Writers are All Vampires

Writers are all vampires.

― Herman Wouk

Writer Trisha Richards asked me where I find ideas for blog posts. 

Novelist Herman Wouk provides the answer.

When it comes to sources for ideas, I'm indiscriminate; an equal opportunity vampire.

More or less in rank order, I derive ideas from:

• Nonfiction books
• Bloggers
• Everyday conversations
• Everyday experiences
• $#*! my spouse says
• Print articles
• White papers
• Fiction
• Movies
• News programs
• Fantasies
• Memories
• Dreams
• Songs
• B2B events
• People and things not otherwise listed

Whenever an idea for a blog post comes to mind, I always write it down.

Immediately.

Sometimes I grab a napkin or a piece of trash; most often I send an email to myself.

Writer Neil Gaiman says there's no lack of ideas; only of attention to them.

"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."

The New New Rules of Marketing and PR

Either write something worth reading or
do something worth writing about.

— Benjamin Franklin

David Meerman Scott galvanized marketers a decade ago with The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

The book still makes everyone's list of "all-time favorites."

Scott's advice was premised on a sudden realization: gatekeepers had grown irrelevant.

If marketers only thought and acted like journalists, and exploited the popularity of websites and social media channels, their messages could "go direct" to customers.

Revolutionary thinking in the day.

But times change, the tragedy of the commons is inescapable, and rules wear out.

Content Shock is now Public Enemy Number 1.

The new new rules of marketing and PR are:

1. Don't create content. Create content customers want.
   
   
2. Don't create buzz. Create products that create buzz.

5 Keys to Content Marketing Success

Sadly, 6 in 10 content marketers can't measure success.

Measuring success requires that you establish goals and KPIs, says DMG's Gordon Plutsky:

Reach. How many people does our content touch? Measures include page views, social impressions, newsletter opens, etc.

Engagement. How many people read our content? Measures include clicks, PDF downloads, video views, etc.

Sharing. Do people share our content? Measures include shares on social networks, forwarding of links, forwarding of newsletters, etc.

Conversion. Do people raise a hand? Measures include list sign-ups, form completions, webinar sign-ups, sales inquiries, etc.

Revenue. Do people buy anything? To measure sales, you must code your inbound tactics and import the attributions to your CRM system—a process that defies even the most practiced marketers.

Feel daunted? View success as a "comprehensive strategic plan rather than a ream of numbers," Plutsky says.

Blogs Top Choice for Lead Generation

Search Engine Journal asked 230 marketers which content attracted the most leads.

Their top choice: blogs.

Four in 10 marketers (41%) named blogs the best content for lead generation (their second choice was white papers (14%)).

If blogs are indeed the best content for lead generation, shouldn't you learn how to blog effectively?

I'd suggest you begin by choosing a form. Two schools of thought prevail:

Long form. Andy Crestodina recommends 1,200 to 1,800 word posts. Google likes long posts, and readers are more apt to share them than they are their short cousins.

Short form. Seth Godin recommends "microcopy," because we live in "the age of the glance."

The choice between the two comes down to your goal:

• Are you aiming to be perceived as an authority? Then long is your best bet.

• Are you aiming to bolster awareness? Then short's your best bet.

Whichever form you choose, I'd suggest you next decide on your beat. What subjects should you cover? 

The choice is obviously most influenced by whatever you sell, but should also take into account competitors' and trade publishers' blogs (you want to be distinctive). And you should be able to crystallize your beat readily:

• We simplify fire-science breakthroughs

• We go inside SaaS marketing

• We promote faster LMS adoption

Lastly—whatever beat you choose—learn how to write readable posts.

Every post you write should be succinct, useful, insightful, startling, newsworthy, and entertaining. Every post should aim to change readers' lives; or their preconceptions, anyway. And every post should omit puffery. Save that for sales calls.

If you want to improve your blogging skills in a single day, sit down and read Bill Blunder's The Art and Craft of Feature Writing.

Milestones (Post Number 1000)

Yesterday is not a milestone that has been passed,
but a daystone on the beaten track of the years.

— Samuel Beckett

Milestones matter.

Without them, we might quit the project, drop the course, abandon the diet, go off the wagon, turn around and go home.

But Sam Beckett was right: milestones are actually daystones marking our yesterdays on a well-trodden path.

The journey's more about how far we've come, than how far we have to go; more about where we've been, than where we're going; more about fellow travelers, than ourselves.

Today's is Goodly Post Number 1000.

A daystone.

Thanks for your yesterdays.

Content Marketers, You are Not a Committee

Why are most corporate blogs mind numbing?

They're the products of committees.

Every post is the same. Safe. Sanctioned. Sanitized.

No one owns the content, so it's uninspired and impassionate.

If you want to improve your corporate blog, find employees who love their work and ask them to contribute (if you can't, you have a bigger problem than a boring blog).

Give them one, simple instruction: You are not a committee.

Then get out of their way and watch what they do. You'll soon have a much better blog.

As Mark Hamill recently told the audience of Content Marketing World, "Follow your own inspiration. If you find something engaging, find a way to repurpose it through your own prism. Believe in yourself and trust your instincts."

 You are not a committee.

Bloggers' Work Habits

Orbit Media asked 1,055 bloggers how they work. It found:

• Bloggers spend on average 3 hours to write a post (26% more time than a year earlier); only 1 in 3 spends less than 2 hours per post.

• 1 in 4 bloggers rely on an editor to improve their posts.

• The average post is 1,050 words long (19% longer than a year earlier).

• Nearly 50% of bloggers include lists in their posts; 15%, video.

• Most bloggers publish weekly; the number who publish daily is down by more than 50% from a year earlier.

• Over 95% of bloggers promote their posts on social media; a majority use email.

• 56% of bloggers routinely check their posts' traffic; 20% never do.

My work habits? Yours truly:

• Spends about 1.5 hours per post.

• Works without the benefit of an editor.

• Writes brief posts, 350 words or so.

• Loves to include lists and videos.

• Publishes 7 days a week.

• Uses social media to promote every post.

• Checks traffic, but not obsessively.

What are your work habits?

9 Easy Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Sarah Smith contributed today's post. She works for an online resource for beginning bloggers, StartBloggingOnline.com.

There are lots of reasons your website draws traffic that doesn't convert to sales. 

One is content. You might think you have the best website out there: it looks good, is colorful, and has all the necessary images and videos. But none of that matters, if visitors don’t get anything of value from your site. Visitors need not just information about your products, but about their benefits. Simply labeling them isn't enough. You need to explain their advantages and lasting impact, and prove why visitors should open their pocketbooks.

Another reason is staleness. You need to keep updating your site with fresh information. You can’t feel complacent just because you have gone live and the site looks amazing. You need to keep providing useful updates, and interacting with visitors to make them feel like you appreciate their visits.

Here's an infographic with more tips for converting traffic into sales.

Good Writers Read Good Books

Erik Deckers contributed today's post. Eric is the president of Pro Blog Service, a content marketing agency with clients throughout the US. He is also the co-author of Branding Yourself and No Bullshit Social Media.

Whenever I attend a networking event, I like to ask questions usually not asked at one of these things.

What’s your favorite sports team? Who was your idol growing up? What’s the last book you read?

I can always spot the sales alpha dogs in any networking crowd. When I ask about the last book they read, or their favorite book, it’s always the same thing.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, someone will say.

Zig Ziglar’s Born To Win, says another.

The Art of War, says a guy with slicked-back hair and a power tie.How to Crush Your Enemies, See Them Driven Before You, and Hear the Lamentations of the Women, says an unusually-muscled guy with a funny accent.

And I can spot the content marketers too.

Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes! someone will say.

The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing, says another.

“I don’t read books, I only read Copyblogger,” says a third.

But the writers—the good writers—will tell me about the books they love. The books they read over and over again, not because it will help them get ahead in life, but because it stirs something within them.

Those are the writers who are more concerned with their craft than with their content. Those are the writers who will produce some of the most interesting work, regardless of their employer. (What’s sad is their employer has no idea how lucky they are to have this wordsmith in their corner, and will wonder why the sales funnel got a little emptier after they left.)

Content marketers: as writers, you should understand and build your craft as much as, if not more than, your understanding of your product, or big data, or SEO, or the right number of items in a listicle, or A/B testing.

Good writers are good content marketers, but the reverse is not true. It doesn’t matter if you’re the leading expert in your particular industry, if you can’t make people want to learn more about it, you’ve failed.

If you can’t make people care about your product, they won’t buy it. If you can’t stir basic human emotions, they won’t care. And if you can’t move people to read your next blog article, or even your next paragraph, it doesn’t matter how much you know.

You will have failed as a marketer and as a writer.

The best thing you can do is focus on improving your writing skills.

That all starts with reading.

Stop Reading Business Books

Content marketers—at least the writers—need to stop reading business books and content marketing blogs. They’re no good for you. At best, you don’t learn anything new. At worst, they teach you bad habits.

As British mystery writer P. D. James said, “Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.”

Read for pleasure instead. Read outside the nonfiction business genre. Read books from your favorite writers. Read mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, or literary fiction. Read history, biographies, creative nonfiction, or collections of old newspaper columns.

But. Don’t. Read. Business Books.

This is input. This is how you become a better writer. You read the writers who are better than you, and you skip the writers who aren’t.

That means business books. As a business book author and reader, I can tell you there are plenty of business books that will never be accused of being “well written.” They’ll teach you plenty about the subject, but they won’t teach you about the craft of writing. Sure, you need to study the science of content marketing, but that should be a small portion of your total reading, not the majority of it.

So you study the best creative writers who are considered masters of the craft, and practice some of their techniques.

This is why professional football players watch game film, not only of their opponents, but of players who came before them.

This is why actors watch old movies by the stars and directors from 50, 60, 70 years ago.

It’s why musicians not only listen to their idols, but their idols’ idols, and even their idols’ idols’ idols.

And this is why good writers constantly read the masters of the craft. This is why several writers have must-read books and authors they recommend to everyone.

My friend, Cathy Day, a creative writing professor at Ball State University, and author of The Circus In Winter told me once, "Reading a lot teaches you what good sentences sound like, feel like, look like. If you don’t know what good sentences are, you will not be successful as a writer of words."

Stephen King, who is not a friend of mine, said something similar: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

What’s on Your Bookshelf?

There are only so many effective headlines you can write, so reading the 87th article on “Five Effective Headlines You Need To Use RIGHT NOW” is a waste of time.

There are only so many ways of creating buyer personas that yet another “How to Build Your Buyer Personas” isn’t going to make a difference.

And when you really get down to it, Jay Baer is channeling Harvey Mackay who’s channeling Zig Ziglar who’s channeling Dale Carnegie. 

There’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to business books and content marketing blogs. (Although I love Jay Baer’s bravery when it comes to wearing those sport coats! And he’s one of the few good business writers I admire.)

But there’s a whole world of books out there that have nothing to do with business, nothing to do with marketing, and will make you a better writer than any business book ever will.

Read Ernest Hemingway’s short stories to learn how to write with punch, using a simple vocabulary.

Read Roger Angell’s Once More Around the Ballpark to learn how to make people passionate about the thing you love.

Read Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None to learn how to hook people at the start of a story, and keep them until the very end.

Identify three of your favorite authors, or at least authors you’ve heard good things about, and read one of their books. Identify passages, sentences, and techniques that move you and make you go “I wish I could do that.” Write them down in a notebook, and then practice replicating them in your everyday writing—emails, blog articles, notes to friends, special reports, everything.

Once you finished those three books, read three more books. And then three more. And then three more.

When you run out of an author’s work, find a new author. When you run out of authors, ask a bookstore employee or librarian for recommendations. Or join Goodreads and ask your friends about the books they love.

Content marketing is facing an avalanche of mediocre content in the coming years, and the only way you’re going to stand out is if you can be better than the avalanche. That means being better at your craft, not producing more and more mediocre content.

It means reading more stuff by great writers and less by average writers. It means realizing you’re better off reading another mystery novel than yet another article that promises “Five Content Marketing Secrets.”

It means focusing on your craft and becoming a master of language and stories. And it all starts by reading the work of the artists who came before you.

Hope for the Reluctant Writer

Reluctance haunts writers.

Blogging proponents—celebrating only the competitive advantages you gain through this form of content marketing—rarely admit blogging is torturous.

It's much easier to sift though emails, sit in a meeting, or make a third cup of coffee.

Unless you're the president, self-doubt is inescapable.

What's the answer?

In What is Literature?, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre asks the reluctant writer to imagine, "what would happen if everybody read what I wrote."

Stuff would happen. Stuff would happen even for the mediocre writer, if he aims for a target audience, Sartre says.

"The function of the writer is to act in such a way that nobody can be ignorant of the world and that nobody may say that he is innocent of what it’s all about."

And in one of his most-quoted lines, Sartre says, "Words are loaded pistols."

If you're a reluctant writer, begin to think of your task differently.

Think of your blog less like a magazine and more like a bulletin board.

Think of your target audience.

Think of your words as loaded pistols, and writing as putting the "bullet" in bulletin.

Ready.

Aim.

Fire.

List versus Story

Tell me, I'll forget. Show me, I'll remember. Involve me, I'll understand.

― Chinese Proverb

In The Hook, Richard Krevolin asks us to imagine two prehistoric tribes, the "List" and the "Story."

The leader of the List provides tribe members a list of "10 things to do when you see a lion."

Two miles away, the leader of the Story sits down and tells tribe members about his boyhood encounter with a hungry lion.

Later, members of each tribe bump into a lion.

The Story Tribe members know just what to do (namely, mimic their leader).

The List Tribe debate what to do first, are eaten, and thus removed from the gene pool.

"Today I think it's fair to say that we are all the genetic offspring of the Story Tribe," Krevolin says.

Your Bad Marketing Content is an Eye-Sore

At a point in The Accidental Life, writer and editor Terry McDonell compares bad marketing content to "joke taxidermy."

When it's bad, it's really bad.

Good content marketers are publishers.

By way of example, consider the blog post "Say 'So Long' to Silos" (from e-learning provider Cornerstone).

The post's author immediately lets readers (HR managers) know she's trustworthy, by acknowledging that, in truth, silos are natural, inevitable outgrowths of any organization. She goes on to list the costs silos impose (low productivity, high turnover, etc.), and offers tips for curbing those costs. She closes promising more tips in a follow-on post.

Good content marketers have learned to be publishers―a necessity in today's digital-first marketplace.

Bad content marketers are joke taxidermists.

Bad content marketers stuff their content with feature-talk, keywords and dubious links, barely departing from old-school advertising.

By way of example, consider the blog post "How to Organize Your Docebo LMS Users for More Targeted Learning" (from e-learning provider Docebo).

Without a beat, the post's author plunges into feature-talk. He tells readers they can build an organizational chart with his company's software, but not how; and devotes the rest of the post to a bulleted list of more features, linking every item to a page on his company's website. He closes by telling readers to "Start your free trial."

Bad content like this isn't only a throwback to interruption marketing; it's an eye-sore.

12 Hairy Hints for Better Blog Posts

Nearly 3 million blog posts are published every day. How can you assure yours will be noticed?

Take these 12 hints to heart:

1. Tackle an evergreen topic. (Readers never tire of fundamentals. Good to Great is 16 years old; How to Win Friends and Influence People, 81).
   
   
2. Seek to be of service to a target audience.
   
   
3. Write a brief, quirky headline that promises you'll solve a problem.
   
   
4. Write a short, informative lede that grabs readers' attention.
   
   
5. Use a simple style.
   
   
6. Use research to prove your points.
   
   
7. Use visuals to engage readers.
   
   
8. Include outbound links to authoritative content.
   
   
9. Seek to produce something better (more readable, current, accurate, in-depth, practical, original, targeted) than the million other posts on the topic.
   
   
10. Write a post that's no longer than it needs to be.
    
    
11. Proofread your post.
    
    
12. Above all, make readers feel good.
    

PS: Deep dive into better blogging by reading Nadya Khoja's remarkable post, Increase Blog Traffic And Boost Engagement With These 37 Proven Methods.

Size Matters Not

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?

― Yoda

Content marketers, make a New Year's resolution to ignore the idiots who tell you content length matters.

The thousands of snake-oil salesmen like James Scherer who promise, "Scientific research tells us how to write the perfect blog article," leaning on vendor data that "proves" long (1,600-word) posts yield higher rankings, greater sharing, and larger readership.

Baloney.

It's quality alone that counts.

Call Me

Nearly all B2B marketers (94%) plan to use content in 2017, according to a new survey by SnapChat.

But 40% lack the resources to create enough content to make any difference to their success.

B2B marketers have flocked to content because it works.

In 2016, as a result of using content, 50% of B2B marketers saw open rates increase by at least 20%; and 65% saw click-through rates increase by more than 5%. Substantial improvements!

B2B marketers' failure to produce more content puzzles me.

Time and again, I see them waste good content—or, more accurately, ignore opportunities to extend or repurpose that content, and profit from what they already have on hand.

The remedy's pretty simple.

Pick up the phone and just call me. You don't have to go without.

Happy New Year!

Just Add Water

Once in a while, people complain about Goodly—namely, that my posts are obscure; that, in my effort to be terse, I ask readers to connect dots that can't be connected.

To those folks I reply: I offer not sermons, but summaries.

I do so because most other bloggers write long, offhand posts. They do so, mainly, to save themselves time, or to satisfy Google's absurd preference for 1,800-word articles.

That serves their purposes well, I'm sure. I'm not sure it serves yours.

Offering summaries, on the other hand, is my way to be different—brief and to the point.

Short story writer Raymond Carver nailed it. “Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on.”

I hope you'll think of my posts as bullion cubes. There's a whole cup of soup condensed into these tiny foil packages.

Unwrap what's inside.  

And just add water.

Crap Content Portends Crap Customer Care

A friend once told me he paid a call on a prospect while battling a sudden-onset flu. My friend was ushered into the executive's office and promptly threw up on the man's desk. Not surprisingly, he didn't close the sale.

When you publish crap content—ungrammatical, tortuous and jargon-heavy—you kill sales, just as surely as my friend did.

Crap content portends crap customer care.

Need proof? Then consider the following, courtesy of the crap-content creators behind United Airlines' blog, Hub:

Top 5 things to know about the United Polaris experience

We're very excited about our brand new international premium cabin service—United Polaris first and business class—which offers comfort and relaxation for restful sleep in the sky. To make sure you know what to expect with United Polaris travel, see below for a few key reminders. You can learn more at united.com/Polaris.

1. Service


2. Lounge


3. Seat


4. Amenities


5. Cabin names


What makes this crap content?

• Prolixity. Why does the blogger use superlatives to excess? He's not "excited," but "very excited." The service isn't "new," but "brand new." It doesn't provide "comfort," but "comfort and relaxation." The blogger doesn't offer "reminders," but "key reminders."
  
  
• Jargon. The blogger packs the 180-word post with jargon like "long haul," "roll out" and "soft-launched."
  
  
• Nonsense. Planes fly, but since when do "seats take flight?" What the hell are "sleep-focused amenities?" And who really cares that United has renamed its first-class cabins?

Crap-content creators like United's will say: Who cares? It's only marketing content: here today, gone tomorrow. Their indifference reflects the brand's values to a T.

They'd be well served to take the advice of critic Alexander Woolcott:

I count it a high honor to belong to a profession in which the good men write every paragraph, every sentence, every line, as lovingly as any Addison or Steele, and do so in full regard that by tomorrow it will have been burned, or used, if at all, to line a shelf.

No Wine before Its TIme

According to a study by Regalix, The State of B2B Content Marketing 2016, 73% of CMOs are dissatisfied with content marketing.

Crap content, of course, explains much of the dissatisfaction. Crap content won't give a brand a welcome seat at customers' tables.

CMOs' impatience explains the rest. They've spent all this dough. Where are the results?

Maybe they expect too much, too soon.

Content marketing isn't branding; but it sure as hell isn't selling, either.

To work, it takes time and amplification. Before results arrive, you have to cultivate an audience and win its trust.

Look at the number of readers you're getting. How large is your readership? How many readers are clicking from your blog to other value-added content? How many are sharing and recommending your content? If the numbers are low, you can't expect stellar results. Those take time.

So exercise some patience. Be like Orson Welles, who earned his "grocery money" in the 1970s by shooting TV commercials, the most famous of which has aged pretty well.  

Your Blog is Like Your 401(k)

Trust is built with consistency.

— Lincoln Chafee

Trend-watching corporate blogs like The Allstate Blog, GE Reports and CMO.com can lure you into mistaking your own blog for a newspaper.

But it's more like one of those ancient People magazines in mom's bathroom. Sure, the articles may be dated, but they're still worth your time.

More accurately, a corporate blog is like a 401(k). Each post is like a dollar invested. And regular posting is like the familiar investment strategy called dollar-cost averaging.

When you dollar-cost average, you stash a fixed dollar amount in your 401(k) every month. That money buys you shares at the then-current prices. When share prices decline, the money buys more of them; when prices increase, it buys fewer. But things average out—and you never need worry about "buying low and selling high." You end up with a ton of equity.

Key to dollar-cost averaging is consistency—your pledge to invest on a regular basis. You should make that same pledge to blogging. Publish consistently. Don't worry about "timing the market." In time, things will average out. And you'll earn a ton of trust.

Sunday Will Never be the Same

Sunday is the best day to publish a blog post, says martech provider TrackMaven.

The firm analyzed over 65,000 business blog posts published between September 2015 and August 2016.

Its new report, How to Build a Better Blog Than Your Competitors, claims Sunday is the prime day to publish. 

TrackMaven also says 3 pm Eastern Time is the best hour to publish.

We've long known blogging pays off. Marketers who blog get 67% more leads than marketers who don’t, according to Hubspot.

We now know blogging on Sunday does, too.