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10 Blog Writing Lessons Learned from Authors, part 1

I have a few favorite authors that I turn to again and again. Authors whose books I kept when I got rid of 600 other books over a two week period. And while most of my bibliophile friends 1) can’t imagine doing that, and 2) are wondering why I didn’t call them first, I’ve enjoyed being free of most of my old and unread books.

But I’ve kept these authors’ books because I learned something from them. A lot of these writers, and one singer, have imparted lessons to me, either through their writings or their interviews. So here are 10 lessons I have learned from 9 of my most favoritest authors (and 1 singer).

1) Pictures speak volumes — Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions. Anyone who ever read Breakfast of Champions will remember the crude, childish drawings he included in his story, including a couple of drawings of people’s anatomy. I’m not suggesting you use these particular drawings, but rather, use pictures and videos to support your point and make your post more interesting to readers. Load your photos into Flickr or Picasa, or use Creative Commons or stock photos, and use them to add a little variety to your posts.

2) String together a series of ledes – Hunter S. Thompson. This is why Hunter S. Thompson was such a powerful writer. In journalism school, students are taught to write one lede (lead, if you must), and then supporting information, and the content gets less important and less interesting the further you go. But Thompson would just string together a bunch of ledes, one after the other — bam, bam, bam!! — and pummel you with them. Then he would calm down a bit before hitting you again with another series of body blows. That’s why he was so exciting to read. That, and all the crazy drug references.

3) Write short sentences — Ernest Hemingway, Big Two-Hearted River. I use this sample a lot in my writing presentations.

Nick was hungry. He did not believe he had ever been hungrier. He opened and emptied a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into the frying pan. “I’ve got a right to eat this kind of stuff, if I’m willing to carry it,” Nick said. His voice sounded strange in the darkening woods. He did not speak again.

I checked this out once on the Flesch-Kincaid reading level, and it came back as a 3rd grade level block of text. Newspapers are written at about a 6th grade reading level, and your blogs should be too. Not because your readers are dumb, but because they have come to expect it. They want short, simple, and easy to understand.

4) Write long, flowing, descriptive sentences — Roger Angell, baseball writer for The New Yorker. Yes, this contradicts my previous point. I’ve been reading Roger Angell for about two years now, and he is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. His descriptions of baseball games are magical. I can feel like I’m there in the park with him, in 1965, watching a Mets game, or in 1969, watching the Detroit Tigers. His writing flows smoothly, like an expensive new pen on creamy writing paper. There are times your writing will need to be more like Angell’s and less like Hemingway’s.

5) Use metaphors —Tom Waits — Putnam County, Nighthawks at the Diner. I talked before about how Tom Waits uses metaphors to create very powerful writing. His song, Putnam County is rife with metaphors and a couple similes. Take a look at what he says about the morning dawn.

And the impending squint of first light
And it lurked behind a weepin’ marquee in downtown Putnam
Yeah, and it’d be pullin’ up any minute now
Just like a bastard amber Velveeta yellow cab on a rainy corner
And be blowin’ its horn in every window in town

My point is that you should sprinkle metaphors into your writing to create the drama, vivid imagery, and power that will make your writing stand out from everyone else’s.

We’ll cover the 2nd half of this list tomorrow.

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Really? We’re STILL Talking 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.

My 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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John Uhri’s Sketch Notes From My Blog Indiana 2010 Presentation

I always love it when John Uhri (@y0mbo) comes to my talks at a conference, because he always creates awesome sketch notes for me. It’s actually very flattering and a great ego boost, so I wanted to show off the notes he did for me at Blog Indiana 2010.

I talked about 11 blog promotion tips to a rather full house. I was a little nervous before I talked, but then again, I’m always nervous before I give a talk. I worry that everyone has heard what I’m about to say, but it’s too late to go in and actually make any changes to the deck. I start having a Stuart Smalley panic attack: “Oh God, everyone’s going to see through me, and label me a failure. I’m going to die homeless and penniless and 30 pounds overweight.”

But then I gave the presentation and rocked it — even if I do say so myself — and lots of people told me they were hearing brand new stuff. (This was especially heartening, since those were the people who I thought would say I didn’t have anything new to offer.)

John says these sketch notes actually help him understand the presentation better than just taking notes, because it forces him to understand it enough to be able to come up with an image or visual cue about what it is. (Last year, he included a sketch of Peter Griffin because I made a reference to the It’s In My Raccoon Wounds” line from a Family Guy episode.)

Here are all of John’s sketch notes form Blog Indiana 2010.

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Ruminations of an “Outsider Writer”

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a writer. What does it mean to be a good writer?

Can anyone do it, or is it something that should only be attempted by trained professionals?

I’ve been thinking about this after hearing a new term: outsider artist. An outsider artist is someone who did not get any formal academic training about being an artist. They’re totally self-taught, they picked things up by trial and error, or by asking other artists, but they didn’t pursue a four year art degree to learn all of the different schools and styles, techniques and tricks.

In some circles, outsider art — Art Brut, French for “raw art” — is a label given with some disdain. It’s said with a slight sneer, like the person who said it just got a whiff of something you stepped in. The outsider artist is not in that special circle. They’re excluded from polite society, and are looked down on, or talked about behind their backs. They are outside the circles of culture, acceptability, and the success that a $10,000+ a year tuition brings.

In other circles, being an outsider artist is a badge of honor. They’re the rebels, the artists from the wrong sides of the tracks. Many outsider artists are not discovered until after their death, if they’re ever discovered at all.

I’m an outsider writer. (A term I’m not fond of, mostly because the rhyming makes it sound silly.)

I was not formally trained as a writer, at least not four years’ worth. I took the required English comp class, a couple journalism classes, and wrote for my college newspaper. My writing skills are completely self-taught, sharpened over the last 23 years.

Does this make me less of a writer? Am I somehow outside the mainstream because I didn’t get the creative writing degree, or the Master of Fine Arts (MFA)?

I’ve met some of these MFAs and creative writers. Most of them are fine people who have skills I’m envious of. Some of these insider writers are not as good as they believe. Some of them just plain suck. And some of them are snobbish, arrogant, and. . .well, let’s just say I came up with a different meaning for “MFA.”

I’m often torn in my views on writing: on one hand, it’s an art form that should only be practiced professionally by people who have a mastery of the language, and can create compelling sentences and stories. Their work shouldn’t be clumsily manhandled by non-writers who claim to be “editing” it.

On the other hand, writing is egalitarian: anyone can be a writer. It’s something we were all taught to do throughout school and college. It’s something that even a person with a high school education can excel at.

Most days, I fall into the egalitarian camp. Anyone can be a writer. You just need the desire, determination, some basic skills, and a pen. From there, you can be any kind of writer you want. Who am I to say whether you’re “good enough,” or shouldn’t enjoy every apple of success you can grab? I’m the outsider, remember?

I’m an outsider writer, but I’ve claimed the awards and accolades the properly-trained writers should have gotten. You have to wonder just how good all their training is when a stone-cold noobie can make a bigger impact with one piece than the people who spent several years of their life preparing for.

I’m an outsider writer, and I wear that badge, that literary leather jacket, with pride. I’ve scratched and struggled for every success I’ve gotten, and I earned every one of my scars. I’ve spent the last 20+ years, studying, reading, practicing, and honing. I’ve been rejected by some of the best and the worst in the business. I like my outsider writer status. It suits me, and I wear it better than a lot of the insiders wear theirs.

Please note: I am not saying I can outwrite any MFA or creative writer. I’m not some Wyatt Earp wordsmith. Far from it. I have several friends who are trained writers, and frankly, they can kick my ass, and I gape open-mouthed at their ability to string words together. But I offer this idea of the successful Outsider Writer to anyone who has an urge to write, but thought that a lack of training or education should hold them back.

Are you an outsider or trained writer? Did you get an education in creative writing, or did you just figure it out as you went along? Are you better off or worse off for your choice? And do you wish you could do it any differently, if you had the chance?

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Not Every Social Media Consultant Knows What They’re Doing

I was tweeting with my friend and fellow social media consultant, Dana Nelson, a couple nights ago about a business presentation she was sitting in, when she quoted this piece of advice from the presenter.

“Posting your business on other business sites is lame – tagging business/ cross marketing does not work.”

Wait, what? Who said that, the business professor from Back to School?

Cross-posting doesn’t work? Creating visible partnerships is lame? Creating a referral network is ineffectual?

Look, there are a lot, a lot, a loooooooot of social media consultants out there. And they don’t all know what they’re talking about. It worries me that these people are spreading poor information out there. It’s like a volunteer sheriff’s deputy telling people you can’t be arrested for drunk driving if you’re wearing your seat belt. (Caution: You can be arrested for drunk driving, even if you are wearing your seat belt.)

And this 16-word piece of misinformation is a doozy, and so wrong in so many ways.

  • It’s a widely accepted fact in search engine optimization circles that promoting a business site on another site is going to give me some big search engine juice. Anyone who understands basic SEO knows that backlinks are what give your site a high search engine ranking.
  • Coke and McDonald’s would disagree with your views on cross-marketing. As would Pizza Hut and Pepsi. Or any movie studio with Happy Meal Toys and Burger King Kids’ Meal Toys. Or BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon. And any sponsors of any NASCAR or Indy Car racing team.
  • People buy from people they like, and accept recommendations from people they trust. If Dana recommends a good restaurant to visit, I’m going to believe her. Why? Because I like her and trust her. It’s the same with businesses. If a business I trust recommends the services of another business, I’m going to believe them. The smart thing for small businesses to do is to team up with allied businesses.
  • There are more business networking experts than there are social media experts (as hard as that is to believe). Nearly all of them will shout the praises of networking, referral sharing, and cross-promoting. And I’ll believe business networking experts who measure their experience in years and decades, not weeks and months.

This is just one of many reasons why you need to screen your so-called social media “expert” before you hire them. Especially if they blather on with inane bits of advice like this.

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5 Signs You Suck at Twitter

I’ve been playing around with Friend Or Follow over the last few days, and I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of people suck at Twitter.

Friend Or Follow is a Twitter tool that shows people you’re following, but aren’t following you; people who follow you, but you’re not following; and people you have a mutual followship with.

I dumped over 500 people from my Twitter account this week with FOF. I checked out each account I unfollowed, and frankly, some of you people are just doing it wrong. That’s why I unfollowed you. Not sure if this includes you? Then check out the…

Five signs you suck at Twitter.

    • You claim to be a social media consultant/pro/expert/guru (CPEG), but your following to follower ratio is 10:1. That is, you’re followed by 5,000 or more people, but only following 500. Social media consultants looove to say “have conversations with people.” But shouldn’t people who truly value conversation be willing to, I don’t know, have them?. Or at least fake like you are? If you’re a CPEG, you should have a ratio fairly close to 1:1. This is not to say that everyone should have a 1:1 ratio. Just the CPEGs. (Pro tip: you’ll also have more than 200 followers. I’m just sayin’.)
    • Nearly every one of your tweets is some motivational or inspirational message. Why do I need to get ten motivational messages peppered throughout the day? If it didn’t help me at 8:30 — 29 minutes after your HootSuite-scheduled “Good morning, my tweeps! Make this an excellent day!” — then it’s not going to help me at 9:30, 10:30, and so on. Don’t regurgitate someone else’s cleverness, show me yours. If you really want to motivate me, tell me about the cool stuff you’re doing.
    • You’re trying to amass as many followers as you can. If you’re a celebrity, a public figure, or someone who’s really, really interesting, that’s great. If you grew your network through hard work and earned those followers, more power to you. But if you resort to computer scripts, trickery, and joining follower-building networks to boost your rankings, then stick with being a LinkedIn LION. Twitter is not a competitive sport. Despite what you’re already doing to LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter isn’t just one more race to the bottom of mediocrity and uselessness.
    • Your Twitter bio has the words “money,” “fast,” and “make” in it. I spam-block every single person whose bio says they have some money making system they want to share with me. Stick to peddling penis drugs and fake watches by email.
    • Your time between tweets can be measured with a calendar. You don’t have to tweet many times a day, but at least once a day wouldn’t kill you. Even every other day would be fine. But when you’re only tweeting every 3 – 4 weeks on a regular basis, then Twitter isn’t a communication tool, it’s an afterthought, like calling your mom the day after Mother’s Day.

What is your Twitter pet peeve? What sort of annoying behavior have you seen?