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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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One More Reminder Why You Shouldn’t Put Your Eggs in Facebook’s Basket

Michael Koploy, an ERP analyst for SoftwareAdvice.com, wrote an interesting article — Adding a Pinterest-Twist to Fix Facebook Commerce — about why companies shouldn’t put a lot of effort into their Facebook pages, like setting up an ecommerce site (or as Koploy calls it, an F-commerce site — ‘F’ for Facebook).Abandoned storefront in Coles County, Illinois

Many experts have weighed-in on why Facebook storefronts are often unsuccessful. A large part of it simply boils down to the fact that Facebook isn’t an e-commerce site. This results in a contextual disconnect.

“Most people don’t go to Facebook wanting to purchase something,” says Josh Davis, social media strategist at ITFO Communications and blogger at LL Social. Davis believes that retailers were initially excited by the advertising potential, but are now realizing shopping-intent isn’t there.

In short, the context for F-commerce is wrong. Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru accurately likened F-commerce to “trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.”

Facebook’s core focus is clearly stated on its login page: “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” Facebook is not about shopping. And it’s not about retailers. But Facebook is good for connecting people to each other.

Last week, we discussed why it’s a bad idea for companies to quit blogging to go with Facebook: Facebook owns the channel, you don’t. When they change their rules and their interface, you’re screwed. When you change your blog, you can decide what, where, when, and how.

But companies like Gamestop, J.C. Penny, and Nordstrom all pulled their F-commerce efforts after failing to receive any kind of pay off. And that’s just a year after investors swore up and down that F-commerce was going to put the hurt on online retail giant Amazon.com.

I hate predicting failure of new ventures, and pointing my finger and going “neener neener” at people who tried something and failed (unless they’re complete a-holes; then they deserve it). But I’m not surprised, and am rather pleased, that these companies got smart and cut their F-commerce efforts before they lost their shirts.

The big surprise they would have had — and it’s the same damn surprise that businesses who put a lot of money and effort into Facebook always get — is that one day, Facebook will decide, “we don’t want you to have X on your page any more, so we’re going to ‘improve’ the network.”

They did it with FBML in 2010 (Facebook Markup Language, which companies spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on to design these gorgeous sites). They did it with Groups, after begging organizations, companies, and loose collectives to spend all their time and effort to get people to join. And they did it with the non-Timeline iFrame pages, after people spent hundreds and thousands of dollars to recover from the whole FBML fracas.

Orangutan feet. I don't know what orangutans read for inspiration.
Mark my words, it will happen again within the next 12 – 18 months. Someone’s going to spend thousands of dollars, get their page looking all pretty and just the way they want it, and WHAM! Facebook will change it yet again.

Facebook, like Koploy reminded us, is a place to connect. It’s a place where friends gather. We don’t hang out with our friends at the bar to buy stuff. Companies that are doing F-commerce need to pull out before they get the big F-U.

Put your money into improving the SEO of your ecommerce site, doing more social media marketing, and using Facebook for what it’s intended for: posting Instagram pictures of your feet and gag-inducing GIFs of your favorite inspirational sayings typically found inside the doors of high school lockers.

Photo credit: Abandoned storefrontColes County Tales (Flickr, Creative Commons)
Orangutan feet Macinate (Flickr, Creative Commons)

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How Do You Know You’re a Real Writer?

Cathy Day’s recent blog post, “Last Lecture: Am I a Writer?” took me back to my own days of struggling with my identity as a Writer.

I’ve been writing for 24 years, but I’ve only accepted the mantle of Writer for the last 17.

It’s an odd thing to wonder about one’s self. Either you’re a Writer, or you’re not, right?

You’re a professional, literary, word slinging, spell-it-with-a-capital-W-by-God Writer, or you’re just some wannabe hack who doesn’t deserve to even call what you do “writing.” (You even manage to speak the word with invisible quotes around it.)

Ernest Hemingway: This dude was a capital-W Writer. He also drank a lot and shot things.

Someone who does plumbing is a plumber. Someone who does accounting is an accountant. And someone who cooks food is a cook.

But ask someone who strings words together if they’re a Writer, and they’ll think about it for a minute.

“No, because I haven’t been published.”

“Yes, as soon I published my first book.”

“No, I’ve only been doing it for a couple years.”

“Yes, after I received my first check for a magazine article.”

New writers hesitate to call themselves one, as if this thing we do is sacred, and they’re not worthy. Writers don’t just string words together for people to read in an email. We tell stories to entertain people, inform and educate, persuade and rally. We can string words together that provoke, comfort, or incite. Scribblers use corporate jargon and fifty dollar words in five cent emails.

Even when I first started writing, it never occurred to me that I was a Writer, until a more experienced one said, “Don’t you write stuff?”

“Yes, every day.”

If you do this a lot, you may be a writer.
“Then why aren’t you a Writer?”

Since I didn’t have a good answer, it was easier just to mumble, “Well, I guess I am.”

That’s how most Writers are crowned, with a mumbled realization, rather than a pomp-filled ceremony, complete with gleaming pens carried proudly on red velvet pillows by pages, to be presented by the queen amidst the fanfare of trumpets. (Although wouldn’t that be awesome?)

To be sure, Writers earn their title. That capital W is not just granted to every schmuck who took a high school English class and pounds out the occasional email to coworkers. That’s not writing. That’s written communication, but it’s not writing.

There may be standards for calling one’s self a Writer — you have to write 100,000 words first; you have to submit a piece for print publication; you have to get paid — but no one has figured out what that is yet. Self-granting the title varies from person to person.

But one constant remains: you’re not a Writer until you call yourself one. The very minute you can say, “I’m a Writer,” and say it without that question mark at the end? That’s when you are one.

Otherwise, no one is stopping you. Go ahead. Take it out. Try it on, and see how it fits. You’ll grow into it over time.

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What Goes Into Writing a Blog Post?

After yesterday’s post on Suggested Freelance Writing Rates — Midwest Edition, I was asked why it costs so much ($75 – $125) to write a blog post.

“It’s 350 – 450 words. How hard can it be?”

Actually, that depends. It depends on what you’re writing. If you’re writing a personal blog entry about the hamburger you enjoyed at lunch with your besties, that’s not hard at all. Takes you 15 minutes tops. But I have yet to meet anyone to hire me to ghost write their personal blog entries.

Writing corporate blog posts is a different matter. The actual wordsmithing — spinning out 350 – 450 words — is pretty straightforward. Yes, you’re paying for the writer’s expertise and skills (remember, this is a trained professional who has dedicated himself or herself to the written word), but there are other factors that go into corporate blogging. Here’s the basic process that most professional bloggers follow:

  • Regular research of the client’s industry. We have to know as much as we can about your industry, reading related blogs, trade journals, and news articles.
  • Interview the client. For Pro Blog Service, I interview our clients about that month’s blog posts, record the interviews, and we write the posts based on that.
  • The writing. This is the act of putting the words into a word processing document.
  • The editing. Any writer will tell you that the editing process is just as crucial as the actual writing. As first draft writers, most of us vary from horrible to passable. There are very, very few people who can write a great first draft. So the editing is just as difficult as putting down the actual words.
  • Publishing to the blog. This includes adding photos, any outbound links, using tools for SEO like WordPress SEO and Schemas. This is the other place people have problems, because they don’t have the time to dink around with finding photos, creating links, etc.
  • Promoting each blog post. You can’t just throw up a blog post and let it sit. You have to promote it to your social networks. And you have to grow those networks. A full-service professional blogger will also include that in their offerings, helping you grow your network so you can reach a bigger and more target audience

Blogging is much, much more than just spinning out the actual words, although that’s certainly the most important part of it. Without the research, the editing, and the promotion, you’re just writing in a diary about whatever randomly pops into your head.

If you’re thinking about blogging, more power to you! Please do. It’s an important part of social media marketing. But just remember that it takes about 1 – 2 hours worth of work to come up with a single blog post. That’s why you either need to hire it done, or allow for that much time in your schedule.

In future posts, I’ll be talking about what makes a good writer, and why, even though we all learned how to write in school, those skills are not enough to make an effective writer.

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Suggested Freelance Writing Rates – Midwest Edition

What are some different freelance rates that freelance writers ought to be charging? It depends on where you live. If you live in America’s Heartland, where the cost of living is lower, you’ll charge less. If you live on one of the three coasts (that includes Chicago), your rates will be much, much higher.

It always makes me laugh when clients from Out East or Out West think that we aren’t charging enough here in Indiana, because our rates are often 50 – 100% less than what they’re being charged by hometown writers. We’re able to charge so much because our cost of living is so much lower. Rent is anywhere from $600 – $1,200 here in Central Indiana, but in New York, that’s the the cost of a gallon of milk.

But things aren’t as good if they’re not as expensive, so the smart freelancer raises his or her rates to meet expense expectations when the client is from Away. [Read more…] about Suggested Freelance Writing Rates – Midwest Edition

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Bad Idea: Companies Quit Blogging to Go With Facebook

The number of companies that maintain blogs dropped by nearly 25% from 2010 to 2011.

That’s not a very smart move.

But it’s a growing trend. According to an article in USA Today, more companies quit blogging, go with Facebook instead, the percentage of companies on Inc. magazine’s fastest growing 500 dropped from 50% in 2010 to 37% in 2011. And only 23% of Fortune 500 companies had a blog in 2011.

Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, the UMass Dartmouth professor who wrote the report, and world-class social media academic, told USA Today that blogging may not be the panacea that businesses thought it would be.

“Blogging requires more investment. You need content regularly. And you need to think about the risk of blogging, accepting comments, liability issues, defamation,” she said.

The problem is, the companies are taking their energy and efforts to Facebook instead. That’s not a dumb strategy. After all, at 800 million+ users, you have to fish where the fish are. And there’s a whole lot of fish on Facebook. [Read more…] about Bad Idea: Companies Quit Blogging to Go With Facebook

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Three Simple Rules About Blogging Ethics and Money

Yesterday’s clarification by Judge Marco A. Hernandez about treating bloggers as journalists points out the need for bloggers to follow basic ethical principles, especially as it relates to accepting money or requiring payment for our services.

Oregon blogger Crystal Cox had been sued for defamation — and lost — after writing blog posts that were critical of Obsidian Financial Group and its co-founder, Kevin Padrick. Cox had claimed she was a journalist and used Oregon’s Media Shield Law as her defense. But Hernandez decided she wasn’t a journalist at all.

The reason she lost, the reason she was deemed to be not “media,” was that she basically tried to get Obsidian to pay her to repair the damage she was causing. As Hernandez wrote: [Read more…] about Three Simple Rules About Blogging Ethics and Money