The Blog as a PR Tool

Master marketer Edward Segal contributed today's post. Edward helps organizations generate publicity about their activities and shows leaders, staff and members how to deliver effective presentations.

A blog is a fast and easy PR tool you can use to promote your knowledge and expertise to a wide audience.

But like other PR tools, blogs should be used for specific reasons and with the hope of achieving particular results. Writing a blog for the sake of seeing your name on the screen is not publicity. It's vanity. Just like issuing a news release when you have nothing to say, a “content-free” blog does little to establish or enhance a positive reputation for you or your company.

Here are some tips for blogging the right way and for the right reasons:

• Create a comprehensive list of your knowledge, expertise, or services. Then prioritize the topics that are most important to you and write what you know about.

• Follow the blog posts of others to see what they have to say on the topics you want to write about. Instead of simply repeating that they’ve already said, find something new or interesting to write about the matter. Posting new and original material will help you stand out from the crowd. Unless, of course, you are more interested in being an echo chamber instead of a fresh voice.

• Depending on the blogging platform you choose to you, you can have a big say in deciding how large or small you’d like your potential audience to be. If you think bigger will be better, and then include a link to your blog on your Web site, social media platforms, e-mail signature, etc.

• Decide how much feedback, if any, you want from your audience. While encouraging dialog among followers of your blog can lead to a larger audience, you also run the risk of losing control of the nature and focus of the content. This is not a bad thing if you want to build an online community, but it could also be frustrating if you think “your” blog has been hijacked by others.

• Plan your blogging activities as if they were like any other important part of your marketing activity. Because they are!

• Experiment with different blogging formats (e.g., word-based versus video-based) before making a final decision about the kind of blog you want to do. If you are more comfortable in front of a keyboard instead of a camera, then launching a YouTube-based blog will not be best for you. How you blog will dictate the platform you should employ.

• If you already have an established reputation, reinforce that image with appropriate blog posts. If you are just starting out in business and have no brand, think long and hard about what you want people to know and think about you. Then take steps to ensure that the content you post does not stray from that desired reputation.

• Keep current on trends and developments in your industry, profession, or areas of expertise. To receive the latest news, set up Google Alerts for key words, phrases and topics you want to follow.

• After you’ve had an opportunity to try your hand with blogging, have an honest conversation with yourself about the experience. Does blogging make sense for you? Is it something that you really want to continue doing, or has it becomes a drag? Every PR activity should be done for the right reasons. Don’t let your blog become a slog.

Should You Blog When You're Tiny?

You're never too tiny to blog, says blogger Lindsay Kolowich.

"Some of the most dramatic successes we've seen with blogging come from businesses in niche industries," she says.

Kolowich points to the success of tiny Conversant Bio.

The firm boosted leads seven times in 10 months by publishing six posts a month.

When it comes to blogging, the burning question isn't should, but how.

Conversant Bio found the secret to blogging success when it quit being a supplier and became a thought leader.

Instead of publishing hackneyed posts like "10 Benefits of a Tissue Sample for Research," the firm published posts about trends in cancer research.

The posts pulled prospects because they included keywords pharma researchers use when they Google—and not by accident.

Before writing any post, the firm learned the keywords prospects Google by asking cancer researchers. Its writers then created posts that included one or more keywords in the title, subheads, body and meta-tags.

Within 10 months of starting its blog, Conversant Bio saw visits swell to 34,000 a month (70% as a result of Google searches).

The firm turned readers into leads by offering them e-books based on the blog posts.

Conversant Bio's chief commercial officer anticipates a 14,500% ROI in the effort in three years.

A Call to Armchairs

Midway through his fireside chat at SXSW last month, President Barack Obama issued government communicators a call to arms.

Or, more accurately, armchairs.

It's communicators' fault that citizens only associate government with failure and corruption, rather than humming infrastructure, the President said.

"A significant part of the task at hand is telling a better story about what government does," Obama said.

Sadly, the President's call for storytelling comes a little late. 

His second term will soon be history.

Not that private-sector storytellers are much better at the craft, as Hill+Knowlton's content director Vikki Chowney notes in PR Week.

Private-sector flacks are too technocentric to tell stories customers care about.

"In an age in which people get their information from digital platforms, it’s our responsibility as communicators to not just think about building new things—but also think about what we say and where we say it in order to get people to care more," Chowney says.

Private-sector flacks should shun the shiny objects swimming before their eyes and get back to PR basics, Chowney says.

"Cutting through the overwhelming noise of online content with a clear, concise message is something we should all be reminding ourselves to focus on daily."

Hack vs. Hacker

Never mistake a hack for a hacker.

Unless she's evil, a hacker creates code.

A hack creates crap.

In general, a hack's a writer who produces undistinguished prose. (The opprobious name derives from hackney, a horse for hire.)

In marketing, a hack's a writer who's:

• Passionate about content; immune to ideas.
• Happy to plagiarize; put off by research.
• Enamored of opinions; averse to facts.
• Obsessed with quantity; indifferent to quality.

Foremost, a hack's a writer who chases eyeballs.

Speaking of quantity, Express Writers offers a useful hack: publish content of "ideal length."

I'll hack the info graphic. Here's the bottom line:

• Write blog posts 2,000 words long; 
• Write Facebook posts 40 characters long; 
• Write Tweets 11 characters long; and 
• Write Pinterest captions 200 characters long.

Herdwick Shepherd Tips the Model

Q: Social media gurus talk in praise of the tribe. But who stands up for the herd?

A: James Rebanks, the "Herdwick Shepherd."

A self-proclaimed Luddite, Rebanks is a British farmer and author of the best-selling memoir The Shepherd's Life.

With 75,000 followers, he's also a Twitter phenomenon.

Writing for The Atlantic, Rebanks calls Tweeting about sheep "an act of resistance and defiance, a way of shouting to the sometimes disinterested world that you’re stubborn, proud, and not giving in."

What goes here?

Sheep have long symbolized the very opposite of "resistance and defiance."

"Fortunately, the world is not built solely to serve good natured herd animals their little happiness," the free-spirited philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said.

"I define 'sheepwalking' as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job," Seth Godin says.

Intentionally or not, Rebanks has flipped the model.

Or should I say, tipped?

Suddenly sheep are superbly chic.

SPEAKING OF TIPPED: Ann Ramsey tipped me off to the Herdwick Shepherd.

Eschew Inkhorn Terms

Queen Elizabeth's confidant Thomas Wilson warned writers away from fancy words 450 years ago in his Art of Rhetoric.

Wilson paid no court to "clerks" who used "outlandish English."

He called their fandangles "inkhorn terms"—words only pedants prefer.

Wilson warned:

Among all other lessons this should first be learned, that we never affect any strange inkhorn terms, but to speak as is commonly received: neither seeking to be over-fine or yet living over-careless, using our speech as most men do.

Think you're immune from Wilson's law, because yours is a C-level audience?

Think again.

Inkhorn terms could cost you credibility, no matter how well-paid your audience, says copywriter Keith Lewis.

Convoluted copy backfires, Lewis says. 

"Far from making you or your company sound intelligent, it alienates audiences. It turns them off, no matter how high up the income chain a potential reader might be."

Want to be a Writer? There's a Catch.

In 1953, Joseph Heller was employed as a copywriter at Merrill Anderson when he imagined a novel that, eight years later, would appear as Catch 22.

"Working on Catch, I’d become furious and despondent that I could only write a page a night," Heller once told an interviewer. "I’d say to myself, ‘Christ, I’m a mature adult with a master’s degree in English, why can’t I work faster?'”

Moxie isn't always included among the copywriter's traits, though it should be. One page a night for eight years takes a lot of moxie.

Hubspot contributor Matthew Kane says copywriters must have nine other traits to be any good. They must be:

Top-notch researchers and interviewers. "Copywriters will need to pivot from client to client and sometimes industry to industry," Kane says. "As such, they’ll need to get up to speed—quickly." Interviews with experts add context to samples and reading materials.

Knowledgeable about audiences. "We try to write in the vernacular," David Ogilvy once said. Ads, ebooks, case studies and blog posts only work when the writer knows "what the intended audience thinks, speaks, and searches for," Kane says.

Thirsty to learn. A copywriter should thirst for knowledge—but not turn insatiable. "Copywriters know their goal should be to learn as much information about the product and the audience as possible to write effective copy—and nothing more."

Informed. "Bad copywriters often stuff their work with purple prose or other literary devices in an attempt to make some sort of high-minded art out of an innocuous project," Kane says. "Good copywriters, on the other hand, understand the modern world. They’re knowledgeable about how consumers skim and read, understand the importance of an attention-grabbing headline, can articulate the sales and marketing objectives, and know a thing or two about SEO and keyword optimization."

Thick-skinned. Rejecting feedback from others never works. "Good copywriters believe in their convictions but understand that they may not always be right."

Self-assured. Good copywriters can explain to critics why they took a particular approach and chose particular words.

Anti-perfectionist. “Art is never finished, only abandoned," da Vinci once said. "Good copywriters realize that the pursuit of perfection—while noble—is futile," Kanes says. "They know that they can go on tweaking forever, but understand that 'good enough' is exactly that."

Willing to seek help. Writing is a solitary pursuit. "As a result, many copywriters have the tendency to view themselves as a 'lone wolf,'” Kane says. But good copywriters seek out mentors, editors, teachers and advisors who will push them to do better work.

Always reading. "An exceptional copywriter is always aware of the latest industry trends," Kane says. "They cringe at coming across as out of touch."

2,200 Steps to Killer Content

Do the content marketers in your organization sit in cubicles all day?

They should know better.

Big ideas don't come from sitting.

As Nietzsche said, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”

Writers have always understood walks are not trips around the block, but treks through idea-land.

Aristotle, Kant, Rousseau, Blake, Dickens, Woolf, Hemingway—all were avid walkers.

"The moment my legs begin to move,” Thoreau said, “my thoughts begin to flow.”

Why does walking work?

Because we don’t have to think hard when we do it.

Our minds are free to wander—and unleash a parade of images.

"Writing and walking are extremely similar feats," Ferris Jabr says in The New Yorker.

"When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps.

"Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands.

"Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts."

Two Stanford researchers have, in fact, shown that walking boosts creativity by 60%.

So, here are the steps to killer content.

Go outdoors.

Walk a mile.

Come back.

Kill it.

Virtual Fishwrap

Fishwrap, according to Urban Dictionary, refers to "any printed journalistic medium with such low credibility and standards in acceptable journalism that its only useful function is to wrap fresh fish in."

I earned my marketer's chops publishing a corporate magazine when those were all the rage. I won't claim it had high standards. But it wasn't fishwrap, either.

Corporate magazines can be powerful content marketing vehicles, particularly for B2B companies.

Speaking of vehicles, Content Marketing Institute credits John Deere with the invention of content marketing with its magazine The Furrow (CMI overlooks Poor Richard's Alamanack.)

A handful of corporate magazines still circulate today in print (CMI's Chief Content Officer is a laudable example); but most, if not folded, have gone digital (McKinsey Quarterly, for example).

Flip-book software may spawn a renaissance of the corporate magazine, but I have doubts.

Like sustained blogging, publishing a corporate magazine is a tough row to hoe (just ask John Deere). 

A luxury-grade magazine gobbles thousands of dollars in fees for freelance journalists, editors, photographers and graphic designers. But that's what you need to spend to hook readers. 

A flip-book, cobbled together on the cheap, won't make the grade.

At best, it's no more than virtual fishwrap.

Storytelling Takes Sources

When it isn't how-to, most marketing content you encounter is pure myth, uniformed and unsubstantiated.

Myth-making isn't storytelling.

Storytelling takes sources, and sources must be cultivated.

In The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, Bill Blundell, former editor at The Wall Street Journal, chides the journalist who fails to cultivate sources.

"Like so many others, he has been counting on plucking ideas out of the air through some kind of immaculate conception," Blundell says.

"But this is backward thinking. He should be using his best-informed and most cooperative sources to help him originate those ideas."

Sources not only spur story ideas, but supply the facts that bring stories to life—even when those facts aren't brought to bear.

When novelist John O'Hara decided the main character in Appointment in Samarra would asphyxiate himself, O'Hara spared no effort to cultivate sources.

"When I wrote Appointment in Samarra," he told a friend, "I established a dummy garage business, took my papers to a guy I know who is a v.p. at General Motors (who wanted to know when the hell I had run a garage), and he in turn passed me on to a fellow at the Automobile Chamber of Commerce. Not much of that appears in the book, but everything that does appear is accurate and sound. I also boned up on toxicology with the late Yandell Henderson so that the carbon monoxide suicide would be all right."

Hard facts and direct illustrations from life "hammer stories into the reader's memory," Bill Blundell says.

How far do you go to gather them? 

Or are you satisfied just to make myths?

Content Marketing and the Agony of Defeat

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Digital agency Sticky Content asked 283 marketers what's defeating their content efforts.

Their answers are no surprise:

• 37% said they have no strategy

• 33% said management dings content

• 46% said demands change after content has been created

• 66% said their organizations waste a quarter of all content; 15% said, half

Is your organization lumbering toward self-defeat? If so, ask:

• Is management serious, or not, about content? Are they merely entranced by this year's "shiny object?" If they're in earnest, then what's our strategy?

• Do reviewers understand what to approve? Message? Accuracy? Style? The reason the content exists? What are the ground-rules?

• Does management trust the content creators? If not, why not? Do they rewrite the lawyers' briefs and the developers' code, too?

• Does management care about waste? One way to boost marketing's ROI isn't to create more content, but to publish and promote what's been created.

• Can I improve things? Or is our situation impossible? (Remember what Napoleon said: "Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools.")

Government Communicators: Send Outreach into Orbit

Award-winning video producer Ann Ramsey contributed today's post. She is a senior producer at the US Department of Health & Human Services in Washington, DC.

Although traditionally a favorite of corporate communicators, the Satellite Media Tour (SMT) should be part of every government communicator's toolkit. 

SMTs make efficient use of time-starved spokespeople who want to reach multiple media markets. This winter, for example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services held weekly SMTs throughout the Health Insurance Marketplace Open Enrollment period. The benefit? Without leaving Washington, busy officials reached broadcast journalists all over the country with continuing updates about healthcare enrollment.

Not every government communicator knows the ins and outs of the SMT, so here’s a rundown. While some agencies use PR firms for their SMTs, I will assume your agency has its own broadcast studio, or at least access to one. 

What is an SMT? An SMT is a series of video interviews featuring a spokesperson responding in front of a camera to the audio of each remote interviewer’s questions. The broadcaster remotely receives the sound and picture of the spokesperson, usually via satellite, for play-out in a live news program, or as a recorded media file for editing into a package for later broadcast. SMTs generally take one to four hours of the spokesperson’s time, and interviews are typically scheduled in 10-minute windows. If radio broadcasters are included, the interview series is referred to as an SMT/RMT.

Advantages. An SMT is an opportunity to tap broadcasters in order to introduce, or respond to, a newsworthy or time-sensitive topic. It allows for targeting of media markets, for direct interaction between the spokesperson and reporters, and for the opportunity to tailor the desired message to each market.

Must-haves. At minimum, you need an available spokesperson; a satellite-capable broadcast studio (look up: is there a dish on your building’s roof?); the manpower to pitch to the networks; and a modest budget to rent a block of satellite time.

Prep. First, send out a pitch notification (media alert) that includes your desired topic or announcement, the planned date of the SMT, the spokesperson’s bio, and any pertinent facts that can be used to leverage an interview. Target your top media markets, stations and networks, and work up a schedule of time-slots to fill. Most SMTs are aimed at some combination of TV news shows (morning, noon, evening) and/or radio drive-time shows. Contact local and network news divisions to pitch your SMT. Once your agency’s broadcast studio has a block of satellite-time arranged, notify all participating stations of the satellite coordinates and signal format details.

Pitching tips. Local TV/radio news divisions are busy places. Nonetheless, a government agency can appeal to them by offering the twin advantages of authority and topicality. That a national authority, such as the Secretary of a cabinet-level department, is available to speak directly to a reporter about a hot topic is attractive to a network, particularly a small, local affiliate. Furthermore, offering a local angle can be helpful, if you can tailor your statistics and examples to each media market. Once a news producer is interested in the interview, the concept and timing normally need to be cleared with a news director at the station. That’s why each time-slot may take a couple of phone calls or emails to confirm.

Day-of. Your agency’s broadcast studio will likely handle booking and supervision of the makeup artist, production crew and satellite link-up, as well as delivery of any non-live interviews to the network producers. You will be assigned a studio SMT producer and floor director to oversee the production. You will need to provide the studio talking points to be loaded into the teleprompter, so your spokesperson can refer to them during each interview. It’s smart to confirm that the studio team has all the information for each interview, including time-slot, the station’s network control room telephone number, producer name and number, interviewer name and number, IFB (“Interruptible Feed Back”) number (used by the studio to dial into each station), backup/engineer number, and delivery method (live or taped).

On-air tips. As a communications professional, you should coach and assist your spokesperson. Be aware that on-air time with the reporter will be short; perhaps just a few minutes. Often the final story is only 90 seconds long. So reporters need your spokesperson to make between one and three points concisely. You should be on site with the spokesperson during the SMT, and coordinate with the studio’s SMT producer and floor director. Let your spokesperson know the first name of each reporter (the reporter will be speaking directly into your spokesperson’s headset). For each interview, the IFB number for the remote station is phoned by the studio’s audio engineer to create a direct audio link between the interviewer and the spokesperson. If needed, this link can be interrupted by the studio SMT producer or floor director, in order to keep the spokesperson informed. (Think of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show listening to a fake mic in his ear and saying, “Wait… I’m being told…”). If any linkup is lost, or any station has to cancel or delay, the studio SMT producer will make on-the-fly changes to maximize the scheduled line-up.

Afterwards. Your agency broadcast studio will deliver any non-live media to stations that have requested taped versions for editing or later play-out. As desired, you may want to follow up with broadcasters for feedback and to confirm that post-delivery airing took place. You can also get a tape of your spokesperson’s on-air answers from your studio, for media training purposes or to keep as an archival record.

Trends. Downsizing in broadcast is having an impact. Today you may find the network news producer and interviewer are one and the same person. If something urgent takes place, the floor director or studio producer must use the IFB to reach the interviewer. Another new wrinkle is that the interviewer may want to do the interview remotely, and so, rather than dialing into a station’s IFB number, the studio dials directly to the interviewer’s own mobile phone. It can be tricky! Social media is also having an impact. You can research the Twitter handle of a given broadcast station, in order to follow and interact on social media before and during a given live interview. And it's now possible to create so-called “air-checks,” permanent internet links to selected news show segments that make them available in play-back to stakeholders after the fact.

Storytelling Traced to Bronze Age

"Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology," philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote in 1949.

Little did he realize the chains are made of 5,000-year-old bronze.

Two social scientists have discovered that storytelling began in the Bronze Age with "The Smith and the Devil," a tale of entrepreneurship, evil and technology (in this case, metallurgy).

A blacksmith offers his soul to the devil, in exchange for the power to weld any materials together. The wily smith then uses his new-found power to weld the devil to a tree, reneging on his side of the bargain.

The scientists' findings confirm the suspicions of the Brothers Grimm, who claimed their stories were artifacts of a "great race which is commonly called Indo-Germanic."

With hard evidence of storytelling's Bronze Age-origins, it's time to consider renaming Bog Man.

You guessed it. 

Blog Man.

Potpourri

Concise writing achieves communication in pure form.

So it's considerate on his 207th birthday to celebrate Edgar Allen Poe's "one-sitting rule" of writing.

In "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe extols brevity for the effect it creates.

"If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression—for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and every thing like totality is at once destroyed."

Long-windedness deprives a piece "of the vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity, of effect," Poe says.

"It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art—the limit of a single sitting."

Using the right tools are just as important, Poe insists in "How to Write a Blackwood Article."

"In the first place, your writer of intensities must have very black ink, and a very big pen, with a very blunt nib. No individual, of however great genius, ever wrote without a good pen a good article."

The Web is Too Much with Us

Our Tower of Babel has been under siege for well over 500 years.

Peeved about the patchwork of books in Renaissance libraries, bibliographer Konrad von Gesner complained in 1545 of "the silliness of useless writings of our time."

Annoyed by the algorithms that drive content-streams, blogger Hossein Derakhshan complained last month that, while homely people's brilliance is ignored, "the silly ramblings of a celebrity gain instant internet presence."

Griping about TMI in fact began with the birth of literacy, each generation thereafter seeing hobgoblins on the horizon.

But maybe, just maybe, the web is too much with us.

So before you release more pap, ask yourself if it's on strategy.

Because, as writer Arjun Basu says, "Without strategy, content is just stuff, and the world has enough stuff."

HAT TIP: Mark Schaefer's blog {grow} brought Hossein Derakshan to my attention. I urge you to listen to Mr. Schaefer's recent podcast.

B2B Marketers: Help Customers Browse Your Content

When will B2B marketers get the memo?

Minimalism is back.

The style's all the rage with runners, designers, gastronomers, photographers—even white guys.

But B2B marketers keep pushing bloated content.

When will they get it? When you subtract, you attract.  

Tight copy encourages browsing.

In their writer's guide Clear and Simple as the Truth, Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner implore writers to write in the "classic style," cutting the excess and making every word count.

Making words count boosts your content's value. 

And that discourages skimming.

"It is possible to skim certain styles," Thomas and Turner write. "Most after-dinner speeches are presented in styles that claim only part of our attention. Many textbooks and news articles are written in styles that allow us to bounce over words and phrases and still feel that we have extracted the sense accurately."

By making words count, you encourage readers to browse.

"Classic style allows browsing but not skimming. We may turn to just one paragraph, say, in an essay, or even to one sentence, and focus on just that. But once we focus on a unit in classic style, and intend to understand it, then we must pay attention to every detail. Writer and reader assume that every word counts. If the reader skips a single word or phrase or sentence, the sense of the unit may be lost. Classic style contains crucial nuances, which can be lost in skimming."

Skim-reading is mindless; browsing's another thing. Browsing is considerate. Browsing is window-shopping.

Customers love to window-shop.

So help them.

"Perfection is achieved, novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, "not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

The Dirty Little Secrets of a Technical Writer

Technology journalist Michelle Bruno contributed today's post. She covers technology and face-to-face meetings in her weekly newsletter, Event Tech Brief.

One might marvel at how I, someone who literally cannot navigate the remote controls of the television set, can write about computer networks and software. It’s really very simple.

The first thing I do when confronted with a particularly complex project is avoid panic. I know now there will be a point at which everything makes sense. It’s just a matter of time.

If the client has not given me source materials, which is rare, I create my own library of research—pulling from Google Scholar or scientific journals and magazines accessed from the library of a local college (a benefit of being an adjunct faculty member).

Almost always, I print the resource materials out on paper and highlight them with a colored marker. As I scan, I begin to formulate an outline in my head.

If I become blocked or overwhelmed, I take a nap.

No writer, even the most experienced, can know everything about everything. That’s why subject matter experts are my best friends. Most software engineers or network administrators are interested that I’m interested and indulge my curiosity.

No matter what I write, every word on the page is still a part of speech: noun, adjective, verb, adverb and so on. 

For example, network, cloud, and machine are nouns. Virtualize, orchestrate, and provision are verbs. It’s critical to get everything in the correct slot.

Structure is very important to me. Even in technical writing, I try to make sure every opening paragraph gives the reader a clue about what they will learn as they read on. 

Every paragraph I write has a topic sentence. If I start out with a list in the first paragraph, I make sure the explanatory paragraphs in the body are in the same order as the items in the list. 

While attempts to be humorous or ironic are normally ill advised in technical writing, I still try to be elegant and clever. Words are still my children and I try to present them in the best light possible.

When I’m not writing, I read. I look for structure and elegance even in the most technical of articles. It’s a blessing and a curse.

I edit as I write. Most of the time I spend more time on the opening paragraph than I do on the entire article. I can’t get comfortable until my direction for the piece is set.

When I finish a project, I deliver it to the client and never read it again for fear I might find a comma out of place or begin agonizing over a word choice.

Technical writers receive exactly zero feedback. Most of the time, my efforts aren’t even acknowledged (one reason I blog). So, to get some warm fuzzy, I share the paper with my husband, who always says, “How the hell do you write stuff like this? You can’t even turn on the TV set.” I just smile.

Postscript by Bob James: Want a weekly dose of wicked good insight?

Subscribe to Event Tech Brief. It's free, and nobody covers the beat better. 

Nobody.

Marketers, Keep Out

The chief reason Adobe's CMO.com is among the web's best branded content titles is its chief editor, Tim Moran.

When it comes to repulsing over-eager marketers, he's combat hardened, thanks to 20 years' experience as a trade editor.

Moran has kept Adobe's marketers from meddling with the corporate blog—without resorting to hands-off policies.

"We don’t have any official or formal policies about church-and-state," he told Velocity.

"The traditional marketers at Adobe have simply come to realize that CMO.com’s job is not to push brand or sell products—there are many other places for that to be done within and around Adobe. They understand our role as the purveyor of thought leadership and insight and have been quite clever about finding ways to get the Adobe POV across on the site in ways that are perfectly acceptable to our media image."

Adobe bought Moran's blog six years ago because it wanted to become a thought leader.

Moran has made it clear to marketers in the meanwhile thought leadership is different from lead generation, and that the two don't mix.

If you want to understand the difference, check out The CMO's Guide to Brand Journalism, courtesy of Hubspot.

Content is Kaput

Many content-crazy marketers have lost their zeal, according to the Content Marketing Institute's 2016 Content Marketing Budgets and Trends.

Institute founder Joe Pulizzi predicts, "Now is when we will witness the greatest content marketing failures of all time."

Their disaffection was predictable.

"Lots of companies bought into the hype and started what they thought was content marketing," Pulizzi says. 

But these companies "either didn't have a strategy or didn't execute it well… or both," and have already moved on, in search of another magic bullet.

Will they ever learn the difference between idea and execution?

In my brief time, I've been told in no uncertain terms that advertising was dead, direct marketing was dead, email marketing was dead, PR was dead, telemarketing was dead, and trade-show marketing was dead.

Now content marketing has joined the angels.

Rest in peace.

Do Long Engagements Lead to Marriage?

In the penultimate scene of When Harry Met Sally, Billy Crystal tells Meg Ryan, "When you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as quickly as possible."

As we know from chick flicks, long engagements don't usually lead to marriage.

Only in the Bizarro World of the web does anyone promise otherwise.

Advocates of long-form content insist long pieces lead to long engagements; long engagements, to sales.

How long? 

Their tests show 1,500 words are good; 2,000, better; 2,500, best.

But Kevin Delaney, editor-in-chief of the news blog Quartz, thinks differently.

As he told RetailDive, most long-form content is padded with uninteresting, B-grade matter.

“What people read online, when you look at the data, is shorter stuff that’s focused, creative and social with a really good headline. It doesn’t mean it’s unsubstantial. It just means it’s really clear about what’s interesting and focuses on that."

Long's fine, provided it's riveting; when it isn't, you want it to stop as quickly as possible.

As critic Roger Ebert once wrote, "No good movie is too long, just as no bad movie is short enough."