My No. 1 rule for good writing: Be interesting.

Sure, I’m a bit obsessed with grammar and admit I loved diagramming sentences in middle school. I keep an AP Stylebook on my desk. I get a thrill from printing out copy, going through it with a pencil and crossing out redundancies.

But all this nerdy copy-editing stuff is secondary to the first rule. After all, if the basic story is not compelling to the intended audience, who cares if your subject and verb agree? O.K., I care, but you get what I’m saying.

The “be interesting” rule is particularly important for my PR peeps to remember these days, as the popularity of content marketing increases.

Also sometimes called corporate journalism or branded media, content marketing is when companies create their own content to build their brands and drive web traffic. Content marketing can include blogs, white papers, web copy, byliners (placed in traditional media) and even social media communication such as Facebook posts and Pinterest boards.

Companies are jumping on the content bandwagon because traditional advertising is become less effective, the black-and-white lines of “real journalism” have faded and people care less about the source of information, as long as it is relevant to their lives.

However, too many companies fail to create content that is useful or interesting. A blog that reads like a bunch of press releases touting the company’s minor successes and community involvement is boring.

Too many PR people begin the content marketing process by thinking about what messages they want to get across. Instead, they need to think more like journalists and strive to write something that is newsy, surprising, helpful and/or thought provoking.

Because what’s the point of good writing if nobody reads it?