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No Bullshit Social Media: One Jujuflop Away from Civil Collapse

There’s a great piece of narration from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that talks about how certain words, which were once distasteful and unspeakable, are now perfectly acceptable to say.

Like “jujuflop.”No Bullshit Social Media cover

In today’s modern Galaxy there is, of course, very little still held to be unspeakable. Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and, in extreme cases, shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech is seen as evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed, and totally unf**ked-up personality.

So, for instance, when in a recent national speech, the financial minister of the Royal World Estate of Qualvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another, and the fact that no one had made any food for awhile and the king seemed to have died, and that most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy had now arrived at what he called, “One whole juju-flop situation,” everyone was so pleased he felt able to come out and say it, that they quite failed to notice that their five-thousand-year-old civilisation had just collapsed overnight.

I feel that way about No Bullshit Social Media, the book I wrote with Jason Falls. I’m not embarrassed by the title. I’m only worried that this is America’s jujuflop: 1) That no one is shocked by the title because we’ve all heard and said worse, and 2) that everyone is so pleased to see it in print that they fail to notice everything else has collapsed around them.

I can’t remember whose idea the title was, but when we pitched it to our editor, Katherine Bull (@katherinebull) and her department, there wasn’t a whole lot of pushback on it. There was some concern over what some of the bookstores might say, but they were all “meh” about it, so we knew we were golden.

I’m proud of the “No Bullshit” title and I’m proud of the work. There’s no question about that (although I won’t let my kids repeat it). And I know there are still some people who, despite my best efforts, will not speak or even write out the name of the title, despite my entreaties that they should honor the literary integrity of the book’s title.

(I actually respect them for this. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to quit trying to get them to say it.)

We picked the title, because that was the only way to describe the approach we were going to take in the book. That, and because we thought Gary Vaynerchuk might want the title . . .And The Horse You Rode In On for his next book.

So, don’t worry about whether you like the title. If you don’t believe social media is right for your company, you need to read it. You don’t have to say the name, you just have to read the book. This book is for you, whether you like the title or not.

No Bullshit describes the approach and it describes the attitude. We’re not going to snow you with lilting chants about “be a part of conversations with your customers” or other tree-hugging hippie bullshit, as Jason calls it. Social media marketing is about the bottom line. About making money. About finding a way to turn this free marketing channel into one that brings in revenue.

Because the executives and business owners who pooh-pooh social media as a passing fad or merely for young people are missing out on a chance to make more money, win new customers, and ensure their company’s very survival.

And that’s no bullshit.

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Stop Saying “Value Add”

English is a fluid, malleable language that is ever changing, which I always enjoy. Until someone comes up with a stupid term like “value add.”

(Before I go on, I know some of my friends use this term. Please be assured this is not a reflection on you. You’re awesome. I only harbor a grudge against the person who first came up with it.)

“Value add” — I can’t even bring myself to use the word without putting Quotes of Sarcasm around it — is one of those business words that went from being an adjective to a noun with a flick of the jargon pen. I still remember the first time I heard it. (Oh what a fun conversation that was!)

Friend: I think your ghost blogging service will make a great “value add” to a marketing agency’s offerings.
Me: What’s a “value add?”
Friend: It’s a thing that adds value. You know, from “value-added.”
Me: Why couldn’t you say “value-added service?”
Friend: This way is shorter.
Me: Except I hate “value-added.” You could say “be valuable.”
Friend: But . . . this is. . .
Me: Or “beneficial.” Or “useful.” Or “provide a great service.”
Friend: But I don’t—
Me: Or “helpful.” Or “marvelous.” Or “inestimable.”

“Value add” is one of those business terms that someone created because “value-added” was apparently too hard to say. That somehow the adjective “value-added,” as in “value-added feature,” was bulky and cumbersome, and tripped over the teeth before blubbering through the lips, like Quasimodo trying to recite the Gettysburg address.

“I know!” shrieked some business jargon harpy, whose song lures young marketers to them in their ships, causing the marketers to hurl themselves on the jagged rocks of corporate BS. “Instead of saying ‘value-added,’ which is four syllables, we’ll say ‘value add’ which is only three!” The other harpies cackled with glee, until a young harpy pointed out that “a value add” is still four syllables, whereupon the other harpies ate her.

Look, I was not a big fan of “value-added” when I first heard it. It sounded jargony, even if it took two commonly used words — “added” and “value” — and mashed them up into one awful word. English is malleable and fluid, and we are free to do things like that.

But I absolutely abhor and detest the new phrase, “value-add.” It serves no useful function, it sounds more corporate and jargony than even “value-added,” if such a thing were possible, and it doesn’t enhance the language so much as it makes me despair for the future of it.

The point of language is to find the best possible words to educate, inform, persuade, enrich, describe, and profess. Words like “valuable” do that. If something “has value,” we know it’s important. But jargon takes away from language. It dilutes language. Weakens it. Makes a mockery of it.

Jargon does not add value to our language. It is a “value-suck.”

is the owner of Professional Blog Service, and the co-author of Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself. His new book, No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing, which he wrote with Jason Falls, is in bookstores and on Amazon now.

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Your Blog Openings Suck

I truly don’t care why you wrote your blog post.

It doesn’t matter that you were sitting in a coffee shop with your friend, Joe, when you were discussing some amazing idea. I don’t care that those of us who may know you may know that you’re committed to saving the manatees. I don’t care that you’ve been reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, “And The Horse You Rode In On.” (Not a real Gary Vaynerchuk book.)

I want you to impress the hell out of me and make me want to read your post. And frankly, telling me that you were discussing the importance of light bulb recycling over a non-fat lemon chai with ginger sprinkles — which is Doug Karr’sfavorite drink — doesn’t impress me at all.

Want to write good leads? Study newspapers.

(I will admit that I am still guilty of these kinds of leads sometimes, but have committed to never do them again.)

An opening sentence in a blog, also called a lead — or lede if you’re a newspaper traditionalist — is supposed to grab your readers’ attention and fling them to the next paragraph (graf, if we’re still going old-school newspaper). The goal of that graf is to propel people to the one after that, and so on.

But you’re not even going to get out of the starting gate if your lead sucks.

When I took my Intro to Journalism class way back when newspapers were still thriving, our professor drummed the importance of writing good leads into us for weeks. “It’s the most important sentence in the entire article,” he would tell us. “Your lead tells people exactly what happened, but it does it with drama and flair.”

In short, your lead doesn’t blather about coffee shops and books. Your lead needs to grab people and intrigue them, or it needs to provide information, or both.

My lead — the fact that I don’t care about why you wrote your blog post — is a true one. I really don’t. Or if I do, I don’t want it to be the first thing you tell me. Drop it in later, if you want to give me the background. It can almost be an aside, but it shouldn’t be the thing you start with.

I think we get into storytelling mode when we write blog posts. We’re so used to “Once upon a time” that we think it’s important to our blog writing as well. Believe me, I love a good story. I love telling stories, hearing stories, reading stories. But when I go to a blog, I want to be educated and informed.

Chances are, your lead is buried under 3 – 4 paragraphs. You could get rid of the opening couple of paragraphs and be all set, although some writers will tell you — maybe a little cynically — that most people could get rid of the first half, and still be fine.

So when you write your blog post, start it any way you want. But then go back and start deleting paragraphs until you get down to the most important point in the whole piece. Lead off with that. If you need to add the old paragraphs back in for background information, do it. But do it later on in the piece.

As you get better, and your leads begin to surface sooner, you’ll reach the point where you’re writing that stellar opening lead right off the bat, getting your readers’ attention earlier, and propelling them all the way through the post. Time on site will go up, conversions will go up because people made it all the way to the end, and you’ll look like a genius.

And you can tell me all about it over a cup of coffee.

Photo credit: JudsonD (Flickr)

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3 Secret Blogging Ideas That Professional Writers Don’t Want You To Know

I’ve written enough blog posts that I’ve figured out what it is that wins readers, and what bores the bejeezus out of them. If I’m stuck for a blog post idea, I’ve got a few general topics and idea kickstarters that will get my creative juices flowing, and get a decent post out of it. I use these same kickstarters to come up with topics for my own clients, especially when they think they’re stuck for ideas or have run out of things to write about.

These are the three best kickstarters I’ve found that work, regardless of the topic or industry.

List posts

I know, I know, you hate them. They’re boring, they’re trite, they’ve been done to death. But do you know who loves them? I mean, really looooooooooves them?

Your readers. They eat them up. They love that there is a small number of ideas that they can read and understand. It brings order to chaos. “Five Best Dishwashers” is way more interesting than “How to choose a dishwasher.”

Secretly, you still think they’re interesting too. Why else would you be here? Admit it, you saw the number 3, and thought, “Three, huh? I guess I have a couple minutes to check it out.”

Still don’t believe me? Do a little test. Next time you’re in the supermarket, pay attention to the magazines at the checkout lane, especially Cosmo. Look at the headlines on the cover. They all follow this format, and they sometimes use the next two ideas.

Every month, for years and years and year, we’ve been promised “Three Secrets Men Won’t Tell You About Sex,” and “Five Ways to a Sexier Love Life.” For YEARS, I tells ya!

And why? Because people love lists. If they didn’t, Cosmo would quit doing it. So I’ll keep writing list posts for as long as Cosmo does. Why? Because if you’re a fellow blogger, you’re not my customer. Corporations and small businesses are my customers. They’re the ones I need to appeal to. And if they want list posts, then I can think of Seven Reasons Why People Love List Posts.

Debunk long-standing myths and stick it to The Man

This is ingrained in our culture. We’re the little guy. We despise the big guy. David hates Goliath. Everyman and Everywoman hates bullies, corporations, and faceless bureaucrats. And if we can see evidence where the little guy sticks it to The Man, we go nuts! So who’s the Man? Big business, the government (state and local too), bullies, TV preachers, and teachers.

Not today’s teachers. Our teachers from when we grew up. We were little kids back then, and had all kinds of knowledge jammed into our brains that we didn’t want. We wanted to rebel, but were held down. Even people in their 60s still harbor a little of that Inner Rebel, and they still want to stick it to their old English teacher who’s been dead for 30 years. By writing a post about debunking an educational topic, I can reach that Inner Rebel and make him or her want to read.

Last week, I wrote a blog post about Five Writing Rules You’re Allowed to Break, and people liked it. Another one — Five Grammar Myths Exploded — was extremely popular. Why? Because I attacked the sacred cow of 7th grade English and showed where it was wrong. The little guy stuck it to The Man by proving he was wrong.

Special professional secrets

Want to get someone’s attention? Share something special with them that no one else gets to find out about. Or “they don’t want you to know.” (And who’s “they?” The Man.) But if it’s something secret — that “they” don’t want you to know — it must be really hot stuff.

Posts like “Five Gas Saving Secrets the Oil Companies Don’t Want You to Know” or “Three Secrets Your Credit Card Company Won’t Tell You” are a whoooole lot more interesting than “Five Ways to Save Gas” or “Three Little-Known Tidbits About Your Credit Card.” People love this kind of stuff; they eat it up.

I used all three of these tactics with this post, and chances are you were very intrigued by the fact that I:

  • Used a number.
  • Promised secrets.
  • Stuck it to an elite group of people — professional writers.

It was actually the idea of sharing secrets that led to this blog post, and I added the other two tactics to the headline later. But even if you just use one of these three kickstarters in your own industry or niche, you can come up with some awesome ideas on your own. For example:

  • Three Ways to Lower Your AC Bill This Summer.
  • History Answers: Who REALLY Flew the First Airplane?
  • Five Secrets to Avoiding Fines Your Library Doesn’t Want You to Know.

So the next time you’re stuck for a post idea, ask yourself: Is there a number of small ideas I can list, a sacred cow I can slay, or “insider secrets*” I can reveal to entice my readers? Once you start thinking this way, there is no end to the number of posts you can write.

* Please note that I don’t mean real insider or corporate secrets. Do not reveal business secrets at all ever. EVER!

Photo credit: Marcmos (Flickr)

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Rethinking Creation versus Curation: Curators CAN Add Value

After my last post about content creation versus content curation, I was convinced that curators didn’t do squat. I likened curators to what Truman Capote said about Jack Kerouac: “That’s not writing. That’s typing.”

I even said, somewhat dismissively,

But I don’t think content curation is that valuable. It’s important, to be sure. With a semi-decent RSS reader, anyone can be a content curator. But it’s not that valuable. Think of what the curators are actually collecting: content that someone else created.

However, I had a few people point out to me that curation is actually a rather valuable service. It’s not just a matter of creating an RSS feed of some cool stuff. Anyone with Google Reader can do that. Rather, it’s a matter of finding the important things and sharing them.

The aggregator just pulls in everything, and lets other people sort out what’s important. But it’s the curator who connects the dots by pulling in the five or ten most important points on the subject, and shows you the patterns.

Liz Guthridge said in her comment to my post, “We need curators to help us find items of value. In that process, they are providing value.”

She even wrote a great blog post on the value of curation. In it, she offers 5 great ways to curate and add value to other people’s understanding of a subject. Numbers 2 and 3 were the best — “Connect the dots” and “Provide context” — because they are what a real curator can do, as opposed to what an aggregator or collector does.

But my friend, Tania, had the best comment that made me rethink the whole idea of what a curator is. (And she should know. She’s an honest-to-God museum curator.)

As a curator of education I have occasional opportunities to organize exhibitions, but far more often it is a way of producing an opportunity for enrichment and learning–a program, workshop, film series, tour, lecture series, etc. Indeed I shuffle the (art collection) deck to reinterpret and reconstitute meaning based on the collection’s possibilities. The chronological approach to the history of art is just one means of understanding art, but if I develop a program about food in art that may turn into a totally different kind of understanding for visitors, and be the relevant connection they are seeking with art in turn changing their experience and understanding to possibly inform some aspect of their lives.

So, I’m revising my thoughts on curators. I think what they do is important. I still value the creators more highly than curators, because that’s where the real work lies, but only slightly higher.

However, thanks to blogging and ebooks, everyone is becoming a creator. But not everyone is doing it well. I think as we have access to more and more information, including all the mediocre and/or crappy stuff, we need the curators to help us make sense of it all.

If you’re only aggregating — that is, you’re only collecting without connecting the dots or providing any kind of context — that’s not real value. You’re just a smaller Google. Anyone can aggregate. But it takes some real talent and smarts to be a curator. And if you’re a curator, let me say thank you for making life easier for people like me. I apologize for not realizing how much you actually do.

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A Sure Cure For Writer’s Block

So I’m bugging the bejeezus out of this poor woman at a coffee shop, asking to look at one of her books when she’s obviously working hard writing something very scholarly. The name of the book? Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing.

Writer's Block

Having been in higher education for a number of years, and having written a number of scholarly works (and being the son of a professor myself), I was naturally curious what those Ivory Tower residents are talking about writing. I open it up to the first chapter and see:

Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a hernia. . . He thinks the article must be of a certain length or it won’t seem important. He thinks how august it will look in print. He thinks of the people who will read it. He thinks that it must have the solid weight of authority. He thinks that its style must dazzle. No wonder he tightens. — W. Zinsser, On Writing Well

Wow, I didn’t know writing had to be that hard. I’ve just sort of, well, done it. I never had writer’s block, because I’ve never worried about what other people thought of my writing, except for a few people. I quit worrying about what it would look like in print after the second time it was printed. I never worried about whether it made other people laugh, only if it made me laugh. (Coincidentally, the stuff I think is hilarious never gets that many compliments, but the stuff I think is just throwaway crap I needed to fill a word count is the stuff that gets rave reviews from readers.)

So quit worrying already and start writing. You’re not writing for posterity, for future generations, or for tens of thousands of readers. You’re writing for yourself. You’re writing what makes you happy, what pleases you, what brings you joy. If you like writing mystery novels, then write mystery novels. If you like writing blog posts, then write blog posts. But write your mystery novels, write your blog posts.

They’re not for someone else, they’re for you.

Writers loosen up once they start writing for themselves and stop thinking about the reader. Quit thinking about The Reader.

We all have a mythical buildup in our mind about The Reader. Our writing teachers always tell us to “think of The Reader, don’t forget The Reader.” But you’re not writing for The Reader. Once you start thinking about The Reader — that genderless, faceless judgmental bureauratic-minded nerd who’s all set to jump on your writing with a shrill “a-ha!” — you’re stuck, because you’re always trying to please him*. The only person you have to please is yourself. Pleasing everyone else is just gravy. (*I know that in a more accepting society, I should say “him or her,” but I’m not. It takes away from the rhythm of the language, and your own The Reader is going to be whatever you call it. Mine is a him.)

So, smack The Reader in the face, and write something you know he’ll hate. Do it on purpose. Make it suck. Make it really nasty, something that should be wrapped in newspaper. And then print it out, and put it somewhere where you can see it. Then, point your finger at it, and shout, “You see that, Reader? Choke on it!” (No, I’m not kidding. Ten cool points if you publish your sucky piece to your blog. Let me know you did, and I’ll even link to it out of moral support.)

Once you loosen up and start writing what you want, the ideas will come faster and more easily, your fingers will fly, and the words will come easily, and your writer’s block will be broken. You’ll be writing again. So, kick The Reader in the ass and tell him to go away and leave you alone. You’ve got better things to do than to pander to him.