Pro Blog Service

Blog

By

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.

typingMy 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.

By

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.

By

Where Should Social Media Live? Marketing, That’s Where

Amber Naslund recently commented on a post of mine, and said:

As social business becomes more the MO instead of just “doing social media”, we still don’t have an answer for where it lives, and it needs somewhere. I don’t think it’s going to be enough for it just to be dispersed independently in various departments. We have C-suite roles that are holistic and support the entire business. HR and IT do that to an extent, too, because they’re practices that have to carry across and touch all disciplines. I think social business needs to be that way too.

But as it matures – and maybe even after it’s well established as best practice – it needs some kind of alignment in order to thrive. I’ve yet to make up my mind whether that means there’s an executive that’s responsible for ‘social business’ itself or something else, but the reality is that we need someone to be accountable for the purposes, vision, and results of social business initiatives (and things like innovation, organizational design, culture development ) as their purview, not just an aspect of their job description.

This has been an ongoing question, and one that is not easily answered.

Except that I think it’s the Marketing department.

If you look at Marketing as the communication channel between customers and the company, and not just the department that makes brochures, pictures, and websites, it makes sense. Marketing communicates through web, print, broadcast, and even direct communication. How those messages reach their audience depends on the mediums (media) where they’re found.

There are those who would argue that it should belong in PR, because they have to communicate with journalists and industry bloggers who are all using social media. Some will argue that it should be in customer service, because it has become an established customer service communication channel. (I would argue that customer service should be folded into marketing, since they focus on customer retention, but that’s a different blog post.)

But if anything, the responsibility for social media needs to be kept in marketing for the communication aspect, and the other departments need to be allowed to use it as part of their own responsibilities. If anyone is going to decide what the social media strategy will be, that should come from marketing, but in cooperation with PR, Customer Service, and any other departments using it.

As I said in a recent blog post, Social Media Stars Killed Social Media, we’re reaching the point where social media is just going to be another form of communication, like email and the phone, and we’re not going to have dedicated social media professionals.

So when that day comes that social media professionals just turn into regular old professionals, they need to land in the marketing department.

By

Ten iPad Business Apps You Need That Aren’t Evernote or Dropbox

If you’ve got an iPad, you’ve no doubt visited the App Store, and checked out one of the “iPad Essentials” lists for business, productivity, music, or any of the other must-have apps.

You’ve certainly read all the “Five (or Ten) Must-Have iPad Apps for Business Productivity” that all say you need Evernote, Dropbox, and the Kindle Reader. In fact, if those were the only articles you read about your iPad, you’d think there were only five apps ever made for it.

And because I’m tired of the same retreaded crap that appears in most 101-level articles, I tried to come up with ten iPad Business apps that are not Evernote or Dropbox.

  1. Type on PDF: This iOS app lets you open a PDF and type on it or sign it. If you’ve ever received a PDF without any form fields, but have Adobe Acrobat, you can drop in your form fields, fill it out, and send it back. Type on PDF lets you do this without using (or even owning) Acrobat on your laptop. The interface is a little cumbersome, but it sure beats messing around with Acrobat just to fill out a simple form. You can also add photos and draw on your PDFs.
  2. Docusign: If you just need to sign PDF documents, like a tax form or contract, use Docusign. I upload contracts and use it to get signatures from new clients. It can import documents from Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Evernote, and Salesforce, plus many others. Create your saved signature and drag it on to any document that needs it. It works just like Type on PDF in that it also lets you add text boxes, but it’s a little harder to do.
  3. Feedly: Now that Google Reader is going away, the big question is what feed reader should people switch to. I like Feedly because it works on my Android, my iPad, and my MacBook. It has a magazine-like layout, which makes it work more like Flipboard, but it imported my entire Google Reader account. Ziin is another possibility if you don’t like Feedly.
  4. Chrome: If you’re a serious Chrome user on your Mac or PC, you don’t need to give up the interactivity. Chrome for the iPad has saved my bacon a couple of times. For one thing, it syncs up all the passwords and bookmarks from my MacBook, which means I can use my iPad to access a website when I don’t have my laptop handy. For another, I can sync up open tabs from laptop to iPad too. That way, if I want to read something later, I just leave it open as a tab on my laptop, sync it, read it, and shut it down.
  5. Penultimate: Alright, I lied a little. There is something from Evernote on here, but it’s not actually Evernote. Penultimate is the pen-based note taking program. You can handwrite notes (which are searchable both in Penultimate and on your Evernote, regardless of where you use it), sketch ideas, and even color. But if you’re going to whine about it, then I’ll suggest Bamboo Paper from Wacom instead. It does the same exact thing, including sync up with Evernote. Both programs are available inside the Evernote Trunk.
  6. Moleskine: Another note taker, especially if you don’t want to use Evernote, or if you’re a Moleskine junkie. This is a typing and handwriting note taker, which lets you merge and upload notes as you take them. It’s especially cool if you don’t like the iPad Note’s yellow legal pad and cousin-to-Comic-Sans font.
  7. MindMeister: A great tool for visual thinkers whose ideas and brainstorming spans outside the traditional item-by-item of the list. Sketch out your ideas and create diagrams to illustrate them, then upload them to the MindMeister.com website for further access and sharing. MindMeister has a free version and a paid version.
  8. Drafts: A straight up text-only typing program, Drafts uses Markdown language for formatting. Markdown language is the big new formatting and writing language that’s used for cross-platform tablet writing. If you know it — and it’s simple to learn — you can write blog posts and articles on your iPad, and format them by surrounding headlines, bold, and italics with +’s and *’s. You can then upload the articles to your blog or website. I’ve used it to cover WNBA basketball games in the past, and may give it a shot at the Indianapolis 500 this year.
  9. Countdown Star: I have to confess a family tie here: my brother-in-law created Countdown Star. It lets you set times and dates of special events, like holidays, conferences, birthdays, and anniversaries, or other important dates like the one I entered, “Pitchers and catchers report.” Countdown is available in a free or paid version, and works on iPad and iPhone.
  10. News Republic: If you read a lot of news, you have a couple choices: tap through different news apps like NPR, USA Today, and your local news apps, or scroll through News Republic. This app pulls in news stories from all over in a variety of different topics, including news, politics, sports, science, tech, and entertainment, plus others. It’s a nice alternative to Flipboard because it gathers from news sources I’ve never even heard of.

So how’d we do? Any apps you’ve never heard of? Any good ones we missed? What outstanding iPad business apps do you use that don’t appear on any “Essential Business Apps Everyone Has Already Heard of” list?

By

Social Media Stars Killed Social Media

The days of the social media rockstar are drawing to a close.

We’re starting to see the end of social media as a standalone, magical mysterious thing that we do — something every startup embraced, every small business resisted, and every corporation fled from in fear — and we’re seeing acceptance, and even love, from those who previously spurned it.

Amber Naslund’s recent post, The Begrudging Death of the Social Media Superstar, plus a recent Jay Baer podcast episode with Dorie Clark, has got me to thinking that the end is in sight.

Social media will no longer be a viable standalone career path.

In the last six years, I’ve seen positions like Director of Social Media Marketing, Online Community Manager, and even VP of Social Media created to take advantage of this growing communication phenomenon. (I will not dignify positions like Social Media Wizard/Ninja/Guru with any response greater than a sneer.)

But I think we’re going to see those positions pulled into their respective departments, and they’ll become part of the general rabble.

Everyone in marketing and PR is going to be expected to be good at social media, much in the same way you need to stop listing “Proficient at Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer” on your résumé.

History Is Repeating Itself

It’s always interesting to see what happens to an entrenched communication channel or business method when a new upstart shows up.

Newspaper people panicked when radio showed up, and the radio folks were the stars of the day. Radio panicked when TV showed up, and the TV people were the stars of the day.

Newspapers, radio, and TV all laughed and laughed when the Internet showed up. Then they ran around, screaming like they were on fire when the Internet started playing songs, streaming TV, and posting classified ads.

In the business world:

  • people turned up their noses at computers in the 1980s, but now we no longer have typists, because everyone does their own typing.
  • The postal service got worried when telexes showed up. . .
  • . . . and those people freaked when fax machines showed up.
  • Fax manufacturers peed themselves when email became the main method of communication.

Every step along the way, the new people were the stars, until everyone calmed down, and they were absorbed into the general landscape.

That’s happening with social media.

The social media people have been rockstars, writing books in a whirlwind of publishing activity, speaking and attending conferences. The ones who were doing it first are now considered the godfathers and grand dames of the industry, and the upstarts aren’t finding any real room to shine. There are no unexplored frontiers.

It won’t happen right away. There are still plenty of companies that aren’t doing social media. Hell, depending on which stats you see, anywhere from 40 – 60% of companies don’t even have a website. That means there are still plenty of people who aren’t adopting the Internet, let alone all the cool stuff it can do.

But when PR and marketing agencies are folding social media into their day-to-day offerings, and not a special add-on, you know things are settling down.

Social Media Experts Were Too Good At Their Job

That’s because, thanks to the social media evangelists who preached the gospel of engagement and relationships, everyone started doing it. And we all got good at it.

Eventually the executives who made the decision to create social media departments are going to start wondering, “Even my kids are doing this now, what makes these people so special? Why do they get the rockstar treatment?”

And the decision will be made to fold social media back into the regular marketing department. Or PR. Customer Service. Sales. R&D.

This is good news for people who are already good at marketing, PR, customer service, sales, and R&D.

But if you’re not good at it, you’re going to have a problem.

If you were only good at using the tools — you were “good at Twitter,” “good at Facebook” — you’re going to have a hard time fitting into your new role. If you thought that social media was all about using the tools, you’re in for a shock.

You need to get good at something else too. You need to get better at the departments and functions you were supporting.

You’re going to have to redefine yourself as a content marketer, a marketing strategist, a PR practitioner, a customer service professional. Social media is only going to be a part of what you do, not the actual thing you do.

Just like writers don’t have to be “proficient at Microsoft Word,” being “good at social media” will not be enough.

Photo credit: eat more toast (Flickr, Creative Commons)

By

Four Journalism Techniques To Incorporate Into Your Blog Writing

If you want to be a successful blogger, you need to write like a journalist. In writing style — short words, short sentences, short paragraphs — as well as story flow — important information first, next important, third important, and so on.

But there are a few other journalism techniques you need for your blog if you want it to flow easily, and attract readers’ attention.

My first training as a writer was actually in journalism. It started with my Journalism 101 class at Ball State University, and then being a columnist and reporter for the Ball State Daily News. Since then

(For historic reference, this was back in 1987, when they were still printing out, waxing, and pasting up all the pages of the paper. This method of newspaper layout is also where the terms “cut and paste” came from.)

I’ve also been a newspaper humor columnist for over 18 years, and was a freelance newspaper reporter for a time. So everything I do is with a journalist’s eye — a jaundiced, bloodshot, narrowed-suspiciously eye. (I keep it in a desk drawer at my office.)

There were four important journalism lessons I learned from those early days of my writing career, which I still use in blogging today.

1. Your Lede Should Contain Everything We Need to Know

First, yes, it’s “lede” (pronounced “leed.”) It’s spelled that way so it’s not confused with “lead” (led), which is what the movable type was made from back in the early, early days of newspapers. Some newspaper reporters will call the opening paragraph the “lead,” but they don’t have a flair for historical drama.

Your lede needs to contain the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the story. We should be able to read that and understand everything we need to know about your blog post. Some of it may be implied, some of it may be understood, but most of it should just be put right out there.

Take a look at my opening lede:

If you (who) want to be (when = in the future) a successful (why) blogger (what = blogger and where = on your blog), you need to write like a journalist (how). In writing style (as well as story flow — important information first, next important, third important, and so on (more what and how).

2. Refer To a Person By Their Whole Name First, and Their Last Name Thereafter

If you mention a person in your blog post, mention them by their whole name, give their title or reason for inclusion the first time. Every time you refer to them thereafter, use their last name only. The presumption is, if the reader needs to know who you’re referring to, they can always scroll back up the story to find their first mention. We do this for men and women alike. The New York Times has their own style of referring to people as “Mr. Deckers” or “Ms. Carter,” but the rest of the journalistic world just uses last names only.

3. Write for Coma Patients

As my Journalism 101 professor, Mark Popovich, explained it: “Imagine your reader came out of a two-year coma this morning and has no idea what’s going on. So they open a newspaper to your story, and this is the first they’re hearing about any of this.”

This means you have to explain some issues, or at least refer back to them. You can’t assume that everyone knows what you’re talking about. You have to assume they’re coming to the issue for the first time in their lives, even if you’ve written about this topic for five years.

And while we’re on the subject, please never use “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already know about” or “Unless you’ve been in a coma, you’ve already heard about” as your lede. It’s stupid, and actually a little offensive. I saw that lede in a blog post about some advanced piece on affiliate marketing, and I still had no idea what the guy was talking about even after he was done.

This hypothetical coma patient is why newspaper stories have all the background information at the end of a story, even if it’s a long running story that “everyone knows about.” They explain the details we learned about in the early days of the issue, just in case someone is not up to speed.

For bloggers, that means link to your past posts about your topic, so our coma patient can go back to that story to catch up. (e.g. “I previously discussed the eight writer archetypes back in March.”)

(It also helps if you have the link open up in a new tab, rather than letting them leave the current page.)

4. Spell Out ALL Jargon The First Time In Every Blog Post

I don’t care if you’re THE leading expert in the industry, and you happen to know that every reader who comes across your blog knows exactly who you are and what you’re talking about. You always spell out abbreviations, acronyms, and jargon terms.

ALWAYS!

Because one day, someone who is not in your industry is going to stumble upon your blog, have no idea what you’re talking about, and they’re going to leave.

It could be our coma patient, or it could be the person who was newly-promoted to the position where they need to give a big fat check to someone with your expertise, but it’s not going to be you, because they have no idea what you do.

If you can make your beginning reader feel smart, without talking down to your advanced reader — and that’s a difficult balance to strike sometimes — you’ll be the person that everyone turns to, rather than just reaching a slice of your potential audience.

Most of our reading habits and reading styles have been shaped and influenced by newspapers. The Boomers and Generation Xers got there by reading actual newspapers. And because that writing style continues on, the Gen Yers are reading the same kinds of news stories online, and being similarly influenced.

Writing and reading styles are still changing as we gather more content online. We skim to read now, rather than reading entire blocks of text.

But one thing will remain the same: journalistic writing is effective for information gathering, because it gives people the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time.

As more people skim to read, if you can write like a journalist, you’ll get more information into their brains

Photo credit: NS Newsflash (Flickr, Creative Commons)