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Google Wants You to be a Better Blog Writer

August 9, 2011 By 10 Comments

The days of schlocky web copy and $1/post off-shore blog writing are over.

Thanks to Google’s new Panda update, your writing can no longer suck. You can’t just get by on 8th grade writing skills, or by hiring an off-shore blog writer for a buck a post anymore.

The new Google Panda update stresses usability and the user experience over whether you have the right keywords in your title and body copy, and over backlinks. Oh sure, they’re still counted, but Google is not putting as much emphasis on those as they once were, thanks to the recent JC Penney backlinking scandal.Photo of a panda

As a result of this, and other Google gaming-techniques that were being abused, Google said, “You know what? That’s it. No more trying to trick us. Now we’re going to start looking at what your users are doing.” (Watch the Rand Fishkin video at the bottom of this post for a much better explanation than I just gave.)

Now, Google is starting to pay attention to the user experience: Do they visit more than one page, which means they like what they see? Are they on for a minute or more, or do they bounce out after 10 seconds, which means you didn’t captivate them? Did they even visit your page when you were at the top of the search engine (i.e. did your page even look interesting)?

The short of it is, if your site sucks, people won’t visit. If they visit, they won’t stick around. And they certainly won’t subject themselves to more than one page of it.

So how do you get them to stick around? You’d better have great content. Not just good enough, not barely readable. Not “meh.” It needs to be awesome. Because, like Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) said, “people share awesome.”

For writers, this means that your knowledge of SEO isn’t as important as it once was. You don’t have to know every single trick to get Google to pay attention to you. You now just have to write good stuff.

That means it needs to be readable, interesting, compelling, and persuasive. It means that if you suck at writing, you’re going to have troubles. It means if you don’t write compelling copy, people aren’t going to stick around. And if you don’t have a good looking, easy-to-navigate website, people aren’t going to want to spend time on your site.

For too long, writing has been a commodity at best, and completely ignored and dismissed at worst. I’ve written for people who didn’t care about the written word, and wouldn’t know good writing if it bit them on the ass. And yet, they were the first to complain when their crappy writing didn’t give them the results they believed they deserved.

These companies throw up cheap, schlocky copy with misspelled words and horrible grammar, knowing that if they gamed Google’s system, it was good enough to get a front page ranking. Well, no more.

While Panda isn’t the savior of all wordsmiths out there, it’s at least something that we can use to our advantage. It means that clients will — hopefully — start paying attention to the quality of their website or blog’s copy. And best of all, it means clients will — hopefully — start paying.

Panda doesn’t mean that this is the end of bad copy. Horrible writers are everywhere, foisting their drivel on an unsuspecting public. But it does mean that they will no longer be rewarded for their sub-par language skills.

Wistia

Photo credit: peromhc (Flickr)

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    Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Corporate Blogging, Ghost Writing, Search Engine Optimization, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

    Who Would You Hire, the Rookie or the Veteran?

    May 17, 2011 By 1 Comment

    I’m occasionally asked by clients whether we have a writer with a specific background. Are/were they in IT, in finance, in animal husbandry?

    I can usually find someone with a skill set that matches what the client is looking for, but it’s not always possible. But, it’s not always necessary either. We have two things going for us that make it unnecessary to have a solid background in the client’s industry:

    1. The client provides us with all the information first, and then they approve the final post. If anything is incorrect, they find it before it gets published.
    2. Our writers are smart enough and spend enough time working with a client that they get pretty good at the client’s issues, their value to the client’s, and the features that make the client’s business so awesome. They become marketing copywriters for that company.

      3. So this presents an interesting problem for us. Do we hire a good writer who is smart and can learn the product, or do we hire someone from the industry and fix their writing?

      Think of it this way: You’re a baseball coach, and you need to sign a hitter to your team. You have a choice between a rookie who can run from home to 1st in 3.5 seconds, and a veteran who run the same distance in the same time. Who do you pick?

      Most people will pick the veteran, because he knows the game and is a proven talent. But the best pick is going to be the rookie. If he can run to 1st in 3.5 seconds right now, think of how great he’ll be if you can hone his technique and teach him a couple tricks to make him run faster.

      That’s how we choose our writers. I prefer to work with writers who don’t have the industry skills, because I can teach them about the industry, and help them become better “runners.” But hiring the industry veterans who have reached their writing peak is problematic. I can’t teach them anything new. They’ve gone as far as they’re going to go as writers, unless they dedicate themselves to becoming better writers. (That’s not to say that these adults can’t become writers. It’s just that they have to make a major commitment to improving and becoming better, but I don’t have time to wait for that.)

      Who would you choose? Would you go for the industry rookie and teach him or her the ropes, or would you get the industry veteran who has a wealth of knowledge on the topic? Leave a comment and let me hear from you.

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      Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Corporate Blogging, Ghost Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

      Finding a Working Definition of Ghost Blogging

      October 1, 2010 By 4 Comments
      Bar chart on the acceptance of ghost blogging

      With all of the controversy that seems to swirl around the acceptability of ghost blogging, I realized we weren’t really arguing about the same thing. The acceptance seemed to be based on their definition of the term.

      Is it writing a blog post with the full input approval of a client? Or is it writing a post that doesn’t have any input, but does have approval? As I read descriptions and arguments by Jason Falls, Lindsay Manfredi, and other blogging luminaries, I realized it was the definition that was the problem.

      So we created a short little survey to figure out what the most widely understood definition of ghost blogging to be. Survey respondents were given 5 different options of what ghost blogging might entail, and then asked to rate them on a 5 point scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree). These are the results out of 51 responses, out of a 5 point scale*:

      1. CLIENT writes a post, YOU proofread, edit, and publish under CLIENT’S name: 4 people disagreed or strongly disagreed (7.9%), but 43 people agreed or strongly agreed (84.3%). Rating: 4.41/5
      2. Interview CLIENT and write a post based on their answers. CLIENT approves before article is posted. 1 person strongly disagreed (2%), 47 agreed or strongly agreed 92.2%). Rating: 4.49/5
      3. Write a post for CLIENT using their ideas and past statements. CLIENT approves. 4 people disagreed 7.8%), 44 people agreed or strongly agreed (86.3%). Rating: 4.29/5
      4. Write a post on behalf of CLIENT, using their ideas and past statements. CLIENT does NOT approve post. 31 people scored SD or D (62%), while only 15 people scored A or SA (30%). Rating: 2.5/5
      5. Write a post for CLIENT, using YOUR ideas. CLIENT does NOT approve post. 40 people scored SD or D (78.4%), 8 people scored A or SA (15.7%). Rating: 1.86/5

      (*These numbers won’t add up to 51 in this description, because I left the “neither agree nor disagree” out of this text for simplicity and brevity. The actual numbers are at the bottom of this post.)

      Bar chart on the acceptance of ghost blogging

      From these results, we can infer a few basic ideas about ghost blogging’s acceptability:

      • Ghost blogging is acceptable to most people as long as the client approves the posts before they are published. In fact, this was the most important factor in deciding whether ghost blogging is appropriate or not.
      • Ghost blogging is acceptable, as long as the client has input (#2), or at the very least, the ideas used have been addressed in the past (#3). Option #2 is akin to a copywriter sitting down with a client, and synthesizing the client’s thoughts and ideas into a piece of text. Option #3 is similar to a presidential speechwriter who is already familiar with the president’s stance on certain topics, and can write about them with authority.
      • At least 8 people thought it was acceptable to essentially put words in the client’s mouth without their knowledge. Personally, I can’t think of any instance where this would be acceptable, in business or government, let alone blogging. Even when I was writing speeches for the Indiana State Health Commissioner, everything had to follow her vision. Her administrative may have assigned the speech or project, but I had to know the Commissioner’s stand on the issues.
      • Conversely, 4 people thought it is wrong to even proofread and edit a client’s writings, and then post it on the client’s website on their behalf. While I’m a little worried that nearly 16% of the respondents thought it’s okay to pose as a client without the client’s knowledge, I can only wonder at how rigid the beliefs are of the people who are opposed to editing and then copying, pasting, and clicking “Publish.” It also worries me what they would think if they knew I had four editors poring over my book before the publishers printed it for me.

      Because the first three options all scored above a 4.4, I can conclude that most people will accept the idea that ghost bloggers need the client’s input and approval before a post gets published. Anything that does not have at least the client’s approval crosses the line of acceptability, and anything that has both input and approval.

      So, that is our baseline for acceptable ghost blogging. The next step is to find out how strongly people feel about it, and see if we can get a bigger group to respond. More on that later.

      Ghost Blogging Survey Results

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        Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Ghost Writing, Writing Tagged With: , ,

        Really? We’re STILL Talking About Ghost Blogging?

        September 7, 2010 By 10 Comments
        Avinash Kaushik makes a misinformed tweet about ghost blogging

        What is it with these social media purists and ghost blogging? What exactly do they not understand?

        Ghost blogging is a service that is provided by ghost writers. We transcribe interviews from our clients, get their approval for what we’ve written, and we post it to their blogs.

        This is no more inauthentic than hiring a social media agency to run your social media campaign, or an ad agency to create your TV commercials. It’s no more inauthentic than private labeling/white labeling a product made by someone else — food companies do it all the time, and no one complains.

        Avinash Kaushik makes a misinformed tweet about ghost bloggingMy friend, Doug Karr, recently wrote a post about Avinash Kaushik’s rather misinformed statement about “ghost blogging being the antithesis of everything social.”

        Doug said:

        It’s always interesting when someone with as much authority as Avinash throws out a rule like this. Not only do I disagree with Avinash, I know many, many companies who would disagree as well. Ghostblogging is not the antithesis of everything social… inauthenticity, dishonesty, and insincerity are the antithesis of everything social.

        As a professional ghost blogger, I’m sick to death of people who paint ghost bloggers as some sort of moral leper, the used car salesmen of the social media industry. (Oops. There, now you’ve made me offend used car salesmen. Happy now?) These social media purists decry ghost blogging as being less than honest because CEOs of large corporations and small businesses don’t spend 1 – 2 hours a day crafting a single blog post.

        “Oh, but if you were serious about it, you’d make the time,” they lilt, wagging their fingers at the slacker CEOs who whine that they’re “tired” after a 14 hour day. “Because social media is all about the conversation and community and the inherent good in other people.”

        No it isn’t. Social media in the business world is all about making money. Businesses can’t pay their workers with conversations. You don’t appease shareholders with community. And their vendors don’t want to hear about all the good you’re finding in other people when they ask why you’re 60 days overdue.

        If we followed the social media purists’ logic to its logical conclusion, we would not be allowed to use these other ghost-type services:

        • Businesses would have to produce their own ads, commercials, and graphics in-house. They could not hire an outside agency to do it. Or if they did, there would be a big disclaimer on it saying it was produced by that agency.
        • Software companies could not outsource their programming to freelance coders. They should do it all themselves.
        • Celebrities should not hire ghost writers to help with their books. They should be allowed to suck on their own.
        • Politicians would not be allowed to use ghost writers to write their speeches. They would have to mumble and fumble their way through every speech, no matter who they were. Or if they used a ghostwriter, they would have to interrupt their speech every 10 minutes with, “This speech was written by my ghost writer, Jeff Shesol.”

        Ghost blogging is the last bastion of any kind of ghosting, where some purist thinks that we shouldn’t be allowed to do it because it’s “inauthentic.”

        Do you know what’s inauthentic? Inauthentic is following fewer than 100 people while 25,000 people follow you on Twitter. f you’re in “the conversation” business, don’t you think you should have a conversation? Otherwise, you’re just holding a one-way broadcast with 25,000 people, and are showing that you’re not willing to listen to anyone else. That’s not authentic in the least bit.

        Whether the purists like it or not, ghost blogging is going to only get more popular. As companies want to enter the social media marketing realm and realize they can’t, because they just laid off their best writers, they will look for other ways to gain that competitive edge. If they’re going to outsource their web design, their ad creation, and their strategy, why shouldn’t they outsource their writing too?

        There are freelance writers in all other parts of business — marketing copy, TV scripts, radio scripts, ad copy, web copy, annual reports, press releases, white papers, grant proposals — so why is blog writing so different from all those other forms of ghost writing?

        It isn’t. If you hire someone to write something for you, and you don’t stick their name on it, they’re a ghost writer. I don’t care if it’s marketing, advertising, or grants. They’re a ghost writer. No one is complaining about their inauthenticity or their non-transparency.

        So the purists need to get off their high horse, learn how the world works, and accept the fact that ghost writers are skilled writers who are paid to provide a service for other people. And we’re going to be here for a while.

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          Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing, Social Media, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

          The Number One Reason Companies Need to Blog About Their Products

          May 20, 2010 By 4 Comments

          We write a lot of product blogs for our clients. No matter what size, shape, color, or price of the product, we’ve written several hundred blog product posts.

          But for all the hundreds of posts we’ve written, there’s only one reason we do it: to win search.

          Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware has long beat the “blogging wins search” drum. (And while I don’t agree about his “myth of the reader” — I believe you should try to get and keep regular, returning readers — he makes a great point about winning search.)

          A product blog post is one of the easiest things to write. It’s just 200 – 300 words describing a particular product with a link back to the original catalog entry or product description. Each post equals a backlink back to your website, and the more backlinks you have to your website, the better you rank in a search.

          Should I Keep My Blog Inside My Website, or Have a Separate Blog?

          We’re fans of keeping a blog and a website together, but there’s no harm in keeping the two separate. After all, the search engines recognize it as a separate website that links back to your original one. However, you’re better off putting your blog on your static website and use internal backlinks to go from the blog to the static pages.

          But if you want to boost your search engine rankings even further, create a second blog where you publish your blog posts, and keep it separate from your regular corporate blog where you’re publishing your authority posts, credibility posts, issues posts, and educational posts. This way you can improve search and find first time visitors with one blog, and gain returning readers with the other.

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            Filed Under: Blog ROI, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing, Marketing, ProBlogService, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

            5 Tips to Become a Professional Blogger

            April 26, 2010 By 2 Comments


            Someone once asked me, “How do I become a blogger?”

            “Simple,” I wrote back, “Raise your hands over your head, and shout to the heavens, ‘I. Am. A BLOGGER!!‘ And then you are one.”

            It really is that easy to become a blogger. Truly anyone can do it. You just need some basic software, and know how to type. After that, you’re good to go.

            But becoming a professional blogger is a whole different matter. Here are 5 tips to becoming an actual professional word slinger.

            1. Make sure you define what you mean by “professional.” There are two types of professional blogger: the person who makes a lot of money selling something via their blog, usually either Google Ads or ebooks, and the professional ghost blogger. While finding success as the former is possible, finding it as the latter is more likely. I have one friend who has a very popular blog, and sells Google AdWords on it. It only brings in a few thousand dollars a year, certainly not enough to make a living. Ghost bloggers, on the other hand, can earn a decent living writing blog posts for other clients. Part copywriter, part social media geek, part blog manager, the ghost blogger is your basic freelance writer, but working in this specific electronic format.

            2. Make sure your writing skills are strong. Writing is easy, writing well is hard. I realize that we can all write in complete sentences and organize our thoughts into semi-coherent patterns. So can your average eighth grader. Unfortunately, some people never progressed beyond that level of skill. If you want to be a professional blogger, your writing needs to be of a higher quality than most.

              If you’re not sure, find some other writers you trust and whose skills you admire, and ask them to honestly evaluate your writing. Tell them you don’t want the typical pat on the head and “it’s pretty good” assessment. Ask them to be honest, and to give you a real evaluation of your skills. If they truly like it, then you’re on your way. If they don’t, start a blog, and work hard to improve. I’ve been a writer for 20 years, and am still learning and improving.

            3. Try to specialize in an area you have experience in. It’s not a requirement, but it will make your life easier. The one interesting thing about newspaper reporters is that they are an expert for a day, absorbing enough information to write their articles. The next day, they move on to a new subject. Ghost bloggers do this. They learn as much about the client as they can, and will write whatever the client wants them to. The client will usually dictate what they want said, the writer writes it, and then gives it to the client for approval. This way, the writer learns about the client, much like a reporter learns about his or her beat.

              When we take on a new client, we spend a lot of time learning about their industry and their company. As we work for them over the months, we do become knowledgeable about their field. But the clients we truly excel at are those we have experience and knowledge in. With them, we can hit the ground running, and our learning curve is significantly flattened.

            4. Associate with other professional writers. It’s often said we’re only as good as the 5 people we hang out with the most. If that’s the case, make sure you’re spending it with other professional writers (or at least really good amateurs). In fact, some of your best mentors and referral sources will be your competitors. Read their blogs, meet them at conferences, hang out with them at coffee shops. You’ll learn a lot from them. Then — and this is the important part — be willing to do the same for other, younger writers who come to you for advice and education.

            5. Read a lot. Every writer has a writing style they learned from reading someone else’s stuff. I learned mine from reading Dave Barry, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Waits, Hunter S. Thompson, and Ernest Hemingway. To keep my own style from becoming stale, I revisit my favorite works and re-immerse myself in their words and style. I also seek out new writers with similar styles, and draw inspiration from them.

              It’s important to remember, however, not to copy your favorite styles, but take the best from each of them, and synthesize them into your own. By creating your own distinctive writing style, you’ll stand out as a quality writer and blogger, worthy of the fees you demand.

            What about you? Do you have any writing tips or suggestions for aspiring professional bloggers? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.

            Photo: Brad J. Ward (Flickr), noted social media marketer

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              Filed Under: Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing, ProBlogService, Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

              Who has time to do the work today?

              March 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

              Clock - who has time to get work doneThere has been a lot of news lately on how companies are really not hiring right now. A recent report talks about how a companies are hiring temp workers, but they are not hiring them to stay. In the past, a common practice was to test drive a worker then offer them a position. Hiring them as full-time employees is not happening right now.

              So, who is getting the work done?

              When I joined ATA Airlines back in 1997, George Michelsons brought in Bain and Company to basically prepare the company for sale. The process was to get rid of a lot of people and put more jobs onto fewer people. While this strategy worked around the country for Bain, it usually preceded an upgrade in office automation to ensure the work could still get done.

              The office automation phase did not occur at ATA Airlines.

              The result was a lot of stressed out people carrying around their imaginary trays trying to figure out how they were going to fit one more item onto an already heavy load. No longer were people interested in teamwork, they were more interested in self-preservation. It created a lot of ill-tempered people in the process.

              As some of my clients reveal their corporate cultures, I am finding similarities to what I experienced at ATA Airlines. No one has time to commit to anything above and beyond what their core responsibilities are. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is not projected to get much better – CEO’s are reluctant to hire.

              What are the solutions?

              The easiest is what is being done by some today. Hire temp workers to get things done. They may cost a little more in the short-term, but allow you to avoid the headaches of hiring employees and their costs over the long-term. There are a lot of companies providing these services.

              Sometimes, just hiring a grunt worker is not enough. Sometimes you need a professional person to do the work, you don’t have time to do. There are companies being set up that can act as your Marketing Department, your Accounting Department, or your HR Department. They can do it at a cost that is far cheaper than hiring full-time employees, but are focused solely on getting work done for you.

              So, look around and ask yourself, are you and your colleagues a bunch of stressed out grumpy people not really accomplishing much because there is too much to do? There is help out there that can help your company meet its strategic goals for the year.

              We actually put together a white paper on the ROI of outsourcing blogging and social media. You can download it here, if you want to take a look.

              Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.

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                Filed Under: Blog ROI, Blogging, Ghost Writing, News, Research Desk, Tools, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

                Want to Improve Your Writing? Be Intentional

                January 26, 2010 By 6 Comments
                My Moleskine at Hubbard &Cravens

                Years ago, I had a chance to hear one of the Philadelphia 76ers speak about how he became a professional ballplayer. Now, I couldn’t tell you who the guy was even if he walked up to me today. But one thing he said always stuck with me.

                When he practiced shooting the ball, he was always intentional when he practiced. When he practiced his shooting, he didn’t screw around. He didn’t goof off, and he didn’t take shots he wouldn’t normally take. He wasn’t a sky-hook shooter, so he didn’t shoot Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s famous shot. He didn’t do backward shots or trick shots. In short, every practice shot he took was a real shot.

                “I don’t shoot these shots in a game, so I don’t waste my time practicing them.”

                It’s the same for writing: if you want to get good at it, you have to be intentional with it. (Actually, this is true for getting good at anything, but I’m a writer, so I’ll stick with what I know.)

                My Moleskine at Hubbard &CravensWhat does that mean? Writing is one of the most intentional activities we can do. It’s not like shooting trick shots in basketball, or going for a slow leisurely ride instead of a training ride on your bike. You’re either writing or you’re not, right?

                Actually, no, you can even screw around when you’re writing. It’s in your attitude, rather than your subject matter. It’s reading when you should be writing (and no, “I’m doing research” doesn’t count). You can be just as intentional writing an email as you are a novel, or writing a comedy sketch as you are a marketing piece. It doesn’t matter where, when, or how you do it. Chris Brogan will write wherever he can find the time. And I carry my laptop and a Moleskine wherever I go.

                How do I write with intention?

                When I’m writing, I always have three questions in the back of my mind.

                • Is that the best word I can use? Is this conveying the right impact, drama, or humor? Dave Barry would take hours to write a single humor column, sometimes struggling with choosing which word carried the best impact for a joke. I’ll sometimes hit Thesaurus.com to find a good word.
                • Did I set this up for the best possible impact? In humor, setup is crucial for a joke to be funny. You can have the best punchline in the world, but if you tank the setup, the whole joke fails. It’s true for every other kind of writing too. This blog post, a marketing brochure, a speech, anything. If you want to have impact, you have to set the reader up for it.
                • How can I make this better? I edit everything. Even my emails get edited before I send them out. But I’m not always looking for punctuation errors or typos. I’m looking to make sure I’m satisfied with everything I’ve written. It usually works best if I can leave something for a couple hours, overnight is even better, and a week is a rare luxury. I have even edited some of my humor blog posts six months after I published them.

                Becoming a good writer doesn’t mean taking all kinds of classes, or writing in your very special notebook with your very special pen in your very favorite coffee shop (just don’t tell my wife that; I use it as an excuse to get out of the house sometimes). It’s a matter of focusing on the task at hand and casting an eye at how you can improve. Not just the piece you’re writing, but future work you’re going to do.

                Do you suck at dialog? Work on improving the dialog for the next piece you write. Then use that new level of competency as your starting point for the next time, and try to improve from that. Frankly, I used to suck at dialog, so I worked on it for months and even years. Now, unfortunately, my narration and scene description are less-than-acceptable, and I have to really focus on those.

                But by writing my narration with my three questions, I’ll be able to improve my descriptions, so I can spend less time writing and more time sitting on a beach, drinking little umbrella drinks, served by. . . some kind of. . . woman wearing a dress that she bought at one of those. . . dress selling places.

                Dammit!

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                  Filed Under: Communication, Ghost Writing, Writing Tagged With: ,

                  The Two Most Important Ways to Tap Into a Buyer’s Motivation

                  November 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

                  Why do people buy? When you boil it down, there are two reasons why people buy anything.

                  Fear and Greed. Loss or gain.

                  In fact, when you look at the Seven Deadly Sins (Greed, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride), Greed isn’t just one of them, it’s the foundation of for most of them: Gluttony, Pride, Lust, and Envy are all greed-based sins. Gluttony is greed of food, Lust is greed of sex, Envy is greed of possessions, and so on.

                  We see ads for nice cars, nice clothes, good food, expensive watches. We’re told, you need these, you deserve these, people will like you if you have them. You’ll be successful and rich, and able to afford more things like this. We Envy the people who have them, and we are Greedy to have them ourselves.

                  Even the ads that sell through sex tap into this mindset: if you have/eat/drink this product, hot women will want to have sex with you. And sex — Lust — is one of the most primal Greed urges we’ve got.

                  Fear is the other driving force. We buy locks because we fear losing what we have (which is fear driven by greed, so it’s a double whammy). We buy safe cars and SUVs because we fear being injured in a crash.

                  One day, I was flipping through a parenting magazine and saw that every single ad was fear based:

                  • Buy this baby monitor so you can hear if your child stops breathing.
                  • Buy this car seat so your baby won’t be hurt in a car accident.
                  • Buy this sleeping trough so your baby stays on his back and doesn’t die.

                  It was actually kind of depressing, because all these new mothers were being bombarded, not with just advertising, but frightening thoughts that their tiny new life could be extinguished at the snap of Fate’s fingers. I remember what it was like the first time I was a dad, and I was able to conjure up all these scary images without the help of advertisers. So I can only imagine what it’s like for new mothers to see this, page after page, ad after ad.

                  As a writer, this is important to know. This is, deep down in the places we don’t talk about, how your customers think. They buy so they can have more of something or prevent the loss of something else. You need to write your copy in a way that draws water from one of these two wells.

                  Look at your product or service, and figure out why someone would want to buy it. Let’s say you sell synthetic motor oil. It’s fairly expensive compared to regular motor oil, but it lasts longer than regular motor oil. You could write your copy in one of two ways:

                    • Greed: If you use this motor, you won’t need to change your oil as frequently. Instead of getting your oil changed every 3,000 miles, you change it every 6,000 miles. Instead of spending $250 per year, you’ll only spend $125 per year, which means you’ll put $125 back in your own pocket.

                  Greed (Envy/Pride): Drivers who love their fancy, expensive cars put synthetic motor oil into them. If you want people to think your car is just as good as these expensive cars here, you’ll put our oil into your car too.

                  • Fear: Synthetic motor oil last longer and works better than regular motor oil. Cheap motor oils break down more quickly, and results in more wear and tear on your engine. The more wear and tear, the sooner your car will break down. This can result in a very expensive repair, or even an entire engine replacement, which will cost at least $3,000. By using synthetic oil, you’ll save your engine and protect your car from costly repairs.

                  Unfortunately, appealing to people’s nobler efforts — it’s good for the environment — isn’t the most effective way to get people to buy. They’re not thinking that way. If you ask Prius owners why they bought their car, and most of them will tell you it’s because of gas prices. A very few people will cite the environment as their number 1 reason for buying it. Otherwise, hybrid cars would have been overwhelmingly popular five years ago, and not just a growing trend.

                  Instead, people bought the Prius because they were afraid gas prices would be very expensive and they didn’t want to pay too much for their gas (Greed and Fear. Double score!) Even today, gas prices and fuel economy are still the number 1 reason for the hybrid’s success. (And just so I don’t sound completely cynical, I will agree that “it’s good for the environment” is a very good reason to buy a hybrid, and probably in the top 3 for most Prius owners.)

                  So as you write your web copy, see if you can tap into the fear or the greed mindset, even a little, and see if your response rates don’t go up.

                  If you do, you could become fabulously wealthy. If you don’t, bad things may happen to you.

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                    Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : The Two Most Important Ways to Tap Into a Buyer's Motivation  •  Keywords : copywriting, seven deadly sins, writing  • 
                    Filed Under: Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Ghost Writing, Writing Tagged With: , ,

                    Making the Argument for Ghost Blogging. Yet Again.

                    November 10, 2009 By 16 Comments
                    Elizabeth Friedland is a Social Media Ninja

                    My good friend Lindsay Manfredi and I were both interviewed about ghost blogging last week, and asked whether we thought it carried any ethical dilemmas.

                    The answer is no, it doesn’t. Not if it’s done correctly.

                    I’ve talked about ghost blogging before, and said if it follows a few basic procedures, it’s as ethical as, say, public relations. (Er, on second thought. . . )social media ninjas

                    Yet, the issue keeps getting brought up, as if we’re committing some unpardonable ethical sin, like medical testing on baby seals. But the only people who seem to care are social media purists and “social media ninjas” who talk about transparency, yet work in industries where their efforts, if done correctly, are anonymous and behind the scenes as well.

                    Ghostwriting = copywriting

                    Anyone who does freelance copywriting can tell you that their name doesn’t go on squat when it comes to their efforts. Sales brochures, web copy, sales letters, speeches, you name it, the writer’s name is not-so-noticeably absent from the final copy. And that’s fine. That’s the life we choose.

                    Marketing agencies don’t get their names on their clients’ campaigns. No one whines that “my name isn’t on that sales brochure I wrote” or “my name isn’t in the newspaper article I sent the press release about.” Frankly, if you’re worried about getting credit for your work, you’re in the wrong business. If you want a byline, be a journalist.

                    Maintaining Ethical Boundaries for Ghost Blogging

                    A good ghost has procedures they follow with their clients:

                    1. I interview the client, who tells me — in his own words — his thoughts about their industry-specific issues.
                    2. I transcribe the interview and clean it up, turning it into 350 – 450 words of clear, informative copy.
                    3. The client approves the article.
                    4. I publish the article on their blog.

                    It’s the clients thoughts, the client’s words. I just transcribe it. Or as we like to say, “we do the work so you can go to your meetings.”

                    How is this any different from the CEO’s letter at the front of the company’s annual report? Or a politician’s speech to her constituents? Or the catalog copy that was supposedly written by the company’s founder? How is it any different from a PR flak’s press release that becomes the basis for a news article? (I say this as a former flak whose press releases were often turned into “Staff Wire Reports” by one county newspaper.)

                    Answer: It isn’t. Not a bit. They are exactly the same thing. (In fact, Jason Falls says that we’re not ghostwriters, we’re copywriters, and that it’s okay.)

                    These are the same steps that every other copywriter, speechwriter, and marketing director in the world follows when they produce work for a client. This has been an acceptable practice since well before Judson Welliver ghosted for Warren G. Harding, thus becoming the first presidential speechwriter.

                    The only place ghostwriting isn’t acceptable is journalism and academia, as it should be. Your merit is based on the work you produce; in business, it’s based on the results you achieve. (Although academia seems to have some of its own ghostwriting issues.)

                    So if you are against ghost blogging, you need to be against all ghostwriting. You need to speak out against speechwriters for politicians. You need to put an end to all freelance copywriting. You need to stop sending out press releases that don’t include your name as a quoted source.

                    Otherwise, it’s a non-issue. The people who hire me are the ones I’m concerned with. The social media purists? Well, you just give me something to blog about, thus boosting my own search engine rankings.

                    So, thanks for that.

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                      Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : Making the Argument for Ghost Blogging. Yet Again.  •  Keywords : blogging, ghostwriting, Social Media, social media experts  • 
                      Filed Under: Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Ghost Writing, Writing Tagged With: , , ,
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