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.

Never. Never. Never.

The Bowling Green Massacre never took place.

And neither did the five-second commencement speech by Winston Churchill, who allegedely rose before his alma mater in 1941 and said, “Never give up, never give up, never give up,” and sat down.

The Internet nourishes "alternative facts."

Churchill in reality spoke 740 words to the students of the Harrow School, including these:

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our school history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.

Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never.

Opinions are my own.

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.

The Death of PR

When I was learning the ropes, PR packed punch.

It could land big B2B companies among the lead stories on the evening news and the front pages of papers. And―like a great equalizer―could do the same for small B2B companies, too.

Big B2B companies had dedicated PR departments; B2B PR agencies flourished; and solo B2B PR practitioners were legion.

No longer.

Marketers I know and respect agree: PR's dead. David Meerman Scott (his famous 2007 book, anyway) killed it.

Scott encouraged marketers to substitute PR for advertising; become publicists, instead of peddlers; and to accelerate marcom by cutting out the middleman (the traditional media).

We took his advice―and, in the process, killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. When everyone's a publicist, no one is.

It didn't help that, at the same hour, two new threats—shared and owned media—came on the scene, stealing even more thunder from earned (and paid) media.

So, what's next?

Influencer Relations, says B2B marketing consultant Tom Pick.

Influencer Relations' job is to generate earned backlinks to a B2B company's website, improving SEO. The practitioner's duty is to persuade influencers to embed a link in any mention of the company.

"The work of today’s 'PR' pros is really about building relationships with key influencers," Pick says. 

"The people we call 'PR' pros actually spend most of their time communicating with some mix of local, business, financial, and industry media; bloggers; industry and financial analysts; channel and technology partners; industry associations or trade groups; internal staff; universities; and community groups. In short, with influencers."

Blurbs Shoudn't Blather

At the 1907 convention of the American Booksellers Association, a speaker handed out copies of his new book with a fake jacket covered with fulsome praise. He borrowed the layout of a toothpaste ad for the back of the jacket, and gave the model in the ad a name, Belinda Blurb.

Hence the word "blurb" was born.

The blurb is every marketer's mainstay. But too many marketers fail to leverage these sweet-talking charmers.

Instead of keeping them brief, punchy and authentic, they pile them with clichés no real customer would mouth:

We have received a robust product, customized to our specific needs, which meets our requirement and which has received the endorsement of the president. Our team was extremely satisfied with professional interactions, the speed and efficiency with which you provided feedback and a positive response to all our queries. Having spent much time with you reviewing the product as we have progressed with the development, we are convinced that we have incorporated a highly complex concept into a simple, user-friendly application and we cannot think of any issues that have been overlooked or missed. Without a doubt your team has provided us with a comprehensive evaluation tool that has received the full support of everyone who has tested it, so we have no reservation in confirming you. We are certain that we now have a unique performance evaluation tool, specific to our current needs, but with enormous scope for the future as we move forward with our talent management plans. It has been such a pleasure to work with your team on all levels, your patience with our requests has been exemplary, and we thank you for your dedication to our project.

The marketer could have published instead:

You've created a simple, user-friendly performance evaluation tool that leaves nothing out. As a result, you've won the confidence of everyone who's tested it (even our president loves it). Thanks to your team, we're ready to move forward with our talent management plans.

Take it from Belinda: blurbs shouldn't blather.