How to Conquer the Robowriters

By 2020, 75% of news coverage will be written by bots, says content marketing guru Mark Schaefer.

"When it gets to the point that a computer can consistently generate content at a level that passes the Turing Test, the economics of content in every form will change forever," Schaefer says. "The freelance writer will become an endangered species."

Schaefer offers freelancers four strategies to beat the bots:

Emote. Good writers transcend their content by connecting emotionally with readers. It hardly matters what they write about; we still want to read it.

Dive. Position yourself as an expert and a "trusted voice of experience," because no bot can "corner the market on true insight."

Engage. Express some original thoughts, or at least express others' thoughts originally. If you only offer commodity content, "it’s going to be game over." Cede content like "10 Twitter Tips" to the bots.

Rebel. Be a part of readers' "bot-free zones." Just as consumers pay a premium for organic, local and artisanal, readers will prefer writers who shun "bot-speak." Keep your content human.

My view is that skilled freelancers needn't fret:

• Mathematician Émile Borel said a century ago, if you provided an infinite number of monkeys typewriters, eventually they'd produce Hamlet. Bots may not represent an infinite troop, but they're 'still a boatload of monkeys. As Uber will do to taxi drivers, bots will soon disintermediate low-skilled writers (it's funny that both are called "hacks"). The great social sewer will awash in robowriting—a genuine improvement.

• But while bots can produce passable news stories, it's hard to imagine them attracting followers. The reason is simple. As great writing teachers (Donald Hall, for example) have always told students to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, because the good writer is full of doubt; she knows her prose isn't inviolable and that the good stuff only emerges from the fifth or sixth or seventh draft. But computers aren't writers; they're robots. They'll never rewrite their stuff, because they lack self-doubt. Have you ever met a computer that doubted its own solution to a problem?

Content Marketer: Why Punish Yourself?

Unless you crave brawn more than bliss, you'd never do 100 extra pushups. 

It'd be masochistic.

So why, when writing's such hard work, write more than readers read?

Brevity should be the rule, not the exception, if you want your content to catch and keep readers' attention.

In The Dyer's Hand, W. H. Auden urged brevity on memoirists with one simple command:

"Be brief, be blunt, be gone.”

Nuff said.

Google Outs a Family Secret

Victorian doctors prescribed morphine like today's doctors do hydrocodone, especially to young middle- and upper-class women. As a result, thousands were committed to "the shadows of addiction."

George Sand, Louisa May Alcott and Mary Todd Lincoln were all morphine addicts. So was playwright Eugene O'Neill's mother, as depicted in Long Day's Journey Into Night. My own maternal grandmother was one.

Family secrets have always been hard to keep, but Google's made them harder.

Researchers at Rutgers University used Google to unearth the long-buried fact that Thomas Edison's first wife died in 1884 of a morphine overdose, even though "congestion of the brain" was recorded as the official cause of death.

Here's how:

• Using Google, they first found an article in an unidentified newspaper that said Edison had tried to revive his comatose wife with electric shocks. Edison was an expert in electricity.

• Using NewspaperArchive.com, the researchers next found another (unsigned) article alleging Mary Edison was a morphine addict who died of an overdose. They also found an interview Mary had given the same paper, and concluded the same reporter who conducted the interview wrote the story about her death.

• Using Google Books, the researchers then discovered “congestion of the brain” was a Victorian euphemism for "overdose." They also discovered electric shock—Edison's expertise—was prescribed in medical books as a way to revive victims, and concluded Mary indeed OD'd.

How to Guarantee Gate-Shut-Panic

It is a hopeless endeavor to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.

—Charles Dickens

"Of all the thousands of events that exist, only 5% represent those that I’d consider as ‘must-attend,’" says event designer Warwick Davies.

"These are the events where your absence will be noted, whether you are an attendee, speaker, sponsor or exhibitor. They are the kinds of events that prompt a ‘fear of missing out'—FOMO—the fear that it will somehow cost you in some way if you aren’t there."

Germans have a word for FOMO, Torschlusspanik, "gate-shut-panic."

The word dates to the Middle Ages, when peasants had to scamper from the fields at dusk, to guarantee they got home before the city gates were shut. The ones who dawdled could be eaten by wolves, beaten by robbers, or killed by the cold.

You can't loose wolves or release the Kraken on resistant attendees. But you can instill FOMO by offering a must-attend event.

Davies says these six actions guarantee it:

Make sure influencers show up. Buzz about your event only occurs when "influentials, connectors and mavens" attend, Davies says. Be sure to find ways for them to see value in attending.

Make sure you connect with influencers. Connect with 10 influencers, and you can't help but spark FOMO. "It will help not only your event, but also your own personal industry profile, and potentially your career."

Make sure you know the next big thing. You can't be clueless and run an irresistible event. Become a trend-spotter and build the next big thing into your event.

Make sure to connect with your Top 10 sponsors.  To create FOMO, you need tight connections with all the decision-makers at your leading funders.

Make sure to offer 10 networking activities. "Have 10 really dynamic and interactive things on the schedule that allow the movers and shakers, as well as their followers, to get together." Activities can include receptions, community projects, roundtable sessions and morning runs.

Make sure to market your event as a "must-attend." But don't just claim it. Prove it. Publish an agenda that shows you're leading your industry.

HAT TIP: James McCabe inspired this post.

Mel Ordway Betters Himself

Mel Ordway's troubles began the day he was assigned Nat Bowen's old territory.

That morning, and for weeks thereafter, whenever he called a customer, Mel was regaled with tales of Nat's famous "sparkle."

Mel guessed Nat's sparkle was largely a matter of physique. The man was an athlete, after all. Mel was out of shape. So to get some sparkle, he began to diet, take long walks, and practice deep-breathing exercises.

Then Mel's wife got on his case.

Phyllis told him that, though she'd been smitten when they were dating, after three years of marriage to him she'd decided Mel was unattractive. He was a day-dreamer, a worry-wart, a promise-breaker, and an intellectual lightweight, Phyllis said. "No wonder you haven't made the hit with the firm that Nat has."

So at Phyllis' insistence, Mel went to the public library and checked out a pile of books: books on improving concentration and memory; on the psychology of personality; and on business and the industry he worked in.

Mel studied the books and, within only weeks, saw his sales increase. His customers began to mention his "sparkle." His boss gave him more room to negotiate prices. And Phyllis grew more affectionate.

Mel became a regular patron of the public library after that. He was firmly on the path to self-betterment.

Mel Ordway's story appeared in the March 1918 edition of The Business Philosopher, a monthly magazine published by Arthur Frederick Sheldon. It was just one of hundreds of similar case studies of under-performers who embraced "Sheldonism" to turn things around.

Now forgotten, Sheldon was once a prominent Chicago business executive; a cofounder of the Rotarians; and the man who coined the slogan, “He Profits Most Who Serves Best.”

Sheldon also launched an industry that came to be called "correspondence education."

In 1902, full of sparkle himself, Sheldon began offering a mail-order self-help course that, at the height of its popularity thirteen years later, would be taken by more than 10,000 salespeople annually.

Sheldon's interests, as reflected in the course materials and the pages of The Business Philosopher, spanned many topics, from personal selling to labor relations, business ethics to economic justice; and helped shape the thinking of a generation of salespeople.

In 1908, Sheldon relocated his mail-order business from downtown to a Chicago suburb named Rockefeller. He bought a 600-acre campus, built a school, and hired nearly 200 local residents to help run it. The Sheldon School offered courses in shorthand, typing, bookkeeping and, naturally, salesmanship.

A year after the school opened, the town changed its name from Rockefeller to AREA, in tribute to the school's motto, Ability. Reliability. Endurance. Action.

AREA, says The Business Philosopher, names a "four-fold capacity" you must embrace; until you do, "complete success is impossible."

Don't believe it?

Just ask Phyllis.