates directly to Twitter, where at least you can see what it's about and be able to decide whether you want to look further into this topic. And if you're really lucky you could get retweeted...

It's changing - and time to change

And then there's communication via SMS. Now here ask yourself, when was the last time you swore loudly at yet another advertisement appearing in your messages, advising you of the latest sale of underwear or an optometrist advising you to visit them once again. It can be really irritating when you hear the ping or whatever noise alerts you of an SMS. However what you can't get away from is the fact that you do at least glance at the message before closing it - so maybe that's a positive on the side of telling your story.

The fact remains that communication and the way we get our messages across is changing and whether we like it or not we have to start looking at new ways of reaching those we need. Look around you at your colleagues - right now. What are they doing? At least half of them are probably looking at their phones, checking their messages, Facebook or Tweeting. One thing they're not doing is reading through pages of endless, mindless copy.

Time to change - time to change...