Pro Blog Service

You are here: Home / Archives for All Posts / Writing

Writing

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I get this a lot in my work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We know where to tap the hammer.

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

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

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

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

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

 

Photo credit: Rob Boudon (Flickr, Creative Commons)

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bloggers Need the Iceberg Theory

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Sketch out basic notes

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

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

3. Write like you talk

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

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

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

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

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

BONUS: Learn how to type fast

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

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

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

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

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)

By

Stop Telling Students “Said is Dead;” They Shouldn’t Use Anything Else

One of the most fun, yet annoying things I’ve ever done for my oldest daughter is to undo the writing “rules” her teacher taught her in the 7th grade.

“Paragraphs have to be 3 – 4 sentences long. Don’t use contractions. Don’t start sentences with ‘and,’ ‘but,’ or ‘or.’ Don’t end your sentences with a preposition.”

When she was in the 7th grade, I had told her not to follow one of her writing rules “because,” I said, citing my full 20+ years of experience, “it’s stupid.” She did, and when the teacher corrected her, she said, “My dad told me not to do it, and he’s a professional writer.”

Believe it or not, that was the end of that little rule, although the teacher did explain that she wanted my daughter to at least know the basics, so she could understand what rules she was breaking.

“They shouldn’t be rules in the first place,” I started to tell my daughter, but my wife stopped me.

Now that my daughter is home schooled, and writing (especially blogging) has become a central part of my daughter’s education, I’m able to teach her the right way to write, and not the school way to write.

And yes, there’s a difference.

This is What Happens When You Focus Too Much on Math

I was more than a little annoyed and disheartened to read John Warner’s “Said Is NOT Dead” article on InsideHigherEd.com.

Recently, the most disturbing news I’ve heard in a long time came across my Facebook feed. It was supplied by Matt Bell, a writer and creative writing teacher of my acquaintance who had heard this very troubling thing from the students in one of his classes.

They told Professor Bell that when it comes to tagging dialog in their fiction, “said is dead.” He inquired where they learned this, and they answered, “school.”

This is what annoys me about our educational system. We have people who don’t write teaching people how to write. We make science teachers have a background in science, history teachers have a history degree. And yes, I know English teachers have an English degree, but they’re usually readers, not writers. Or they’re not very good writers, otherwise they wouldn’t be telling students to use “enthused,” “squealed,” “chortled,” and “shrieked,” instead of “said” and “asked.”

That’s not good writing. That shows you have a thesaurus, and it’s actually very distracting. The whole point of dialog is to relay a conversation, not show how clever the author is. I want to hear the people speaking, I don’t want to see how many different emotion words the author knows.

To paraphrase Warner’s friend, Jim Ruland, “A tag on a line of dialog is like a tag on a garment: you’re not supposed to notice it and it’s slightly embarrassing when you do.”

By teaching “said is dead,” these teachers are violating two other important rules of writing:

  1. Don’t use adverbs. Don’t describe a verb, use a better verb.
  2. Show, don’t tell. Don’t tell me she’s enthusiastic, describe it through her actions.

Good dialog should flow like a good TV show. When you have good actors doing good dialog, you don’t need a lot of visual fluff to go with it. When you’re writing dialog, you don’t need all that pap and fluff to tell the reader what to think. You show it with the rest of the narrative or the other character’s reaction.

Teachers Need to Learn to Write

Writing is easy. Writing well is hard. And the better you get, the harder it gets. But people who teach grossly incorrect ideas like “said is dead” are making it harder for people who actually want to write for a living.

Anyone who has to unlearn a bad habit is at a disadvantage compared to the people who learned good habits early on. Teachers who tell their students “said is dead” — or any of these other grammar and language myths — are doing their students a horrible disservice. And employers like me end up with an entire generation of students who couldn’t write their way out of a wet paper bag without a quiver full of adjectives.

Teachers, if you want to help your students be good writers, start writing yourself. Write essays and short stories. Don’t just read them, produce them. Invite professional writers and college writing professors to your class to talk about what the writing life is like. Start reading blogs from professional writers and creating writing teachers to see what kinds of advice they’re giving and what ideas they’re teaching.

Give them sound writing advice that every professional writer is following in the real world, and not something from the Pollyanna School of Saccharine Pap.

(Update: As my friend and published novelist, Cathy Day, said in the comments below: If any K-12 teachers find their way to this post and feel inspired to focus on their own identities as writers, this is just what they need: The Indiana Writing Project (or if they don’t live in Indiana, many states off similar summer institutes).)