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CelebBoutique Shredded by a Lack of Curiosity and General Awareness

CelebBoutique, the British clothing website, may have committed the foul-up of all foul-ups:

After being hammered for just a few minutes on social media, their social media people turned on the TV, and saw the terrible news from Aurora, Colorado. Then they sent this:

We apologise for our misunderstanding about Aurora. – CB

We didn’t check what the trend was about hence the confusion, again we do apologise.

Followed by this:

We are incredibly sorry for our tweet about Aurora – Our PR is NOT US based and had not checked the reason for the trend, at that time our
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social media was totally UNAWARE of the situation and simply thought it was another trending topic – we have removed the very insensitive
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tweet and will of course take more care in future to look into what we say in our tweets. Again we do apologise for any offense caused
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this was not intentional & will not occur again. Our most sincere apologies for both the tweet and situation. – CB

Meanwhile, most Americans are livid at the insensitivity of what is now being perceived as a vacuous and clueless fashion brand spouting off about clothes, shoes, and celebrities. As a result, CelebBoutique has just taken a major hit to its brand, with several thousand people pounding them like the fist of an angry god.

And it’s not going to go away anytime soon.

I’ll cut them a little slack. Yes, I’m angry, but I also recognize that mistakes do happen. Someone made a terrible mistake, and it’s not worth storming the castle with pitchforks and torches. No one should lose their job for this.

But this was a mistake that could have easily — EASILY! — been prevented.

All you have to do is be curious, and be willing to educate yourself.

Lack of Curiosity Killed CelebBoutique

Their first follow-up tweets are the first indication that curiosity is not something CelebBoutique’s social media staff holds in great quantities.

“We didn’t check what the trend was about.”

How do you not check this? How can you not be the least bit curious that some word is trending? Why was the first thing that popped into your head about you and your dress, and not “gee, I wonder why that word is trending?”

There are tools to tell you what is trending. There are tools to tell you why something is trending. Google, Twitter Search, even hashtags.org are all places to start.

This is where people need to think like journalists. A journalist never reports on a story that he hears from one person. A newspaper reporter doesn’t write a single sentence until she has confirmed everything her sources tell her. And they never, ever fire off a comment without knowing a single thing about what they’re talking about.

I don’t know if CelebBoutique uses an outside PR firm to do their social media, or if they have an internal staff. I don’t know if they have one person in charge of the Twitter account, or if there are several people.

But regardless of who is doing what, you need to act like a journalist. Even for just a minute. Act like a journalist.

Be curious.

Ask questions.

Wonder why something is happening, and don’t just fire off the first thing that comes into your head, like an 8-year-old.

Otherwise, you pull a boneheaded move like this, and all the goodwill you and your company have worked for will be shredded and ground into the dirt.

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Update: It looks like the National Rifle Association made a similar gaffe. They actually deleted their entire Twitter account.

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3 Ways to Write a 30 Minute Blog Post

Want to write a 30 minute blog post, but you’re not a writer? Do you struggle with getting anything written in under an hour? I once knew a PR professional who couldn’t write a press release in less than three hours, yet I wrote the same release in 20 minutes.

Why?

Because most of this stuff, like it or not, is formulaic. Formula doesn’t mean boring or lacking quality. But it does mean following a few of the same steps over and over and over. The end result doesn’t have to be formulaic, but the process does. And if you can get the process down, you can write a blog post in 30 minutes or less.

Here are three ways you can write a 30 minute blog post.

1. Write When You’re Not Writing

Good writers write all the time, but they don’t necessarily do it with a pen in their hand or a laptop under their fingers. You can do write while you’re driving, showering, standing, sitting, commuting, cleaning the house, cooking, or staring out the window. In fact, staring out the window is a great way to write.

This kid is off to a great start as a writer.

The Lance Mannion blog (which is the macho-est dude’s name since Dirk Facepunch) had a great description of what writing is.

“Standing, that’s working. Sitting is working. Pacing is writing. I do my best thinking then. Looking out the window, that’s writing. Brushing your teeth is writing. Anything’s writing,” Rob says. “The hardest writing is showering.”

Just turn off your radio or TV and start writing your next post in your head. I wrote this post while I was driving to lunch today.

2. The List Post

Bloggers everywhere are rolling their eyes at this, but tough shit. List posts are awesome. List posts are easy. And whether you like them or not, list posts bring in readers. (You’re here, aren’t you?)

Chances are, everything you want to say about a particular topic can be summed up in a few key points. After all, we’ve been taught to write and speak with three main points. And we’ve been trained to skim and read in bullet points by USA Today and many magazines (check out Cosmo the next time you’re in the supermarket checkout line). Like I always tell people, “I’ll quit doing list articles the week after Cosmo does.”

So break your post into 3, 5, or even 10 reasons/secrets/tips/tricks. Write them in outline form, and then give a brief explanation of each point, and move on. Later, develop each point into its own blog post and explore the idea more thoroughly.

3. Write an Email to Your Mom

First of all, you have to stop writing for posterity. You have to stop writing as if your blog posts will be pored over in 100 years by scholars as evidence of your great thinking. You have to stop writing as if you’re going to say something profoundly awesome that will change the face of your industry.

(This is also true of people who buy new notebooks, write two pages in them, and then abandon them.)

Instead, write an email to your mom.

We all love our mom, but she never quite gets what we do. She sort of does, especially if you explain it in simple terms without all the jargon and insider knowledge.

So start your blog post with these 10 words: Dear Mom, Let me tell you what I learned today.

Then, explain what you want her to know in language she’ll understand. It’s even better if you can explain why it’s so cool, too. And keep it short — 300 – 350 words — she doesn’t want to be mired in the details. Save that for a future email.

Then, go back and delete that 10 word opening. You’ve got your blog post.

So, there you have it. Three ways you can write a blog post in 30 minutes or less. As long as you keep it short and simple, and use basic language, you should be able to get it done.

 

 
Photo credit: avlxyz (Flickr, Creative Commons)

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Keep Calling It Social Media ROI: A Response to Copyblogger

I hate it when people try to change the name of a well-known concept, just because they don’t think it accurately describes what that thing is anymore.

Some teeth grindingly well-known examples include:

  • Changing radio theater to audio theater “because you don’t just listen on the radio anymore — CDs, podcasts, and the Internet are also channels.”
  • American Public Radio changing their name to American Public Media for the same reason.
  • Debbie Weil wants to stop calling blogging “blogging,” because the term is outdated. It should be called “the social web” (I heard her say it on Doug Karr’s Marketing Tech Radio show last year).

Trust me, this list goes on and on and on.

Last December, Copyblogger did the same thing. Sean Jackson (CFO of Copyblogger) and Sonia Simone (CMO of Copyblogger) wrote a blog post called There Is No ROI In Social Media Marketing.

But the truth is, marketing will never produce an ROI.

Sonia: OK, you’re still sounding insane to me.

Sean: I’m not done yet.

Marketing will never produce an ROI because ROI is not what you think it is.

A pure definition of ROI is simple to quantify.

ROI = (Gain from the Investment – Cost of Investment)/Cost of the Investment

The problem for marketing professionals is that marketing activity is not an investment.

An investment is an asset that you purchase and place on your Balance Sheet. Like an office building or a computer system. It’s something you could sell later if you didn’t need it any more.

Marketing is an expense, and goes on the Profit & Loss statement.

Yes, this makes sense. But it makes sense in the same way that telling an 8-year-old that eating Brussels sprouts will help him grow up to be big and strong. And on one level, the 8-year-old wants to be big and strong.

On the other hand, it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard, because Brussels sprouts taste like shit.

We Need ROI

Frankly, I don’t care if you don’t think it’s accurate. I don’t care if you think there’s a term that better reflects all the subtle intricacies of whatever it is you’re involved with. I’m not just talking about the difference between investments and profits (that’s more than a little subtle).

I’m talking about the difference between the words you use, and the words everyone else in the world uses.

When I was in crisis communication at the Indiana State Department of Health in 2006-2007, I had to constantly stop the epidemiologists from referring to the bird flu as the “human flu pandemic.” Whenever we had a news interview, I had to remind more than a few of them not to use “human flu pandemic” when they spoke with reporters.

“But ‘bird flu’ isn’t accurate. It may not even come from birds. And it certainly won’t be limited to birds by then.”

“Okay, then call it ‘pan flu,’ because that’s the term the general public is using.”

They didn’t like it, because it wasn’t completely, technically accurate, but I was satisfied because the public was going to know what the hell they were talking about.

We saw it again in 2009, when — turns out the epis were right — it was the swine flu epidemic that got us. And predictably, the media types and general public were all talking about swine flu, swine flu, swine flu. Predictably, the CDC tried talking about the “human flu pandemic,” and no one knew what the hell they were talking about.

Word reached the CDC, and they started talking about H1N1 instead (it helped when the US Swine Association and other hog people told the media that the term “swine flu” was hurting their sales).

It was still accurate, it didn’t offend the epis, and it was still short and sound-bitey enough for the media and public.

What ROI and Swine Flu Have in Common

(Nothing. It was the pithiest sub-head I could think of.)

But at the same time, we do have to recognize that, for good or bad, people will use the term ROI forever. Like Jackson said, “I’m seeing ROI taking on a mythical status in marketing — a benchmark used to compare every decision to some financial metric of return.”

It’s not just marketing people, it’s businesspeople everywhere. We all use the term “ROI,” even if there’s really not an “I” in the first place. Same way KFC is now just “KFC.” It no longer stands for “Kentucky Fried Chicken,” they’re just “KFC.”

I think the term “ROI” is taking on the same meaning. We know it means something, but it doesn’t reflect what the letters stand for anymore.

Now, ROI can refer to investments in capital products, it can refer to marketing campaigns, it can refer to your website, your cell phone, your networking events, or anything you spend money on and hope to make money back.

(Because if you want to get even more technically accurate about it, most capital items don’t have a return; you use them until they wear out. And my personal finance friends remind me that an investment only refers to things that can appreciate in value; so a house is an investment, a car is not. So should we start referring to it as Lack Of Return On Investment, or LOROI? No, because that’s stupid.)

So Should We Change The Term “ROI?”

No, we should not. Because all the variations I hear — Return on ENGAGEMENT, Return on INTERACTION, Return on EFFORT — are about as mentally repulsive as a cold, half-chewed Brussels sprout in an 8-year-old’s mouth.

Just like with blogging, radio theater, and public radio, we need to stick with the term that people know. Rather than taking a prescriptive approach to language (i.e. “we have to follow these rules, because they’re the rules”), and changing the name of something to be as perfectly accurate as possible, instead just chalk it up to “common usage,” or the idea that too many people are doing it this way to change it.

Rather than complaining about the term, why don’t you instead try to get people to understand that social media is 1) measurable, and 2) can make money? That’s the more important battle to fight, rather than the ticky-tack little details that only matter to a select few people in an already tiny niche.

 

 

Jason Falls and I talk extensively about the ROI of social media marketing in our book, No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing (affiliate link).

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Making the Case for Writing Every Day (a #BlogChat response)

There was a big debate on #Blogchat last night about whether one should blog every day.

“Yes, you absolutely should,” say the every-dayers, the sloggers, the do it until it’s righters.

“No, because why would you want to turn out less-than-good,” say the inspirationists, the wanna-bes, the do it when it feels gooders.

I am not a fan of slacking, of inspiration, or of doing what feels good. I’m a professional writer, and that means I go to work every day, whether I feel like it or not.

You can tell the difference between the good writer and the average writer, the professional writer and the amateur.

The ones you’ve heard of and the ones you haven’t.

I am a firm believer in writing every day, and blogging every chance I get. And while I don’t blog every chance I can on my own blog, I’m blogging somewhere, on someone else’s blog. Some days, it’s on here, some days (especially Sundays), it’s on Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog, it’s my own humor blog, and many days, it’s for clients and not for me at all.

Blogchat screenshot

(Believe me, it’s not lost on me that I’m advocating for daily blogging when I go for a week or more without touching this one.)

But I’m still a firm believer in writing — not just blogging, but writing — every day, and that writing needs to be in whatever genre or tool you use. If you’re a fiction writer, you need to write fiction every day. If you write magazine articles, you need to write nonfiction every day. And if you’re a poet, you’d damn well better be writing poetry every single day.

Otherwise, you’re never going to get any good.

This holds true for bloggers as well. If you want to be more than “good enough” at this form of communication, you need to be blogging on a daily basis.

I don’t hold with this idea that you should write only when inspiration strikes, or that you can get by with only writing a couple times a week. If you don’t mind toiling in mediocrity and anonymity, then by all means, write whenever the mood strikes. Because the mood will strike when it’s not convenient, like in the middle of a meeting, or while you’re in bed. And if you wait for the next inspiration to strike, you’re going to miss a crucial opportunity to 1) share a cool idea, and 2) get better.

But if you’re practicing your craft on a daily basis, you’re going to be good enough that you can wait for inspiration to strike and you can hit a home run. Otherwise, your moments of brilliance will go unseen and you won’t have the impact you were hoping for.

You may not need to post on your own blog every day, but if you’re not writing and blogging every single day, you’re not going to be any good at it.

(For another side of the argument, read Patrick Pillip’s “Write Every Day. Unless You Can’t. He makes a valid argument for taking a day off once in a while, and calling them mental health days. I can’t argue with that. And if I were smarter, I’d take one.)

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What Goes Into Writing a Blog Post?

After yesterday’s post on Suggested Freelance Writing Rates — Midwest Edition, I was asked why it costs so much ($75 – $125) to write a blog post.

“It’s 350 – 450 words. How hard can it be?”

Actually, that depends. It depends on what you’re writing. If you’re writing a personal blog entry about the hamburger you enjoyed at lunch with your besties, that’s not hard at all. Takes you 15 minutes tops. But I have yet to meet anyone to hire me to ghost write their personal blog entries.

Writing corporate blog posts is a different matter. The actual wordsmithing — spinning out 350 – 450 words — is pretty straightforward. Yes, you’re paying for the writer’s expertise and skills (remember, this is a trained professional who has dedicated himself or herself to the written word), but there are other factors that go into corporate blogging. Here’s the basic process that most professional bloggers follow:

  • Regular research of the client’s industry. We have to know as much as we can about your industry, reading related blogs, trade journals, and news articles.
  • Interview the client. For Pro Blog Service, I interview our clients about that month’s blog posts, record the interviews, and we write the posts based on that.
  • The writing. This is the act of putting the words into a word processing document.
  • The editing. Any writer will tell you that the editing process is just as crucial as the actual writing. As first draft writers, most of us vary from horrible to passable. There are very, very few people who can write a great first draft. So the editing is just as difficult as putting down the actual words.
  • Publishing to the blog. This includes adding photos, any outbound links, using tools for SEO like WordPress SEO and Schemas. This is the other place people have problems, because they don’t have the time to dink around with finding photos, creating links, etc.
  • Promoting each blog post. You can’t just throw up a blog post and let it sit. You have to promote it to your social networks. And you have to grow those networks. A full-service professional blogger will also include that in their offerings, helping you grow your network so you can reach a bigger and more target audience

Blogging is much, much more than just spinning out the actual words, although that’s certainly the most important part of it. Without the research, the editing, and the promotion, you’re just writing in a diary about whatever randomly pops into your head.

If you’re thinking about blogging, more power to you! Please do. It’s an important part of social media marketing. But just remember that it takes about 1 – 2 hours worth of work to come up with a single blog post. That’s why you either need to hire it done, or allow for that much time in your schedule.

In future posts, I’ll be talking about what makes a good writer, and why, even though we all learned how to write in school, those skills are not enough to make an effective writer.

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Suggested Freelance Writing Rates – Midwest Edition

What are some different freelance rates that freelance writers ought to be charging? It depends on where you live. If you live in America’s Heartland, where the cost of living is lower, you’ll charge less. If you live on one of the three coasts (that includes Chicago), your rates will be much, much higher.

It always makes me laugh when clients from Out East or Out West think that we aren’t charging enough here in Indiana, because our rates are often 50 – 100% less than what they’re being charged by hometown writers. We’re able to charge so much because our cost of living is so much lower. Rent is anywhere from $600 – $1,200 here in Central Indiana, but in New York, that’s the the cost of a gallon of milk.

But things aren’t as good if they’re not as expensive, so the smart freelancer raises his or her rates to meet expense expectations when the client is from Away. [Read more…] about Suggested Freelance Writing Rates – Midwest Edition