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Erik Deckers

About Erik Deckers

Erik Deckers is the President of Pro Blog Service, a content marketing and social media marketing agency He co-authored four social media books, including No Bullshit Social Media with Jason Falls (2011, Que Biz-Tech), and Branding Yourself with Kyle Lacy (3rd ed., 2017, Que Biz-Tech), and The Owned Media Doctrine (2013, Archway Publishing). Erik has written a weekly newspaper humor column for 10 papers around Indiana since 1995. He was also the Spring 2016 writer-in-residence at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, FL.

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Here are my most recent posts

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Bloggers Need to Act Professionally to be Taken Seriously

Yesterday, Deb Ng put a big smackdown on self-entitled bloggers who think that conference hotels need to fawn all over their guests or face the wrath of thousands of angry mommy bloggers armed with smartphones and hashtags.

I found a post filled with nothing but entitlement. The blogger, whose name is Jen, posted an open letter to the Sheraton Chicago who will be hosting BlogHer in a few weeks.  She wanted to prepare hotel management for what’s to come.

After explaining what a blogger is, because apparently hotel staff aren’t hip or in touch enough to know, Jen goes on to tell the hotel what to expect if BlogHer attendees aren’t treated super special.

Ng’s disgust is understandable. Bloggers want to be taken seriously as writers and journalists, and the problems Jen warns the Sheraton about make it that much harder. It doesn’t help when bloggers are on their worst behavior, not by being loud and obnoxious — every conference in every industry does that — but by being unreasonable and demanding.

If we want to be taken seriously as professionals, and not just a hobbyist with a laptop, we need to act like professionals. Here’s how:

1) Act Like You’re Supposed To Be There

Indy 500 Media Center
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Media Center. I’ve covered the Indy 500 since 2009.
Don’t fawn, don’t gush, don’t geek out, don’t ask for autographs. Red Hot Mama, a baseball blogger, once told me the Cincinnati Reds won’t give access to bloggers anymore, because one blogger in the mid-2000s was given media access and instead acted like a total fanboy. He got pictures taken with players, asked for autographs, the whole works. He was the first and last blogger allowed in the clubhouse. Similarly, when I started covering the Indianapolis 500 for my personal blog, I was told the Speedway would yank the credentials of any journalist who ever asked a driver for an autograph or a photo.

Journalists don’t gush, they act like they’re supposed to be there. They have a job to do, and they get it done. Do the same. Act like this is your job, not a once-in-a-lifetime special treat. Because if you don’t, it truly will only happen once. Act like a pro and they’ll ask you back.

2) You’re Not Entitled To Anything

You don’t deserve the things you’re given. They’re not given to you because you’re special. They’re given to you as part of a media and PR campaign. You can’t march into a conference or special event and demand a swag bag or a VIP pass. (See “You’re Not A Celebrity” below.) Don’t act entitled, be humble. If someone gives you a gift, accept it in the spirit it’s given: it’s a gift. Be grateful for it.

This issue is a sticky wicket, because bloggers will often get free things that journalists are not allowed to receive. It’s one area of ethics that separates bloggers from the pros, and may need to change one day. But in the meantime, if you act like you deserve it, you’ll soon be blackballed by the people you’re trying to write about.

3) Don’t Tweet Your Tantrums

If you don’t get something you want, don’t be a passive-aggressive whiner. Don’t throw a Twitter tantrum. Be a mature and responsible adult. Speak to a real person about your complaint. If they don’t make it right, speak to a manager. If they still don’t make it right, then you can take it outside. Tweeting that a restaurant burned your meal or forgot to put cream in your coffee without giving them a chance to make it right first just makes you look like a brat.

There are a couple of times where going straight to Twitter is not a bad thing. Any company that has a Twitter customer service account can be more easily reached this way than spending 20 minutes on the phone. @Delta has fixed a couple of problems for me in the past this way. But publicly complaining about something that could have been fixed with a 15 second conversation is not the way to do it.

4) You’re Not A Celebrity

I’ve never known a journalist to play the “do you know who I am?” card. They don’t expect to be recognized. Many go out of their way to avoid it. Which means, they never threaten people with “exposure” in their newspaper or on their news program when they’re displeased.

Conversely, I’ve known bloggers and book authors who expect immediate name recognition, believing that people regularly peruse the blogosphere or study a bookstore’s shelves in the hopes that they’ll one day meet those writers. When that recognition doesn’t come, said writers will drop their job title or accomplishments about as casually as a college freshman trying not to act drunk, in the hopes of intimidating the other person into giving them free stuff.

You may have thousands of people who gush about you online or shake your hand after you speak at a conference, but until your face shows up on a gossip rag at the supermarket checkout, you’re not a real celebrity.

5) Don’t Be A Bully

When things don’t go your way, don’t be a bully (i.e. don’t play the “do you know who I am?” card here either). Don’t get all your friends to join forces and tweet someone else into submission.

I’m always amazed at the number of people who claim to be anti-bullying, but will gang up and publicly shame people who they think are deserving of their scorn. Companies that gave them a bad experience will soon be on the receiving end of several dozen, if not hundreds, of snotty comments on their Facebook page.

If you’re a consumer or social justice advocate, that’s one thing. But slashing people with the swift sword of Twitter justice just because you don’t like the coffee makes you a bully.

(No, seriously, that happens. The story Ng responded to included this little gem: “Don’t water down the coffee you serve us. Don’t. We’ll hunt you down and kill you with hashtags. #WheresTheCaffeineSheraton?” While Jen’s statement was supposed to be a joke, that actually happens way more than it ever should.)

We’re going to see a day when bloggers are seen and accepted as professionals, but that day is going to be a long time coming when they act like whiny little gits who expect the world to fall over themselves trying to please them. I’m not just picking on Jen or BlogHer, I’m talking to any blogger who has ever thought their 2,000 readers a month made them A Force To Be Reckoned With.

Treat people with respect, be kind, be polite, and act like you know what you’re doing. Everyone else knows what that should look like, and when you don’t, you just make the rest of us who are actually doing the work look bad.

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Grammar Bullies, Write or Shut Up

I saw a video based on an essay by Stephen Fry about how he loathes language pedants (that’s fancy British talk for Grammar Bullies), and it’s got me rethinking how I approach my own love of language and punctuation pet peeves.

First, let me say I’m not a fan of a 6:30 minute kinetic typography video (see it below); I’d rather just read the original, or hear the audio, not read at someone else’s out-loud pace. But that’s just me. Other than that, this was brilliant.

For me, it is a cause of some upset that more Anglophones don’t enjoy language. Music is enjoyable it seems, so are dance and other, athletic forms of movement. People seem to be able to find sensual and sensuous pleasure in almost anything but words these days. Words, it seems belong to other people, anyone who expresses themselves with originality, delight and verbal freshness is more likely to be mocked, distrusted or disliked than welcomed. The free and happy use of words appears to be considered elitist or pretentious.

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There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.

— Don’t Mind Your Language by Stephen Fry

I’ve always been a stickler about language, but I try not to make an ass of myself about it. I make sure I use it correctly, but I don’t want to be a Grammar Bully. I don’t correct people out loud, although I’ve been known to mark up a sign or two. And I’ve, on occasion, sent my friend Doug Karr a private DM when he’s misspelled a word in a blog post.

My bigger crusade has been spent fighting the Grammar Bullies, those self-appointed vigilantes who snipe and gripe about every preposition-ending sentence, every split infinitive, and every other misguided grammar myth that they insist on perpetrating because they stopped learning about grammar after the 5th grade.

(Had they continued, they would know those myths have long been debunked, and that you can boldly split infinitives and end sentences with any prepositions you come up with.)

My Challenge to Grammar Bullies

So I’m changing my own personal rules about language usage. I’m not going to pick nits off other people’s language, unless they pick on someone else first. I’m not going to correct someone’s mistakes, unless they just need a guiding hand to send them in the right direction, rather than a bully’s smackdown.

To the Grammar Bullies, those people who still vomit out their 5th grade English rules like yesterdays’ lunch, you need to put up or shut up. Most of those rules are outdated or were incorrect in the first place.

If you’re a Grammar Bully who doesn’t actually do any real writing yourself, you’re a coward. An assassin who does his work with poisons, so he can be safely out of harm’s way, rather than the warrior, who wades into battle and earns his glory. You’re the theater critic who can’t act, the sports analyst who never played.

I think the new standard for Grammar Sticklers (that’s fancy American talk for “you’re being an A-hole”) should be that you need to be a Writer. You can’t just complain about grammar and language. You need to produce your own grammar and language for everyone to see.

Write, as Fry said, “poems, love-letters, novels and stories.” Put them out there for the whole world to see. Let the other people who are “too farting busy sneering and guarding the language” get a gander at your work.

But if you can’t produce, if you don’t have any skin in the game, then your “corrections” are hollow and pedantic (that’s fancy talk for “this is why no one likes you”), and should be ignored.

You’re not allowed to gripe. You’re not allowed to point out errors in other people’s writing. You may not complain about these things, because you haven’t earned the right. You haven’t done the work. You haven’t slung the ink. You haven’t sat down at a typewriter, opened a vein, and bled.

Because until you do, you don’t know the annoyance of a pesky piss-ant biting at your ankles, complaining about things they know nothing about.

So, you self-appointed grammar thugs and bullies, put your Sharpies down, pick up your notebooks and laptops, and let’s see what you can do. Until then, keep your pens and your pedantic rules in your pockets, and let the real writers get back to work.

(As for the rest of you: seriously, stop putting apostrophes in words to pluralize them. “DVD’s” and “car’s” is incorrect.)

 

 

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Paying For the Unicorn’s Food: Content Marketers Should Not Accept Minimum Wage

When it comes to writers working for cheap, or feeling guilty about what they charge, I always tell this joke. I’ve told it before, but it’s worth repeating:

A business owner is horrified one day to discover that her business server is completely broken. Kaput. Shot. Frazzled. Stick a fork in it, it’s done. Problem is, all her company files are on there, and she’s dead in the water without it.

In a panic, she calls a computer repair expert. He shows up, and examines the server. Runs his hands over it, listens to it, even sniffs it. Then he pulls out a tiny hammer, and taps the computer. It starts right up.

The business owner is overjoyed, but that joy turns to annoyance when she receives the bill a few days later: Computer repair, $500.

She calls the repair expert in a huff, and demands to see an itemized bill. “You just tapped the thing with a tiny hammer. That was so simple What makes you think that was worth $500?”

A few days later, she receives the itemized bill: Tapping the computer with a tiny hammer: $1. Knowing where to tap it: $499.

I get this a lot in my work.

Surprisingly, unicorns only eat cheeseburgers and drink bourbon. At least that’s what Jason Falls tells me. I’ve been paying him to feed my unicorn.

I’m a writer. I do the thing that we all learned to do in middle school and high school. As a result, people think that what I do is easy, and that they’re also good at it, which means they’re not willing to pay for it. (We also took shop class and art, yet there aren’t more professional woodworkers and artists.)

It also means a lot of new writers are afraid to charge what they’re worth, and they accept lower prices out of guilt, and the belief that everyone can do what they do.

Recently one potential client told me my rates were way too high — higher than anyone else he had encountered — and that he had been quoted $100 per month for similar content marketing services.

My first thought was “I’ll take it! I can use the money to pay for my unicorn’s food.”

But rather than say that, or explain how he would be getting a professional writer with nearly a quarter century’s experience under his fingers, I gave him some advice instead. I told him I’ve seen similar “writers” charging similar amounts, and that he should watch out for a couple things when he received his content:

  • Blog posts written in such poor English, they need so much editing and repair that it’s just easier to delete them and start over.
  • The content is syndicated and shared among many so different clients, which means Google won’t accept it as original content, which means he’ll never get the SEO benefit.

Writing may be one skill that was taught in school, but it’s not one we all do equally. If that were the case, we would have all been professional athletes. We would all be musicians. We would all speak German, Spanish, or French fluently. We would all know chemistry. We would all be experimental physicists. We could balance our checkbook and solve for X. We would be equally awesome at everything we learned in school, and would never have the need for accountants, chemists, or landscape architects.

The fact that we don’t should be a clue that not everyone is a good writer either. Just because people write emails doesn’t make them writers. Just because people write reports doesn’t make them writers. Just because I can make a vinegar and baking soda volcano does not mean I’ll develop the next cure for baldness.

Writers are those talented individuals who can write a press release in 20 minutes, can write a blog post that ranks high on Google and is shared and read by thousands of people, and write a book on their chosen subject in a matter of months.

We know where to tap the hammer.

Writing is not a talent that everyone can do well, no matter how many emails you write. Writing is a skill that we spend years and years developing and improving. If everyone could do it, we would all write books.

In every other endeavor, we know true craftsman will charge according to his or her skills. The master carpenter charges more than the new apprentice, because he knows he has more and better skills. The master chef makes more money than the kid chopping vegetables, because she has worked and studied for years.

So when you compare two writers who are charging vastly different amounts for the same work, look closely at the background of the writers. Who has been doing it for 25 years, and who just got out of college? Who has written 2,000 articles, and who has written 2,000 words?

Freelancers, if you’re good at your job, and you know you’re worth your price, stick to it. Don’t be offended by those who want a lower price, but don’t lower your skills and standards either. Just keep doing what you’re doing and prove you’re worth every penny.

The clients who value good writing are the relationships you’ll value more and do better work for anyway. The clients who buy your services based on price will be quickly wooed away by someone else who bats their eyes and waves a 5% discount at them.

 

Photo credit: Rob Boudon (Flickr, Creative Commons)

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How Bloggers Can Use Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory of Writing

No one ever thinks about how big an iceberg really is. When you see an iceberg, you only see 20% of it. The other 80% is below the surface of the water. But without that 80%, you wouldn’t have the 20%. The visible 20% is built on the foundation of the 80%, even though you’ll never see it, or in some cases, even realize that it’s there.

That’s the philosophy of Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory of writing.

He also called it the Theory of Omission, because it was the things he omitted that made his writing more authentic.

He wrote about real people he knew, rather than making up characters. He wrote about subjects he was passionate about, fishing, bull fighting, hunting, and even writing. But it was what he didn’t talk about, the foundations, that gave the stories their strong underpinnings. He believed those things were understood and felt by the reader, and would come through in the story. In his essay, “The Art of the Short Story,” Hemingway said:

A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit. . .You could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.

It means that writers need to have an in-depth understanding of what and who they’re writing about, rather than only a surface knowledge. The knowledgeable writer has better depth to a story, while the less knowledgeable one does not. And Hemingway believed you could tell the difference between the writer who omitted something they knew from the writer who omitted something they didn’t know.

Although Hemingway was a fiction writer, he based characters in his stories on people he knew. They would act and react the same way their real-life counterparts would. He even strongly admonished F. Scott Fitzgerald for not writing about real people.

Bloggers Need the Iceberg Theory

This works for bloggers and nonfiction writers too. In the ideas we express and the language we use, we should build our stories and blog posts on the 80% of the iceberg no one else will see.

For ghost bloggers, it means we have to know more than just the story we’re writing. We have to know how the product or service works. We have to know the industries the client is targeting. We even have to know the allied industries that affect, and are affected by, the client’s work.

Because all that knowledge informs and flavors each blog post, and shows up in the tiny details that are present or are missing.

And believe me, the client and their readers know what’s missing, and they can tell when the writer knows what they’re talking about. They can tell when the omissions are intentional, and when they’re because of a lack of knowledge.

To build that iceberg yourself, it means spending time having conversations with the client. Learning the things that interest them. The things they think are cool about their job, and even their own hobbies. It means listening to them talk to other colleagues about the company, so you can find their voice.

Ultimately, this lets us build the base of our iceberg in such a way that the 20% we can see will be fully supported, and not tip over into the sea with a single nudge.

 

Photo credit: NOAA’s National Ocean Service (Flickr, Creative Commons)

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Three Secrets to Writing Fast

I was once sitting at a meeting where an interesting question came up, so when I got back to my office, I wrote a blog post about it, and it was up an hour later.

“How did you get that up there so fast?” someone else from the meeting asked.

“Well, I had to drive back to the office first,” I said.

My friend thought I was being a smartass, but that’s actually how and why I was able to write that blog post.

I’ve gotten to the point where I can write most things very fast. It always seems to surprise people, but it’s actually not that hard. Here are my three secrets (plus one bonus) to writing fast:

1. Write when you’re not in front of the computer

Remember, writing is not an activity you must perform with a laptop computer. That’s typing. Writing is the act of putting the right words into the right order.

That means you can write anywhere, at any time. I write when I’m in the car. I think of the basic ideas of my piece, how I want to lay it out, and any points I want to make. The blog post I mentioned earlier was one I was actually able to write in 30 minutes, because I thought about it for the entire 15 minute trip in my car.

You can write in the car, in the shower, going for a walk, or any other time you don’t have to engage the language portion of your brain somewhere else. That means you shouldn’t do it when you’re having a conversation, watching TV, or listening to talk radio.

I wrote this blog post in my car on a recent road trip.

2. Sketch out basic notes

Whenever I have a cool idea, it will often get stuck in my brain, and won’t let me work on anything else. So I write it down in my notebook, which frees it from my head, letting me work on something else. Once I do this, it also reboots my brain so I can start sketching out that idea a little better.

If I want to work on an idea for an article or post, I write down the three main points I want to make, and then think about it in the car. With that tiny bit of pen-and-paper work, I open up any logjams in my head, and I can think about the piece a lot more effectively.

3. Write like you talk

Doing this taught me to be a better writer.
Do you talk to yourself in your mind? Do you have an inner monologue going in your head? (Don’t lie, I know you do.)

What tone does it take? If you’re like most people, it’s conversational. You talk like you, well, talk.

And yet, most people try to write very formally, using big words and lo-o-o-ong sentences. They ignore their inner monologue, and channel their Inner Professor. As a result, it takes three times longer than it should to write something. They think of the word they would have used, and then think of the bigger, “smarter” word instead. Since they’re not used to writing that way, or even speaking that way, it slows them down.

If you want to write fast, write like you talk. Get your inner monologue to sound more like your public speaking voice, using the language you use in real life (assuming you’re not a chronic cusser). Imagine speaking your words out loud, as if you were giving a speech to a room full of your friends and colleagues.

After a while, you’ll be able to sync your speaking voice and your writing voice, and you’ll write down what your inner monologue is saying, exactly as it’s being said. This will save you all kinds of time from trying to use your formal writing voice when that’s something you should have left behind when you graduated from college.

BONUS: Learn how to type fast

This may seem hardly worth mentioning, but once you start doing these other things, you’ll find that you may not be able to type fast enough to keep up with your brain. If you’re still typing with two or three fingers, and cannot touch type, learn it.

(Note: If you’re still battling with the traditional QWERTY keyboard and are clocking in at 50 words per minute, consider switching to a Dvorak keyboard. I still use the QWERTY, because I can type 90 wpm; Randy Cassingham says that if you can type that fast, you won’t be any faster on the Dvorak. But if you’re running at half that speed, take a few weeks to learn the new keyboard, and you’ll find you’re blazing fast.)

Otherwise, what will happen is that you’ll find your fingers are moving slower than your brain, which means your brain will not only outrun your words, but you’ll find that you’re forgetting what you were going to say. You’ll have to stop and try to remember what it was, which is a big drag on productivity.

While there are plenty of writers who still prefer to write with a pen on a notebook or note pad, because they like to “be in the moment,” I have retrained my brain over the years to function better in front of a keyboard. This is where I do my best work. And it saves me plenty of time to be in the moment for other things later on.

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Lawyers Need to Cooperate with Marketing, or Get Out of the Way

It’s the customer every brand dreams of: the superfan who spends their own time, money, and energy evangelizing a product to all their friends and family.

Sara Rosso is a Nutella superfan. So much so that she created World Nutella Day back in 2007, and it has taken place on February 5th every year.

Then she received a cease-and-desist letter from Ferrero’s (Nutella’s parent company) lawyers, demanding that she no longer use the Nutella name in her I-LOVE-NUTELLA-THIIIIIIIIIIIS-MUCH efforts.

According to an article on Social Media Today, Rosso got media coverage of the event on NBC, CNN, and ABC, plus a social media audience of 47,000 fans and followers.

And yet, some lawyers who had no idea about the awesomeness she was spreading (pun totally intended) as well as no freaking clue about how free marketing evangelism worked, shut her down.

So Rosso took her case to the people, and posted the cease-and-desist letter to her blog, and almost immediately — I hope after the marketing department shouted “WHAT THE F*** DID YOU JUST DO?!” at the legal department — contacted her to rectify the situation.

When it was all said and done, Ferrero issued this press release, which Rosso posted on her website:

“World Nutella Day: a positive conclusion

Positive direct contact between Ferrero and Sara Rosso, owner of the non-official Nutella fan page World Nutella Day, has brought an end to the case.

Ferrero would like to express to Sara Rosso its sincere gratitude for her passion for Nutella, gratitude which is extended to all fans of the World Nutella Day.

The case arose from a routine brand defense procedure that was activated as a result of some misuse of the Nutella brand on the fan page.

Ferrero is pleased to announce that today, after contacting Sara Rosso and finding together the appropriate solutions, it immediately stopped the previous action.

Ferrero considers itself fortunate to have such devoted and loyal fans of its Nutella spread, like Sara Rosso.

Problem solved! World Nutella Day has been saved!

Except it should never have been a problem in the first place. Without going into all the “everyone in a company should communicate” drivel, which you and I know will never happen, Legal should have at least been smart enough to check with Marketing and said, “Hey, have you guys ever heard of World Nutella Day? Is this a thing?”

And Marketing would have said, “No, but it’s pretty cool. Why do you ask?”

Legal: “Because we want to shut it down. Someone is using the Nutella name other than us.”

Marketing: “Don’t be stupid. Clearly this is someone who is helping us further the cause of Nutella, which helps us make more money, which is how we can afford to support your non-revenue generating asses.”

While I understand the need for brand protection and support, there needs to be a mechanism in place where the marketing folks can have some input on the cease-and-desist letters and tell the lawyers, “wait, don’t send that one.”

Then stories like this would never have to be written, and Nutella and Ferrero wouldn’t end up with egg on their face.