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Stop Leaning on These Five Copywriting Crutches

Even the best copywriters use clichés and rely on copywriting crutches. It’s inevitable, but it’s preventable. We’re trying to spit out a lot of copy on tight deadlines, and while our fingers may work faster than our brains, our brains will pop out any old stuff just to keep our fingers moving.

And that’s how clichés appear in our work. We don’t mean to do it, it just sort of happens.

But if you keep a few of the worst offenders in mind as you’re working, you may catch them just as they spill out onto your keyboard. And if you missed them the first time around, you’ll catch them on the edits.

Here are the five copywriting crutches and clichés we need to avoid.

1. Let’s face it

There’s nothing wrong with this, per se.

It fits where it’s used, no one is using it incorrectly, and it conveys a feeling of resigned acceptance of the problem at hand.

But it’s just so overused that it has been rendered completely useless. It’s like the Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes,” which got played over and over and over and over and over to the point that I hate it so much, I will drive my car off a bridge to escape it.

“Let’s face it” is the “Two Princes” of writing. It should be struck from your lexicon, burned to ashes, which you then jump up and down on, before putting them in a lead-lined box and dropping it into the Mariana Trench.

(I really hate this phrase almost as much as I hate “Two Princes.”)

Just pick something else. Anything else. In point of fact. In truth. You gotta admit. What are we even doing here?

In truth, it makes you sound like you’re not trying very hard. Pick something better.

Needs

Probably the most overused word in all copywriting.

You gotta admit — see what I did there? — it’s a versatile word. It’s both a verb and a noun. We have needs. We need things.

Except saying “needs” is like saying “stuff” or things.”

Every customer needs something or wants something. Or they desire it. Wish for it. Demand it. Prefer it. Delight in it. Obsesses over it. Yearns. Craves. Hungers.

There are so many different options available, but the best we can come up with is “needs?”

What you need is a thesaurus. (Let me recommend OneLook.com.)

Being “passionate about” something

How many LinkedIn profiles have you seen where someone is “passionate about” web analytics? Or email marketing? Or tax law? Or artificial intelligence? I saw a job posting that required applicants to “be passionate about short-form copy.”

Seriously? You’re passionate about that? Your passionate about gazing deeply into the limpid pools of Google Analytics reports? I should yearn for the delicate touch of a 280-character tweet?

This thing smolders within your heart like burning coals? You can’t stop thinking about email marketing and it consumes your every waking moment? Whenever the wind blows, you hear its name in the trees — Tax law! Tax law! — and feel its caress on your face, like the touch of a lover?

Either you’re the most boring person on Earth, or you’re overinflating your dedication to this particular job function.

You should be passionate about your family or your partner. You should be passionate about a sports team or an art form. You should be passionate about something so much that you dress up in funny clothes and scream like a maniac whenever you get to do it. That’s passion. Do you do that when you get to send out an email newsletter?

(If you do, please share a video of that.)

If you feel that way about email marketing, or whatever, more power to you. It takes all types to make the world go ’round. But I tend to just roll my eyes and assume you’re exaggerating.

Making history/is historic

Things do not make history. Events are not historic, especially if that event hasn’t happened yet.

Whose history? Who decided it was historic? There were two Black quarterbacks in the Super Bowl this year. So many sportswriters relied on the clichéd crutch of calling it historic, but it wasn’t.

Was it notable? Absolutely. Was it important? You bet. Was it long overdue and a wrong that should have been righted years ago, ever since Doug Williams became the first Black QB and the first Black Super Bowl MVP in 1988? You’d better believe it.

But was it a thing that historians are going to be writing books about and discussing at length in 100 years? No. That’s the historic stuff.

What’s the difference between HISTORIC and HISTORICAL?

A quick note on the difference between these two terms. Historic refers to things that are important that everyone should be aware of: the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War, the first Black president.

Historical is anything that’s from a prior period in time. A book published in 1776, a letter from a Union soldier, the first football game between Harvard and Yale.

While we’re on the subject, please GOD stop saying “an historic.” It’s not AN historic, it’s A historic. Sure, I know you heard the news people say it, but they’re bandwagon-jumping idiots who try to sound sophisticated and miss the mark. There’s absolutely no reason ever that you should say “an historic,” unless it’s to mock someone else who does it.

We use “an” before any word that starts with a vowel sound, and “a” before any word that starts with a consonant sound.

  • An umbrella, an MBA, an hour.
  • A unicorn, a university, a European.

Historic — unless you’re from Boston or are a 19th-century chimney sweep — is pronounced with the H sound very much intact.

Using adverbs and adjectives for EVERYTHING

There’s a very good chance you’ve sung the praises of a colleague, collaborator, or frenemy and you do so in the most glowing terms possible.

“I had an amazing, mind-blowing lunch at this delightfully cozy little bistro with my wonderful, delightful, mind-bogglingly creative friend, Churlington Beescoat.”

We gush, extol, glorify, and heap exaltations on our dear friend, Churlington, and we can’t say enough nice things about him because he is simply the Best Person Ever.

At least until next week, when we have lunch with our dear friend, Powderkeg Malone.

There’s a reason we don’t use a lot of adverbs and adjectives in writing. They’re a tool that new writers overuse, but they keep us from writing our best work. (Adverbs do, not new writers.)

If you have to describe a verb, then you’re using the wrong verb. Too many young writers try to wring out as much emotion as possible to tell you that their goldfish’s death made them cry really, really, really terribly loudly.

That’s not very sad at all. Maybe if you added another “really?”

What’s wrong with adjectives though?

They’re less problematic than adverbs, but there are times when you need to describe a noun. However, that’s not always necessary.

“A nutritious lunch” tells us what kind of lunch it is, but it’s not very interesting. “A lunch that would make my nutritionist nod in quiet approval” paints a more vivid picture. We get the sense that the lunch is sensible, solid, and even a little boring.

Instead of using adverbs and adjectives, come up with better verbs and nouns. You’re writers, for God’s sake! Expand your vocabulary. Come up with new words or use old words in new ways. (Just no business jargon, please.)

Recently, I saw Garrison Keillor talk about “purpling one’s thumb with a hammer,” and I thought that was the very best way to describe whacking your thumb with a hammer, because the word not only contains the action, but the result. You didn’t just hit your thumb, you hit it so hard that it bruised and bled underneath the nail. But those previous 12 words are contained within the single word “purpling.”

As content marketers, we need to use powerful language like that. We want to write powerful, persuasive copy that causes people to reach for their credit cards and purchase orders. And they don’t do that for really amazing, terrific, stupendous products.

As a writer, no matter what you write, you need to focus on the mechanics of your writing. Your word choice, your sentence structure, and your tone are just as important as your story, your narrative, and your characters. Maybe more so.

So avoid these copywriting crutches. Find a new way to say things and to be more interesting.

Let’s face it, your writing is going to flop otherwise.

Photo credit: Stocksnap (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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Be Bold with Content Marketing Choices: Podcasts, Books, Graphic Novels!

There’s such a mountain of dreck and garbage in content marketing today that it’s burying all the good stuff. And that doesn’t include anything that’s generated by AI programs. Most of it is mediocre garbage created by barely-skilled practitioners who pray at the altar of First thought = best thought.

We miss out on all the good content because it’s buried by the same repetitive, 101-level nonsense — 5 Content Marketing Secrets (#1: Write good stuff) — that tens of thousands of other content marketers just sort of blurged out.

If content marketers want to stand out from the crowd, they need to be big and bold.

Fifteen years ago, when social media and blogging were just catching on, you could dominate your industry just by being on social media and having a blog.

Nowadays, you can’t not be online. You will be absolutely crushed by those companies that do. Imagine being dominated by another company that blogs once every three months and tweets every two weeks.

How embarrassing.

Enough With the 101-Level Content

That means creating stellar content. You can’t write the same introductory 101-level garbage that everyone else is. It’s been overdone, and you’re not going to stand out.

Do a quick Google search for your job or industry and the word “secrets.” Go ahead, I’ll wait.

. . .

How many results showed up? How many of them said the same thing over and over and over?

As you perused the results, were the top results from well-established brands with a major online presence and thousands of articles? Of course, they were. No one is going to supplant them without a lot of time, money, and effort. A lot of it.

When I did a search for “content marketing secrets,” not only were there 114 million results, but number one on the list was Hubspot, and the top info card was from ClassyCareerGirl.com.

So what sort of chance do I have of trying to rank #1 for that particular keyword? I would need to start a campaign that would take 80 hours per week, generate thousands of articles, and I would spend years doing social media promotion, and I would still be behind.

So rather than repeating that effort and writing the 114,000,001st “content marketing secrets” article, why not do something bolder?

Be Bold In Your Content Marketing

I’d love to see content marketers be big and brassy with their efforts. Don’t just limit yourself to blog articles. Do something out of the ordinary, something more challenging that not everyone else does. For example, you could:

  • Write a book on your subject. Not just a 30-page ebook either, but a serious tome about your specialist subject. Nothing says, “I know a lot about this” like a book.
  • Write a NOVEL about your subject. Remember The One-Minute Manager and Who Moved My Cheese? Those are technically non-fiction books called business parables. They’re stories that teach lessons through storytelling, not a dry recitation of facts. I’m currently working on a business parable for a client about his leadership philosophy.
  • Record a podcast. Some of the best practitioners in their field have podcasts, which is how they become leaders in their brands. There are podcasts on marketing, manufacturing, entrepreneurship, dental practice, and accounting. If you can think of it, chances are there’s a podcast. But there’s not your podcast.*
  • Write a graphic novel. I’d love to see a bank or wealth management firm teach kids about financial literacy, but with a graphic novel. Everyone’s got books and lesson plans to teach financial literacy, but no one has done it with a comic book. Now that’s bold!
    • Orson Welles directing The Mercury Theater On The Air.
  • Create an audio drama. If you’ve ever listened to old-time radio or modern audio drama (same thing, different names), then you understand the power of audio storytelling. Create characters, create a conflict (plot), and build a story around it. Hell, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck made a movie about a shoe! So don’t tell me you can’t tell a story about your field.
  • Better yet, make it an episodic soap opera. I would absolutely listen to a podcast about life at an insurance company that insures against superhero damage. You could use each episode to explain a small bit about the insurance industry — Acts of God, natural disasters, etc. — but make it fun to listen to as well.
  • Make a movie. See above about Damon and Affleck’s “Air.”
  • Do a weekly video series. Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz and Wil Wheaton lookalike, established himself as the King of SEO with his weekly Whiteboard Friday videos, which Moz continued with after Rand left the company. Create weekly whiteboard videos that show you explaining a particular topic or concept to your audience.

* Tip: Podcasts make great sales tools. Invite your sales prospects to be interviewed on your podcast. They may not take your sales call, but they’ll be happy to be on your podcast. And they’ll remember you and what you do later.

That’s how you can be bold. That’s how you can make content that’s better than the average, run-of-the-mill content that’s burying all the good stuff. You can make things that stand out and catch people’s attention in a way that regular blog articles — like this one, I know — just can’t do.

And if you have any questions about book writing, blogging, writing audio dramas, podcasting, or content marketing in general, let me know. I’ve done all of that, and am happy to give advice and recommendations.

Photo credit: McFadden Publications, Feb. 1939 (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

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Understand Your Content Marketing ROI

I was asked recently about content marketing ROI, specifically around blogging and email marketing. I’m a big believer in the importance of content marketing over other forms of marketing (since I’m a professional content marketer), and I like to sing the praises of business blogging services and email marketing.

When I was trying to explain content marketing ROI, I only had a couple personal case studies to draw on, but they’re outliers. (More on them in a minute.) Instead, I pulled up statistics from several other content marketing and digital marketing sources.

  • Blog posts are statistically the most effective tool for building brand awareness, with 31% of B2B companies listing short articles as the highest-performing content in this respect (Content Marketing Institute)
  • B2B companies who blog consistently receive 67% more monthly leads than companies who don’t blog regularly (Demand Metric)
  • 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months (Hubspot)
  • 47% of B2B buyers consumed 3-5 pieces of content from a company before engaging with one of their sales reps (Demand Gen Report)
  • 95% of the B2B service and product buyers admit that they view content as a trustworthy marker when evaluating a business (Demand Gen Report)
  • 71% in the B2B industry review an organization’s blog during their buyer’s journey (Demand Gen Report)
  • On average, a company’s blog produces 67% more leads per month. (Demand Metric)
  • Costs 62% less than traditional marketing, generates 3x more leads (Demand Metric)
  • The return on investment for email marketing in 2018 stood at $42, which is an increase of $10 from the DMA’s previous report. (Direct Marketing Association UK)
  • The ROI for manufacturing can reach 1,372% (FrontPageSage’s own customer research)

“What’s YOUR Content Marketing ROI?”

I’m sometimes asked about my own content marketing ROI. That’s a little harder since I’m an outsourced vendor, and most companies won’t share their internal sales data with me. But I have a couple.

“Do you at least have a range or an estimate?” they’ll ask. I tell them this:

“In the early days of this agency, we worked with a construction equipment manufacturer that made $200 million per year in gross revenue. He was Internet-savvy and tracked the hell out of everything. He found that he got a 6% bump in his total sales as a direct result of our blogging services. That worked out to another $1 million per month in increased revenue.

“About the same time, we worked with a mystery shopping agency with two full-time employees and two part-timers. Their total sales were roughly $750,000 per year. After three years of writing 8 blog articles per month, they had tripled their business three times and grew to 27 full-time employees. They also landed a million-dollar contract for a national wireless company during our first year with them.

“So, our range of improvement can be anywhere from 6% to 900%.”

Of course, this is a bit frustrating since it’s a broad range, but I use it as an example to illustrate a few important points:

  • Your content marketing ROI is only as good as your actual content.
  • Quality rules over quantity, but you should still blog at least once a week. Don’t forsake consistency either.
  • There are a high number of variables that affect your content marketing ROI, anything from your field, your content, your competition, and how much Google updates its algorithms.
  • High-quality written content will always outperform mediocre content. Always.
  • A variety of content formats will outperform a single format. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
  • On the other hand, don’t rely solely on video. At this point of SEO development, videos help SEO, but not in the same way that written content does. Google still relies heavily on written content.

What about email marketing?

Email marketing has a number of different benefits — too many for me to go into here, but I can say this. Email marketing is a great marketing method because it’s the only one where potential customers have said, “Yes, I’d like to hear from you later. Here’s how you can reach me.”

  • The problem is, most email marketers abuse it by sharing poorly-written and created content. If you want high engagement, send out interesting stuff.
  • Some email marketers send too many messages. (I just unsubscribed from a new newsletter after getting four emails in four days. I don’t have time for that!)
  • This is the place to customize content. Segment your subscribers into different groups and offer them different content options. Bookriot.com has almost a couple dozen email newsletters each about different book genres, giveaways, and contests. This way, you’re not given one single email that appeals to everyone. I get only one email per week about the books I would want, and nothing about the books I don’t.
  • Your email list is all yours. If they wanted to, Twitter and Facebook could wipe out all your followers and fans. You can’t export that list or use it somewhere else. You can’t switch social networks and take all those followers and fans with you. But your email list is worth its weight in Bitcoin!

Your content marketing ROI is going to be a lot higher and easier to measure and manage than traditional marketing or even social media marketing. It can also give online advertising a run for its money because content marketing reaches people when they have a question or an interest. They’re thinking about buying, so they do a Google search to start their buying journey. If your blog content shows up on the Google search, then you’re in the hunt!

But if not, then you may have a problem.

Photo credit: 12571684 (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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The Future of Content Marketing Will Not Be Different

What is the future of content marketing?

I’m often asked, what will content marketing look like in the future?

People are surprised with my answer: Just like it does now.

It’s not going to be different, we’re not going to see some major new way of “consuming content” (I really loathe that phrase!), and there’s not going to be some new method of content delivery that we’re going to have to learn.

Because when you look at content at its barest essence, it’s just words, images, and sounds. That’s what it has always been, that’s what it will always be.

It was words, images, and sounds when cave dwellers drew on cave walls and grunted their delight. It was words, images, and sounds when the Ancient Greeks passed down knowledge with stories or told stories with plays. It was words, images, and sounds — well, not so much sound — when the first ever movie of a galloping horse was made or the world’s oldest surviving film, Roundhay Garden Scene, was made.

It was words, images, and sounds when newspapers, radio, and television all had their heyday and when they were replaced by blogs, videos, and podcasts.

Content marketing is no different from any other form of communication in our history. We’ve used words, images, and sounds to communicate the entire time. But the only thing that has changed has been the medium we use — the way the content gets consumed read, watched, or heard.

Content creation tools don’t matter

Eighty years ago, we had newspapers, radio shows, and movie newsreels. Television became popular 70 years ago, launching the Golden Age of Television.

And now, everything you could ever want — including samples of old newspapers, radio shows, newsreels, and TV shows — are all available on your laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.

You can read about how those media were made eighty years ago, or you can make and share a 21st-century version of it for other people to read, watch, or hear.

Because it’s still the same old words, images, and sounds.

And it won’t matter one bit how those are made. The secret to doing well at content marketing is to be able to do words, images, and sounds well.

You have to write well. You have to sound good. You have to know how to frame a photo or a video. You have to create things that are interesting. You have to know how to tell a story. You have to know how to capture your audience at the very moment they click your link.

The tools don’t matter.

I’ll say it again: THE TOOLS DON’T MATTER!

Years ago, I used to argue with people who claimed: “there’s no such thing as social media experts because the tools are too new.”

My response then is the same as it is now: I don’t have to be a tools expert, I have to be a communication expert. I have to be good at conveying a message in my chosen medium. The tools can change from week to week, and it won’t affect me one bit because I don’t have to master the tool, I just have to master the craft.

Think of it another way. A carpenter that has spent his entire life swinging a hammer isn’t less effective just because you gave him a pneumatic nailer. A chef doesn’t forget how to cook because you switch out her gas stove to an electric one. And writers aren’t suddenly reduced to creating doggerel just because they switched pens.

So when people think you need specific Mailchimp or Constant Contact experience to be an effective email marketer, that’s wrong.

When people think you need to know how to use Hubspot or WordPress to be an effective blogger, that’s completely wrong.

It’s like saying a photographer is not a good photographer because she uses Nikon and not Canon. Or that a writer is not a good writer because they use Apple Pages and not Microsoft Word.

The tool does not create quality content. WordPress and Hubspot don’t make you write well. Constant Contact doesn’t make you a good email marketer. The latest video camera doesn’t make you a good videographer any more than a great camera makes you a good photographer.

The tools do not make the artist. A good artist can make good art with crappy tools, but a bad artist cannot make good art with good tools.

So it doesn’t matter what happens to the tools: WordPress may go away. Hubspot may fall into the sea. YouTube could be eaten by a pack of hyenas.

None of that will change how content creators make their art.

If WordPress were to go away, bloggers aren’t going to be thrown for a loop or cast out on the scrap heap. We’ll just shrug our shoulders and continue to tell good stories on the new distribution method. And blogging itself won’t go away, it will just be called something else.

Podcasting won’t go away because there will be other ways to deliver episodic information and entertainment via audio distribution.

Videos won’t go away because — well, video’s just never going to go away. In fact, it just surpassed blogging and infographics as the most commonly used form of content marketing. (I’m still a little salty about it, thank you very much.)

The artists and creators will still have a way to make and distribute their work, even if the tools for that distribution go away, change, or die completely.

Remind me how is this about the future of content marketing again

My point is, when you ask about the future of content marketing, just remember, the core elements of content marketing — words, images, and sounds — are never going to change. We’re still going to read, we’re still going to watch videos and look at pictures, and we’re still going to listen to music and information.

The channels will change, the methods of production will change, and even the popularity of the content formats will change. (Freakin’ video!) But the need for quality content will never change. That’s the one constant you can count on.

So if you’re in the content creation business, just focus on improving your craft. Become the best creator you can. Learn your art so you can be one of the best creators around. Worry less about the technology, because that won’t affect whether you’re good at your job. And when the method changes, you’ll already know what you need to do.

Photo credit: Steve Shook (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0)

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The Conundrum of Writing With Integrity

I recently heard Jamal Greene on a recent Two Writers Slinging Yang podcast interview, talking about his time writing at Sports Illustrated.

He talked about writing at Sports Illustrated where the writing became an issue of what the reader wanted. He called it a form of customer service, or “serve to order.”

If the customer wants it, or the editors thought they wanted a certain product, and your job as the writer was to produce that product. And over the time I was at Sports Illustrated, it became more and more oriented towards customer service and that didn’t touch me.

If you’re in it because you like to write in a certain way, and then you’ve got to write in a way that’s going to get eyeballs, you’re not really writing with the kind of integrity that you want. And I felt that and I didn’t think I was ever going to get to the point, for good reason, where I had the kind of autonomy to write in the way I wanted to write

The phrase writing with integrity stopped me in my tracks. I had to pause the podcast and ruminate on that for several minutes.

As content marketers, we don’t get the chance to write with integrity very often. Sure, we like to be ethical and truthful. Despite the stereotype people have of marketers, we do try to operate with honesty and truth. But when do we get to actually write with integrity?

When do we get the chance to be open and transparent — the buzzword among many bloggers in the early-2010s — and share what’s really going on? When do we get the chance to tell a good story because it’s a good story and not just one more entry on our content marketing calendar?

“Today, we need an article about how developers can download our API and use our testing environment.”

Not something that allows for a lot of “writing with integrity.”

The problem is, the same that Greene experienced at Sports Illustrated, is that the integrity articles — the long-form, in-depth articles — are not the most popular ones. They’re the best ones, to be sure. But they don’t get the eyeballs. And that’s what journalism is about these days: getting eyeballs and clicks and visits to move advertising revenue. The long, well-done articles don’t get the traffic, and so they don’t get the attention. They’re the ones that get submitted for awards and for inclusion in anthologies. But they don’t get the same kind of traffic as “10 Reasons Why Your Favorite Team Sucks and 10 Why They’ll Win Their Division.”

It’s this way with business blogs. There are certain articles that get all kinds of traffic, but they’re not always the enjoyable, long-form articles that exercise your writing muscles. Instead, you have to write the kinds of articles where you say, “I got a creative writing degree for this? A damn monkey could write this!”

It’s even harder if you write for a corporation, or if you’re in the B2B world, where being dowdy and rigid is practically the price of admission. Very rarely do I see B2B blog articles that are fun, funny, or interesting. (And the ones I did see were more than likely ones that I wrote.)

Content Marketing With Integrity

But that doesn’t mean you can never do it. There are times that companies should be a little vulnerable and tell some stories that show people your history. Let them learn from your mistakes. Write a piece that talks about how your company nearly folded, and it was only thanks to some last-minute maneuvering that saved everyone. (Trust me, that story will be out there anyway, so you might as well be the one to tell it.)

Tell the story about how your solution didn’t work for a customer right away, and it took some additional work, consulting, and even training to get things to work properly. Don’t skip over that part in your case study, embrace it and showcase it.

Just like sportswriters have to write the daily news stories and game recaps (also called “gamers”) in order to be able to write the long-form features that make sportswriting so interesting, marketers need to carry water on a daily basis, writing the serve-to-order stories before they can write their other, better stories.

Of course, you may be in an industry or work for a business where you don’t get to write with integrity at all. Financial services, lawyers, pharmaceutical companies, and other highly-regulated businesses tend not to be able to write something that risky.

But for the rest of you, stop worrying about stories that will only bring in the eyeballs. Take a risk once in a while on a story that’s not a listicle, or something that promises “X Secrets to Improve Your Productivity.” While I like those articles and think they’re great traffic generators, they’re not very interesting or deep.

If you’re into the content marketing funnel philosophy, keep writing your “top of funnel” articles to bring people in. But try writing with integrity and transparency, and write the article you’ve been itching to write, and use it at the bottom of the funnel where people are about ready to sign.

Take a risk, try something new, and write the story you’ve been feeling, not the story on your content calendar.

Photo credit: Devanath (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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Who Should Make the Final Editorial Decisions About Writing?

When you’re a writer, everyone thinks they can do what you do. They think they’re good at writing and, well, it’s painful to watch.

They send a few emails and write a report so convoluted that it would choke a hippo, and suddenly they’re Pulitzer-winning writers and editors.

Now they want to dip their dirty fingers into your writing to “make it better.” So they root around in there like the bartender just put out a bowl of complimentary peanuts and they haven’t eaten in days. Only their idea of making it better is going to make things worse.

The copy that you spent hours on — the thing you’re educated and trained to do! — is made worse than when it was still just scribbled notes on a lunch napkin.

So, content marketers, who should be the final say in the actual language of your writing?

Ultimately, the person who pays you, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say something when you’re the expert. And unless the person who pays you is a “my way or the highway” type, you should get the final say.

Years ago, when I was the crisis communications director at the Indiana State Department of Health, I was in a meeting with one of the Assistant Commissioners — my boss’ boss’ boss — and the head of our legal department phoned in with some “helpful notes” for a press release I had written.

When we hung up, I told the AC, “Yeah, I’m not doing any of that.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. Because he recognized that writers write and that lawyers are not good copywriters.

Even my own boss recognized the importance of what I did. Gary was a retired U.S. Army colonel (who commanded his own tank brigade) and was now in charge of the Emergency Response division. He won my eternal admiration when he told someone else with helpful notes, “Erik knows what he’s doing. Leave him alone.”

When you’re a content marketer, specifically when you’re a writer, you should be the final arbiter of the best way to say something. Not your boss, not your client, not the graphic artist who took three English classes.

You’re the wordsmith. You’re the ink slinger. You’re the word nerd. You’re the one who studies language and pays attention to how authors structure sentences. You’re the one who reads David Ogilvy essays because the guy can outwrite most authors.

You’re the one who laughs at Oxford comma jokes (An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars).

You’re the one who has actually read books on writing. You listen to the Grammar Girl and A Way With Words podcasts because you like them. (Disclosure: I write for Grammar Girl once in a while.)

So why are you letting other people root around in your writing? Stand up for it and don’t let people muck around in what you’re trained to do and they’re not.

Now, this does not mean you’re the subject matter expert. Your SMEs should have veto power on their specialized subject.

You’re not a legal expert. Your corporate attorney should have veto power over the things that will put your CEO in jail.

And you’re not a design expert. Your graphic designer should tell you that your 1,000-word manifesto won’t fit on a 4×6 printed postcard.

But when it comes to putting the best words in the best order to tell the best stories? That’s all you.

So you’d better know your stuff.

It really does mean reading books on writing. And listening to Grammar Girl and A Way With Words. And reading David Ogilvy. And stealing from your favorite authors.

Because when the time comes, you’re going to need to defend your work and show that you know your shit.

One time, a client pointed out an error in one of my articles I had written for him.

“You can’t end your sentences with a preposition,” he said.

Robert Lowth. He was actually a fascinating person if you’re a word nerd.

“Actually, that’s not true,” I said, and I explained to him how that should have never been a rule in the first place. I recited the history of Robert Lowth and how he created this rule in his 1762 book, A Short Introduction to English Grammar. (Read about Robert Lowth here.)

“Oh,” he said. “You clearly know more about this than I do.” And when it came to language and word choice, he let me do my thing from then on. But it did take me speaking up and showing that I knew my shit.

As a writer, you need to study language, grammar, and punctuation. You at least need to know the rules (and the non-rules) of writing so you know when you can break them. You want to be able to tell people why their 4th-grade grammar lessons are incorrect and explain how common usage says we can now do things like start sentences with “Hopefully” now.

So be a student of language and the mechanics of writing. Because when it comes to defending your work and your choices, you need to be able to stand your ground and show why people need to just let you do your work.

Because the next lawyer who tries to tell me how to “fix” my writing is going to hear my equally valid opinions on how they should practice law.

Photo credit: Erik Deckers (Me. I took that photo.)
Photo credit: Oil painting by Robert Edge Pine ((1730-1788))