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Stop Saying ‘In These Troubled Times’: 5 Amateur Mistakes Content Marketers Keep Making

We’ve had years of practice, thousands of articles written on the rights and wrongs, and millions of social media “experts,” but we still have content marketers and copywriters making the same stupid, amateur mistakes they’ve been warned against.

Now everyone seems to think the current pandemic shutdown somehow changes all the rules, and everything they’ve been told not to do is now fair game.

Not at all. In fact, if anything, this crisis means you have to really buckle down and quit making them.

Here are five amateur mistakes that content marketers and copywriters need to quit making right now.

1. Stop saying “In these troubled times”

Good Lord, if I see “in these trying/terrible/troubled times” once more, I’m going to Hulk-smash my laptop!

They’re are all troubled times! This is nothing special. (Okay, maybe it’s a little different.) But we’ve always had trying times. Even during the good times, we’ve had trying times. “In these trying times” could be said about any time.

Twelve years ago, during the Great Recession, I had a freelance copywriter who used “in these trying times” or “in these economically troubled times” in every single article they handed in for the next four years, even when things were on the upswing.

Every. Single. One.

Bottom line, do not refer to “these troubled times” at all ever. It’s one of the most useless and overused writing clichés in the entire world.

2. Stop sending emails about what YOU’RE doing

Sign that says I Would Have Preferred a Blank Wall Rather Than This Great Piece of Shit. This applies to most marketing messages, especially the ones that say In these troubled times.I’ve seen plenty of emails explaining what a particular company’s response to COVID-19 has been. Some, like my favorite coffee shop or pizza place, are explaining what steps they’re taking to protect customers, because they know that we’re affected by the things they do and don’t do.

Other companies, like software companies I haven’t heard from since 2012, are telling me the steps they’re taking to shelter in place, practice social distancing, and blah blah blah.

Seriously, Chad? You’re just a software company. No one cares.

The only reason you should send an email about your COVID-19 response is if your response directly affects your customers.

For example, if you have a web hosting company, I want to know what steps you’re taking to keep my servers up and running. If you have a rental car company, I only want to know if you’re going to be open or if I can cancel my reservations. I don’t care how closely you’re monitoring the government’s guidance. Don’t give me a 500-word piece of bullshit that doesn’t tell me anything until the last paragraph. (Read Josh Bernoff’s cutting analysis of Hert’z corporate email.)

And, clean out your email list. If you haven’t heard from certain people in more than four years, maybe you should just remove them.

3. Don’t say anything unless you have something to say

This piggybacks off point #2, but it’s a much broader message. As content marketers, we’re already used to filling up people’s inboxes and social streams. And people are 1) ignoring it and 2) tired of it.

So maybe we should instead shut up and do something useful. People are frightened, anxious, and just trying to take care of themselves and their loved ones. So no one needs more marketing clutter to get people to pay attention to us.

If you want to get people’s attention, do something useful. Offer them something to make their lives easier. Accounting software companies, teach people how to become entrepreneurs, because a lot of people are losing their jobs. Personal finance coaches, create videos, blog articles, and podcasts about how to lower our costs and trim our budgets. Restaurants can offer cooking classes or “ask me anything” sessions.

Some companies are already doing this. My gym, like a lot of gyms, are offering workout-at-home video sessions. My friend the yoga instructor is doing Monday night yoga sessions on Facebook Live. Blaze Pizza hosted a virtual pizza party with their executive chef, Brad, where people could ask him questions and get real-time answers.

But other companies are still sending me emails about booking trips, buying electronics, or buying men’s clothing.

I realize you have to find a way to stay in business, but try being useful before you start being commercial.

4. Update your old messages

For some of you, it’s business as usual. For most everyone else, they’re not buying anything. And yes, it’s hurting the economy. And yes, businesses are suffering and they need a way to stay in business. I’m not saying you shouldn’t.

What you should be doing right now is revamping your old messages and updating them to reflect the new reality we’re going to be facing for the next several weeks.

Case in point, a friend from Indiana posted that she saw a commercial from one of the local TV stations reminding people to check in with them for the local traffic report. That’s fine, except there is no traffic because Indiana is on a statewide stay-at-home order.

While the ad may be a good reminder for people once the order is lifted, it’s still a wasted opportunity. Check your upcoming messages and see if any of them have now aged out or ring a little tone deaf in light of the shutdown.

If you have scheduled your messages days and weeks in advance (which is a bad idea), hit Pause on your drip campaign until you can be sure that everything is still valid, true, and necessary. Take that opportunity to update your messages to better reflect your new approaches (see #2) and any new offers you might have.

5. Never, EVER refer to the “China virus”

We all know what this virus family is called — coronavirus — and what this particular strain is called — COVID-19. Those are the two most widely accepted terms that everyone knows and uses. The media is using them, the CDC and the World Health Organization are using them. It’s only certain government officials who are calling it the “China virus,” and it’s causing a lot of problems for Asian Americans.

They’re being threatened, verbally harassed, and in some cases, physically assaulted, all because some mouth-breathing halfwit thinks Chinese people are perpetuating the virus on our country. These are the same mouth-breathing halfwits who think you can also catch it by drinking Corona beer.

Which is made in Mexico. Which is not near China.

So if you use the term China virus, you’re just buying into the same racist dogwhistling nonsense as those other mouth-breathing halfwits. So don’t do it.

Good content marketers are always learning, always improving, always trying to do better. But there are times where we get lazy and settle into old habits and easy cliches just to get through the next assignment. But now is not the time to fall prey to that kind of thinking.

Your customers are counting on you in these troubled times.

Photo credit: Urban Artefakte (Flickr, Creative Commons)

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Sportswriters, Don’t Give Up Game Recaps for Social Media

I was listening to a recent episode of Jeff Pearlman’s Two Writers Slinging Yang, and his interview with Langston Newsome, a sportswriter with the Columbia (Missouri) Tribune. Jeff talks to sportswriters and other writers about the art of writing and state of journalism.

In this episode, Jeff and Langston discussed the need for game recaps — also called “gamers” in the sports journalism biz — and whether there was a need for it.

Langston said he thought gamers were worthless because “I’m not reading the 600-word gamer on any site anymore.”

Black and white image of a journalist. This is how I imagine old-timey sportwriters looked, pipe clenched in his teeth, holding an old style phone.
“Stop the presses, Jimmy! I got the scoop of the century!”
The need for gamers is an ongoing discussion in many sports departments, as sportswriters and editors struggle with whether they need to write a recap of the big plays and turning points in each matchup, or whether the networks’ and teams’ Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube accounts are filling the gap and shoving traditional gamers to the side.

As a social media professional, I can tell you that social media is not the panacea everyone thinks it is. As much as we think this is an online digital world, and we can do away with things like newspapers, libraries, paper books, and even sports gamers, we can’t. We still live in an old-school world that relies on old-school methods and old-school channels of communication.

Not everyone watches games live; they still want to read about what happened. Maybe they don’t live in the area where the game is broadcast. Maybe they don’t have cable. Maybe they had two games they wanted to see.

Not everyone pays attention to teams’ social media; they don’t see the updates that are happening in real time. Maybe they’re at work. Maybe they don’t follow the teams’ social accounts. Maybe they don’t have social media themselves.

Not everyone is online in the first place; they don’t have the ability to see those updates when they’re happening. Maybe they can’t afford a smartphone. Maybe they don’t have Internet access. Maybe they’re seniors who don’t want to deal with the Internet. (These are your biggest newspaper readers, and they’re part of the biggest demographic in the country; 97 million people born between 1928 – 1964.)

Sportswriters, don’t give up on gamers. There’s still a need for them, just as much as there’s a need for analysis and features.

Gamers are glimpses into the past, social updates are real-time, have-to-be-present highlights.

Gamers can focus on some of the smaller plays and interesting facts, social updates only focus on the big, big plays, not the little things.

Don’t Abandon the Old-School Just Yet

One of the favorite digital marketing stats that gets bandied about is that roughly 50% of the country never reads a newspaper. But that means that roughly 50% of the country still reads a newspaper, even if it’s once a week, even if it’s online.

According to a Statista.com report, as of May 2017,

  • 54% of people 60 years and older read a print newspaper at least once a week.
  • 44% of people between 30 – 59 read a print newspaper at least once a week.
  • Only 28% of people between 18 – 29 read a print newspaper once a week or more.*

* These are the people to gear digital news toward. They’re the ones looking at game highlights online and following teams’ social media accounts.

While the need for gamers may eventually go away, that day is not today. There are still plenty of people old enough to keep reading newspapers — there are 72.56 million Baby Boomers in the U.S., people born between 1946 – 1964 and another 24.44 million born between 1928 – 1945 — and they’re not embracing digital.

So sportswriters should keep writing gamers for as long as there’s a need and an audience. Don’t go by your own viewing and reading habits to determine what’s acceptable and wanted by 97 million other people in this country.

Besides, gamers help you become a better writer in the long run.

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Writing the Old Fashioned Way (GUEST POST)

Every so often, I will feature guest posts from writers who actually have important and interesting things to say. Irene Roth is a professional writer and writing coach, which means she really knows her stuff. When she offered an article on how to improve your writing with an unusual technique, I happily took her up on it.

The vast majority of writers seem to have a keyboard of some kind close by. Whether it is a tiny keyboard on our phone, tablet, laptop, or a desktop keyboard, we are quite comfortable with typing our thoughts out quickly and efficiently for later on. Typing on screens have become the new norm. Neither do we have to spend many hours retyping our material from longhand later on. We believe we can save time if we simply type our work right onto the computer screen.

So, let’s look at four ways that writing our manuscripts in longhand can actually boost our creative energies just by picking up a pen instead of typing on a screen.

1. We Will Remember What We Wrote

The act of writing longhand will help us remember more of what we’re taking notes on. This is crucially important when we’re doing research for our manuscripts. Typing is a far less neurologically complex process than writing. This is because typing is simply a mechanical movement. We don’t really seem to be engaged with our material as much when we are writing things down. Further, when we write, large parts of our brains light up, making the activity much more complex.

2. It Beats Writer’s Block

Most writers struggle with writer’s block some time in their careers. We all have different ways of dealing with this difficulty. However, one of the best ways to consistently overcome writer’s block is to change the way we write. So, for instance, if we typically write on the computer screen, we should switch to writing longhand. And from my years of coaching, I have discovered that writers believe that writing in longhand is the solution to the problem.

This is probably because writing activates different parts of the brain. Therefore, it can short-circuit a case of writer’s block quite quickly. After all, we are using different muscles in our brain to write longhand. This can potentially trigger a positive array of interconnected thoughts, ideas and memories which can reduce or eliminate writer’s block.

3. We Will Write More Clearly

Irene S. Roth, author of Writing the Old-Fashioned WayBecause writing by hand is slower than typing, it also feels more labor-intensive. Because of this, writing by hand is actually a great tool to learn how to write more concisely and effectively. We will be more aware of extra words that we use or if we used a wrong word. In addition, the amount of focus that it takes to put pen to paper also helps us create more complete sentences with better and more vivid scenes. When we’re typing on the computer, we will be much more distracted than when we write by hand.

We Will Revise Better

Revising is by far the hardest part of writing. Just because we completed a first draft of our manuscript doesn’t mean that we’re done. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. The editing process has only just begun. We are usually way too close to our writing, so it may be hard to be objective about our writing, making editing difficult. Because we’ll need to transcribe our handwritten pages to a typed manuscript, we get the opportunity to review every word we’ve written as we type it. This can also help us detach from our work. By the time we finish typing up our manuscript, we can rework passages of our work so that they are smoother and more precise.

Given all of these benefits, it is important for writers to try to write in longhand as often as possible. Not only will they enjoy the overall creative process, think more clearly, and write better quality manuscripts, they will enjoy writing and will look forward to coming back to their writing the next day. Who knows, we may just fall in love with it too.

Irene S. Roth has a Master’s Degree in Philosophy and Psychology from York University and is currently using her expertise to write for kids about empowerment and self-esteem. She has published ten nonfiction books for kids and teens and sixty-five books for adults as well as 2,000 articles and book reviews both online and in print. She has been running workshops at Savvy Authors on many different topics for writers. She also leads a very successful mentoring program for writers on Savvy Authors that is in its fourth year.

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Jargon Words Are the Hallmarks of a Pretentious Ass

As David Ogilvy once said, jargon words “are the hallmarks of a pretentious ass.”

And that’s how I feel when you use handshake as a verb when you mean to say “introduce.” Or a value add.

Too many business types, especially in the tech and social media world, can’t stop sounding like the Dack.com Bullshit Generator. They say things like “disintermediate bleeding-edge paradigms” and “synergize mission-critical infomediaries” without actually knowing what they mean.

(Seriously, go check out the Bullshit Generator and build your own sentence. Pick one term from each of the three columns, and you can generate phrases like “we matrix cross-media web-readiness.”

Here are 10 jargon words that we need to get rid of immediately

  1. A value add: From “value added,” which comes from “valuable.” Don’t make up a noun phrase when there’s a much better word available (see “on a going forward basis”). Like useful, helpful, vital, beneficial, prized, advantageous, and meaningful.
    2. Gill's Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon
    Gill’s Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon
  2. Drinking the Kool-Aid: For one thing, this is horribly offensive, since it refers to the Jonestown Massacre of 918 people in 1978. For another, the people who died in that mass murder-suicide drank Flavor Aid. But mostly you should stop using it since it mocks the deaths of more than 900 people.
  3. Onboarding: Sign up. Register. I hate this word so much that even though my spellchecker is flagging this word right now, I refuse to add it to my user dictionary. So it’s just sitting there, with a little red squiggle under it. This offends my sense of competitive perfection, but “onboarding” offends it even more.
  4. Frictionless: Easy. You know what’s easier to say than “frictionless?” “Easy.” It’s literally one syllable less. And if you ever say you have “a frictionless onboarding experience.” you deserve to be mocked openly by children. Just say “signing up is easy.”
  5. Learnings: They’re just “lessons.” There was nothing wrong with saying “lessons.”
  6. Learners: Students. You mean students — students learn lessons, learners do not learn learnings. If you feel funny calling adults in a conference breakout session students, then call them “participants” or “attendees.” I have never heard of a single example where “learners” was the best option.
  7. Handshake: I heard someone say they were in the business of “handshaking” companies together. At first, I thought she meant meeting new people. When she said it a second time — “we can handshake you to other companies” — I was worried she was having a stroke.

    8. A tweet I wrote about the jargon word "to socialize."

  8. On a going forward basis: From now on. Seriously, “going forward” was bad enough, but someone said, “You know what? That’s not complicated enough. Let’s add more words to it.”
  9. On the go forward. The bastard child of “on a going forward basis.” Seriously, I would rather you said “going forward” than to hear you utter this again.
  10. Socialize: Just say share. You socialize at a party, you don’t “socialize this data.” And if anyone ever says “socialize these learnings,” I’m going to scream.

Very rarely do bullshit words make effective jargon. There are some words that we use that started out as jargon words — Jeep, radar, scuba — but those are words that actually made communication easier. People got tired of saying “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus” over and over.

And I understand that we need things like acronyms and acrostics to shorten some industrial terminology, like how emergency responders have to go through “NIMS” training, which refers to National Incident Management Systems. No one wants to say that every time.

But until and unless you can convince me that “on the go forward” is better than “from now on,” keep your bullshit jargon words where they belong: in an iron box that gets rocketed directly into the sun.

Photo credit: Joe Mabel (Wikimedia Commons, GNU Free Documentation License)

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How To Write Impactful Travel Blog Posts That Get Noticed

Every so often, I will feature guest posts from writers who actually have important and interesting things to say. Joel Syder is a freelance and travel blog writer, a topic which is near and dear to my heart. So I wanted to feature his article on travel blog writing.

Writing travel blog posts involves so much more than simply stating ‘Hey, I’m here!’ In fact, with so much noise in the travel blogging niche, it’s becoming more and more difficult to get noticed. Yet to those who pen their travel blog posts in the right way, there are ample means to get impactful results, be that a following, or click-throughs if you are supporting a product or service. With that in mind, here are some tips to producing travel blog posts that actually get results:

Use an interesting title

It all starts from the beginning, which in this case is your title. This is a one-off chance to hook the reader into your travel blog post. Make it unique, interesting and quirky if possible. Entice them to read more.

“Sometimes choosing the right title can take almost as long as the blog post itself. It’s essential that it reflects your post but that it reels the reader in. You want them to think ‘What’s this all about?’” remarks Trudy Carlton, a travel blogger at Writemyx and Brit student.

Find a different angle

Joel Syder is a freelance and travel blog writer.
Joel Syder

It can be tough to do, but your post also needs to pitch something slightly different too. In a crowded space this may seem overwhelming, but often it entails simply looking at things from a different perspective, i.e. the local people, for example. The great thing about travel is that it involves so many things: sights, people, culture, food, music, language and so on. It doesn’t have to be a huge innovation at all, just look at things through a new set of eyes, and there’s your angle.

Write engaging content

In this day and age of SEO, keyword placements, link building and so on, what can be overlooked is the fact that something still needs to be well written. In fact, this is probably truer than ever with all of the options that are available, and with audiences’ patience on the wane. Start strongly, and never let off, using clear, concise language that is proofread for mistakes. And let your personality shine through – no one wants a robotic piece that could have been written by bots! Tell a story that people want to hear, and to do that, put yourself in the shoes of the reader.

Take your own pictures

Pepper you piece with unique shots you have personally taken on your travels. Stock photos are easy to spot a mile off, so use personal shots with all their inherent flaws (no one is looking for professional pics) and this adds charm and a genuine reality to your piece: ‘this person has actually been there!’

“I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to take tons and tons of pictures. And take them of absolutely everything: the food, the landscape, the people (with permission of course), and get yourself in there too, although refrain from the cheesy selfies!,” advises Robbie Wainscroft, a cruise ship worker at 1day2write and Nextcoursework.

Look for niches within the niche

It’s important to find a niche too. Of course, travel writing is a niche itself, but as already stated, within this field there are so many sub-categories that the list is almost endless. So, think about exactly what you are aiming for before you start, and who it would appeal too. As an example, organic food production is already a popular topic, but told within the confines of a trip to Southeast Asia, it takes on a whole new angle. When you look at it like this, the possibilities are limitless.

Jot down everything when you’re traveling

Remember that everything can give inspiration, but if you are sitting on your sofa trying to recall it, the whole experience becomes a lot more difficult. With that in mind, just keep writing down stuff as you are in the middle of things, or use a dictaphone to make remarks. No matter how mundane they may seem at the time, just having these words as a reference will inspire memories, smells and sounds and a later stage.

Consider SEO

Writing well is the key, but if this can be performed in conjunction with SEO principles, then you really are on to a winner. Research keywords and think about synonyms and related phrases. Gone are the days of stuffing, but natural placement of a few integral words will certainly boost the piece on those all-important search engine rankings. But the difference is, nowadays it doesn’t need to come at the expense of quality, which is great news for serious writers.

International travel agent and travel writer Joel Syder loves nothing more than sharing his experiences and the things that excite him in the world of travel at Academic Brits and Phd Kingdom. He is a regular contributor of articles to Originwritings.

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How to Work With a Ghostwriter

I’ve been a ghostwriter for over 10 years, working on blog articles and even books with people who have a story to tell. I’ve worked with dozens of clients and have written over 3,500 articles in that time, as well as eight books, including my new novel, Mackinac Island Nation.

My clients have ranged from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to entrepreneurs running one-person operations, both in the United States and overseas, in a staggering variety of industries. I’ve been able to learn from all of them, and — I hope — they’ve been able to learn from me.

For those of you who are thinking about working with a ghostwriter, whether it’s for corporate blog articles or even your own memoirs, there are a few things you need to realize before you start.

It’s going to cost money.

A photo of hands over an old Compaq keyboard, like a ghostwriter.
You can tell this is an old photo (from 2004) just by the Compaq logo in the bottom corner.
Writers need to eat. We have to pay our mortgages. We have to take care of our families. We don’t write for the promise of royalties or the exposure. This is not a hobby, this is our job. And just like any skilled position, the better the writer is, the more it’s going to cost. Things will get done faster and they’ll be done better than if you go with the less expensive option.

So while many people who want to write a book have a fascinating story to tell, a good writer is not going to want to spend 3 – 6 months working on your book in the hopes that they’ll get something from your efforts. It’s impolite to even ask, so if this is your plan for paying them, either save up your money or start writing it yourself.

Typically, a ghostwriter will ask for half up front and half at the end, but my practice has been to ask for half of the fee up front, one-fourth when we reach the halfway mark, and the remaining fourth when the final chapter is delivered and/or the manuscript has gone through one or two rounds of edits. For corporate ghost blogging clients, I typically work on a retainer basis where there will be a set number of articles written each month, and the client is invoiced on the 1st.

Be prepared for some give and take.

This is a collaborative process, and the manuscript will be evolving and changing. When the ghostwriter gives you the first draft, that’s so you can make the big changes, like rearranging sections, clarifying details, and rewriting problem sentences. This isn’t the finished product, so don’t get upset that your writer just handed you a pile of garbage. Your job now is to go back and read it and make sure everything is correct and you’re satisfied with the direction this is going.

That first stage is also not the time for fixing typos and punctuation or spelling errors. That will come later. Like I tell my clients, there’s no point in polishing a turd, let’s make it a not-turd first. Make all the major revisions and changes before you start fixing the tiny errors.

Similarly, you will have to call it done at some point. Yes, you want this to be perfect, and you want it to be polished to a high sheen, but that’s not always going to be your ghostwriter’s strong suit. Their job is to write the manuscript, make some revisions, and get it to a reasonable state where a copyeditor could take it over.

So be sure to work out in advance how many revisions and changes you can ask for. No writer wants to spend 12 months polishing and changing your manuscript, so save your revisions for one major passthrough rather than trickling them in. Typically, you should be able to get to the copyediting stage with no more than two revisions. If you’re not getting there, then one or both of you are the problem.

Leave the mechanics to your writer

There’s a very good chance that you’re good at punctuation and grammar, but there’s a very good chance that your ghostwriter is a nerd about it. That means that they know whether the grammar rules we learned in school are totally bogus..

For example, I was working with a client who tried — rather smugly, I thought — to correct me on a preposition I had used at the end of a sentence. So I explained to him:

This is a rule that should never have been in existence in the first place, but it had been created by an 18th-century Latin scholar named Robert Lowth in his book, A Short Guide to English Grammar. Lowth had read a similar admonition in a commentary by a 17th-century poet and scholar named John Dryden.

The problem was Dryden and Lowth were applying Latin rules to English, even though English didn’t actually need a few of those particular rules. It has been unnecessary for centuries, and most grammar nerds will never expect someone to contort their sentences just to follow that rule.

I could tell by the reaction from the client that he hadn’t expected any of that.

“Oh,” was all he said, and he never brought up grammar issues again.

The moral of the story: When someone starts spouting 400-year-old grammar history knowledge, he probably knows when you can break the rules.

So let him.

Don’t feel guilty that you’re working with a ghostwriter

Look, if you could write, you’d be a writer. If you had the time, you could do this yourself. But chances are, you’re working with a ghostwriter because either writing is not your forte or you just don’t have the hours and hours to put in the work.

This is the same reason you don’t change your own oil, fix your own leaky plumbing, re-roof your own house, or do your own taxes. You want a professional who’s good at what they do so you can look great at what you do.

Once, when I was ghostwriting a speech for a client, they felt embarrassed to have someone writing for them, like they weren’t important enough to need a speechwriter. I told them it wasn’t a question of being important, it was a question not having the time.

“Do you have four hours to devote to this project?” I asked.

“No, I barely have four hours to do anything,” said the client.

“Well, I do,” I said. “This doesn’t make you too big for your britches, it keeps you from looking unprepared when you give this speech.”

This is true whether you need a speechwriter, blog writer, or book writer. It’s not a question of whether you’re too important or have more money than sense. It’s a matter of helping you present your best story, whether it’s in a book, your company blog, or even a speech.

You need a professional who understands the subtleties and nuances of language, can tell your story in a clear and compelling way, and can do it in a timely manner.

So if you ever need to work with a ghostwriter, be clear and upfront with your expectations, and ask your ghostwriter to do the same with you. Don’t get bogged down in the process and let them do their job, while you do yours.

Photo credit: hobvias sudoneighm (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0)