Who cares that you don’t have the right credentials?
Or that you break rules. Or that you break them because you didn’t know they were rules in the first place.
Or that you’re afraid.
Who cares that you stay up late, or get up early because you’re not happy with something you wrote and you need to fix it?
Who cares that it’s the wrong word and the right one won’t come?
Or that you hate semicolons as much as I do?
You’re the one behind the curtain.
You are in the magic business, friend. And only you knows how to push that idea along.
There is no license for writers. You chose this.
No one is ever going to give you permission to do this.
And you’re often going to find more reasons to stop than to go on.
No one cares if it’s luck or talent that saves you.
No one ever says “I used to be a writer” and means it. You’re in this for life.
The readers and the money are rewards. And good ones at that.
But there is only one thing keeping score in this business of stringing together letters and words.
There’s just the work.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
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I’m in the middle of doing some in-depth research for an important project, and I find myself thinking a lot these days about the nearly lost legacy of Charles Herrold.
It’s okay if you have no idea who he was. I hadn’t a clue either until I started reading up on the early history of radio.
Charles Herrold was a radio pioneer.
He coined the terms broadcasting and narrowcasting—possibly as early as 1909, and well before the eventual rise of radio’s golden age in the 1930s and 40s, by which time these were household names.
Like so many great words, broadcasting and narrowcasting were borrowed ideas: terms that were used to describe the farming method of sowing seeds from a container that spun outwards in all directions rather than in neat rows.
In choosing these words to describe the scattering approach of this new medium, Herrold showed that he understood the enormous potential of radio as an all-new way of reaching a lot more people than ever before, all at once.
Not just the select literate few of society, as was the case in the 18th and 19th centuries with book publishing and newspapers. All people. Not just with one program, but many.
Through radio and the way that Herrold (among others) saw its application, message became content.
Content became programming. And eventually, programming found a mass audience.
So why then is Herrold such a lesser-known in broadcasting history?
Most mentions of him indicate that he never made a profit from the industry that he helped pioneer.
Professor Mike Adams of San Jose State University summed up the problem this way: “He was in the right place at the right time…but he had the wrong technology.”
Herrold’s broadcasting was based on what engineers call the arc method, while others opted for a method involving vacuum tubes. I’ll spare you the technical details here.
What’s important to know about the arc method of broadcasting was that it sounded awful.
His audience couldn’t hear him as well as they could have. So they went elsewhere.
According to several public records, Herrold died in relative obscurity. Meanwhile, his radio counterpart, Frank Conrad went on to be celebrated in the New York Times as the “father of radio broadcasting.”
There are valuable lessons in this story that you can apply to your business and marketing efforts today.
First, it’s not enough to have good ideas or even to see the potential of something ahead of others.
Execution is everything.
Second, if you’re in the people business (and odds are very good that you are), you are a broadcaster. You can’t build an audience if people can’t hear you properly.
Let me repeat that…
“If you’re in the people business, you are a broadcaster. You can’t build an audience if people can’t hear you properly.”
Click to tweet this.
Make sure you have the right tools that cut through the noise. And remember: you have less time than you think to capture and maintain your audience’s attention.
Third, create great content just as you would build any other exceptional product in your business. Get it into the hands of your audience in a way that is most convenient for them.
These matter ahead of all things when you’re in the people business.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
Writers get asked this often and more often than not, the answer can be distilled to this: I don’t really know. They just come to me.
Ideas are like luck. You can believe they just happen and that you’re just fortunate to be there when they materialze. But that’s a pretty fanciful notion, isn’t it?
Here’s what I know as someone who has been in the idea business for more than 10 years on my own, and more than 20 in the writing trade: luck and ideas come from practice.
You have to make a habit of being there—of showing up and doing the thing that needs to get done to get the things you really want. There is no shortcut.
I like what Neil Gaiman says about this: “You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.”
I want to share with you 10 more. The list is varied, but what they all have in common is an unyielding devotion to showing up regularly with great writing and solid ideas.
Who’s on your favourite list for creative inspiration? Let me know.
James Altucher
His positions on a lot of things might raise your eyebrows. He and I disagree, for instance, on the importance of voting (I see it as a civic duty in Canada, but I can see why he feels the way he does, living where he lives). But there’s a strange genius to what James does. I admire that, not to mention his deep sincerity. He also happens to be a prolific storyteller who understands the intimate bond between reader and writer. More than just teaching the value of not holding back at all in your writing, he also writes killer headlines. How can you help but click on a story called How I Screwed Yasser Arafat out of $2mm? I never miss a thing this guy writes.
Dan Zarella
I value a handful of field-tested research more than a truckload of opinions, and that’s why I read social media scientist Dan Zarella’s blog regularly (as well as his latest book). The takeway is more than just for social media. There’s insight here you can apply to all aspects of marketing and selling. As a direct result of Dan’s work—and his generosity in sharing his findings online—there’s a lot more certainty to writing for the web than ever before. Be sceptical of the opinionated. Act on verifiable data.
rob mclennan
Poetry is what reminds me that there are no easy answers to creative problems. As I say so often: simple is hard. I turn to many poets often for advice through their words. One in particular is rob mclennan, whom I’ve know since the days of Bard poetry readings in the basement of a downtown bar here in Ottawa. His blog isn’t just a platform for his own elegant prose, but for others, too.
Leo Babauta
As much as I’m a stickler for evidence-based research, one place where that can’t help much is in learning the mastery of living the good life in the fine sense that Aristotle once spoke of. The path to happiness is not through data, but through wisdom earned through practice. It’s that easy. And that hard. This is why I keep coming back to ZenHabits for more.
Colleen Francis
Wait, I know what you’re going to say. “Hey you’re plugging her because she’s a client!” Well, that’s partly true (I’ve been writing for Colleen for many, many years). But there’s an even more important reason. Colleen is one of the industry’s best speakers and coaches, teaching business owners and sales people to increase sales the smart way. I learn something new on every job I work on for her. If you want to be a better speaker, a better business owner and even just be smarter about working with people, Colleen has the world by the tail. So I’m happy to share her wisdom with you, dear reader.
Jane Friedman
Jane Friedman of the University of Cincinatti shares my passion for the future of publishing and has some very thoughtful things to say about that. She does a great job of helping to teach writers to think more like entrepreneurs. There are also valuable takeaways for everyone—not just writers–in search of advice and encouragement on keeping their creativity muscles well-exercised.
Jeff Goins
This is a recent find for me. Jeff’s a writer for writers. His blog is pitched at those who care about “writing, creativity, and changing the world.” And he does a great job of delivering on that. His stuff glows with an infectious positive energy and that’s why I subscribe to his updates. Bonus points for being a fellow guitar enthusiast.
Lisa Larter
She practices what she preaches about how businesses can do a better job of using social media in their marketing activities. Her post on why business owners need a “stop-doing” list helped give me a push in the right direction in 2011 and I’ve been reading her ever since. Lisa gets bonus marks for being a fellow resident of Ottawa–where a one-time non-existent entrepreneurial culture is growing today, thanks to the people who put in the time to make it happen.
Roger Ebert
Yes, the man’s a giant in film review. But at his core, Roger’s a writer who just happens to talk about film. His ideas often touch on things that transcend cinema. He built a rather fine career on his considerable writing talents, and yet in the last several years, his skills have grown even more. It’s partly in defiance of illness and loss, but there’s something else that drives this guy’s incredible passion for words. He’s not afraid to colour outside the lines. He reminds that there is endless satisfaction in digging deeper into your thinking and to not just settle for what comes quickly.
Artie Isaac
I was first drawn to Artie because of his speaking style, which I admire greatly (and that includes his trademark bowtie). He’s a powerful advocate for anyone who is in the ideas business. What I’ve found has really been keeping me coming back, however, is his emphasis on ethics. He’s also a fan of Thich Nhat Hanh. So again, bonus points.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
As a business professional, a published book can be one of the most powerful tools in your personal marketing arsenal. Not only does it deliver value to your readers by sharing what you know on a subject, you directly benefit, too.
It can elevate your profile as an authority on the topic you write about. It can reveal your passion. And if your book is really well-written, it also gives people a sense of what you’re like as a person, both on a personal and professional level.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
The number of ebooks published in 2012 is going to exceed a million, easily. That’s more than 8 times as many books as were published to the public a year ago.
I’ve been talking about this trend for quite some time now. If you’re in the audience business (and you are), the self-publishing gold rush is on.
Ebooks are now one of the most powerful, disruptive forces in publishing and marketing today.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
I’ve revised this post because I’m open to having my mind changed.
Originally, I had titled this “Why you shouldn’t enable comments on your site anymore.”
Maybe that was too broad of a brush.
I’m still not a fan of comments on blogs. I post on a few myself, but more often than not, I skip them altogether.
I have a few reasons for that and I’ll get to those in a moment.
But first, a point about you.
As my reader, you value great content and creating a fantastic reading experience as much as I do.
I want your readership here to be a great experience every time. I’m always happy when my readers tell me what they have to say in response to my posts. Those comments are good. And the idea behind doing that is a good one.
That’s not why comments have fallen out of favour with me.
I just don’t think they are for everyone who has a blog. The default position should be don’t do it.
Before you enable comments, you should ask yourself why you’re doing this in the first place.
Does it add to your reader’s experience?
In its infancy, the web was small and operated like a community of communities. Comment-enabled blogs were very handy for people to share thoughtful ideas to help build on what you were saying. It also was a place where diverging opinions could hash things out. It also tended to be a key place for link exchanges.
There was, in many ways, self-enforced civility in what people had to say in their posts. Just like that old maxim: reputations are made and undone faster in a small town.
That’s often not the case anymore.
Have a look at the calibre of comments that populate the bulk of newspaper websites, for example.
Much of it borders on being unreadable.
If you’re in the business of finding ways to create the best possible reading experience for your reader, comments are the last place you are going to find inspiration.
It’s a telling point that Seth Godin and John Gruber–well-read people with no shortage of opinions–don’t have a comment-enabled section to accompany their posts.
Does it contribute value to your reader?
Sure, there are still websites and blogs out there today where built-in comments still add value to original content. But for every good example, it is no effort at all to find tens of thousands of bad ones.
You are in control of your content. But there are considerably more constraints on what you can do about who posts and what they have to say in the comments section of your site.
Look past the pointless arguments, the self-promotional replies and the “great-post-I-agree-completely” responses. Does any of what’s left in comments really help your reader? I’m less and less convinced.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some great examples of comment-enabled content out there. I even comment on a few. But in each case, it is clear that a blog moderator has asked themselves the hard question about who is benefitting from having this feature in the first place.
Do you have the time for this?
Remember that in many countries, you can be held legally responsible for what gets posted in your comments section. Couple that with your wish to create great content, and you can quickly find yourself spending a large chunk of your time moderating discussions and writing reply posts. Is that really the best use of your time, both in terms of product and serving your audience?
Can you address authenticity issues?
Anonymous posts are troublesome. I struggle with this myself. Inauthentic content equals zero value.
And poor-calibre comments aren’t independent of your content. They become part of your product.
Is this something you’re doing because you can or because you should?
I’m always tempted to call this the JBYCDMYS principle. But that would look really awkward. Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should is a principle that ought to be exercized far more than it is these days.
Our world online is crammed with this kind of thinking: features and ornamentations that look nice at first glance or do things that initially seem like good ideas, but deliver questionable long-term value.
So what if your new content management system makes it easy to enable comments? So what if this is something that everybody else is doing? The only measure that really counts is whether it helps your reader solve a problem.
You can only determine so much of that with metrics. You can’t measure good taste.
Are there better alternatives?
There are many alternatives now to commenting (and the hassles of registering to do that). Tweet about it. Or write your own post. Or post something on Google+. You can even kick it old school and email somebody. There are plenty of great ways to engage people that do a better job of ensuring authenticity while delivering a better experience for readers.
Having asked all these questions…
There is one more question to ask and it’s a biggie.
What do your readers have to say?
Mine are telling me that comments matter to them. And a few were peeved that I shut off comments on this blog.
Well I’m all about doing right by my readers, so I’m ready to be proven wrong about this.
I’ve re-enabled comments on this site (and hopefully have addressed the spam-comment issue, too).
So how about it, reader? Are you still using comments on your site? If so, are you asking yourself the tough questions first about why you’re making this available?
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
About two weeks ago, my friend and noted web developer Jonathan Snook decided to write an ebook.
It went on sale yesterday.
His work over these past two weeks is the outcome of a series of notes he’d been collecting for a few months. The result is an ebook that shows developers how they can use cascading style sheets to better manage large, complex websites.
The technical term for this is SMACSS. But this post isn’t to talk about what that does (besides, his book explains it so well that even a guy like me can begin to understand it).
Rather, I want to share with you three valuable lessons that anyone in the ideas business—and as a reader of this blog, that means you—can learn from and apply, based on Jonathan’s example.
There is no time-to-market anymore.
We live in an idea-powered economy. The market for smart new ways of doing things—in this case, developers who build big websites—isn’t the kind that’s going to wait around for months to get a paper-based book in their hands.
For the chop-down-a-tree publishing industry, the time-to-market (fancy talk for the length of time between creating a product and it being available for sale) is typically measured in months. Sometimes even longer.
That’s an agonizing amount of time to wait and it’s a major sore point with writers and thought leaders today. As Scott Stratten–best-selling author of Unmarketing–tweeted over the weekend on this very subject: “publishing needs to decide if they’re in the information biz or the paper biz.”
Opting for self-publishing your ebook erases that delay. It eliminates everything that used to stand between you and the people you want to influence. It puts ideas in people’s heads. And it does so nearly as fast as you can come up with ideas.
That’s why the ebook is one of the most dangerous, disruptive inventions to have ever emerged in human history.
Let me repeat that…
“The ebook is one of the most dangerous, disruptive inventions to have ever emerged in human history.” Click to tweet this.
No wonder publishers (among others) are freaking out.
Build on permission.
Jonathan understood that it’s not enough to just write an ebook, upload it to Amazon, Kobo or the iBookstore and sit back and wait for readers to come to you. Ideas travel fastest in groups.
As I am fond of saying, people are busy. No matter who you are, the public’s attention for what you have to say is scarce. “Permission,” says Seth Godin, “is still the most important and valuable asset of the web (and of publishing).” You need credibility to build an audience. And that’s an ongoing task.
In case of my friend Jonathan, he already has a legion of fans and followers. The way we sells his book and his ideas shows you how he’s done that.
In addition to offering his newest product for download either directly from his site or via Amazon, he’s also included a membership option, featuring some pretty great added benefits for a small fee.
“We’re all marketers now.”
That’s a quote from a 2011 McKinsey Quarterly report. And it’s spot-on. You are no longer separate from your message. Today, who you are, what you do, what you offer, what you solve and how you solve things are all part of your product and your offer.
Among the last of the perceived benefits of the publishing industry was that they would look after all these things for you. They would package your product, edit it, and use a bunch of methods to try and draw attention to your product.
Even in those areas, you are now better served by doing things your way. No one knows your idea and your audience better than you.
It’s not hard to find experts who can help you look after all the things you need to build the best possible experience for your readers. For instance, Jonathan hired a fantastic illustrator who developed a great looking character mascot for his cover. Need an editor? It’s not hard to find a great one who is easy to work with. Same goes for graphic design, translation…and so on.
This is a great time to be a writer. If you’re in the idea business, you already are one (and there are pros who can help you refine that skill, too. Don’t know one? Call me. I can help.)
Learn from the examples of others like Jonathan and you’ll see: in this digital age, with this dangerous invention, it’s never been easier to share your ideas and build a market with more people in less time.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
This post starts with a story about my car. The other day, I had to bring it in to the shop. I’d noticed that my fuel economy was off by a measurable amount and I couldn’t figure out what was causing this. I suppose I could have just ignored it, but that’s never wise to do mechanical things. And besides, careful use of non-renewable resources is one of those things that matters to me.
Turns out one of the rear brake cylinders had seized. Not all the way. Just ever-so-slightly, such that it was causing the engine to work just a little harder because something was dragging a tiny bit on one of the brake drums. It’s running fine now (and thanks again, Bruno).
Tuneups are handy. Under the watchful eye of a trusted professional, they can save you a lot of time and money.
Your marketing content is no different. The tools your business uses to communicate can benefit from the occasional tuneup.
Online newsletters are especially important to keep in top-operating shape. As a professional copywriter, I see first-hand how much is invested into this valuable product—both in terms of establishing a reader base and developing great content.
You have a vested interest in making sure your e-newsletter (or even print, for you old-schoolers out there) is meeting your goals: staying on your reader’s radar by providing something useful to them.
Here are six things you need to be doing to make sure your newsletter is doing all it should for your business.
1. Ensure readability: If it’s hard to read, it’s hard to understand…and even harder to be memorable. Choose a typeface for your copy that’s easy on the eye and scales properly from small to large print. And don’t forget linespacing! A subtle shift from 1.0 to 1.3 spacing can make a big difference between cluttered and orderly looking copy.
2. Make the reader’s experience your #1 priority: Your newsletter should offer the same kind of experience that your customers enjoy when working with you. Even though a newsletter implies that it’s news about you, present news that matters to your reader. Want to share the news about a great new staffing addition to your team? Show your readers how this benefits them in terms of new skills or improved service.
3. Scale to mobile: Mobile traffic is exploding. A study by Cisco suggests global mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold by 2015. It’s time to get serious about ensuring your content looks just as great for readers on mobile devices as other sources. Check typography and linespacing in your newsletter content and test it out on a range of smartphones and tablets. Avoid fonts that appear squashed. Mobile device emulators like this one are also helpful for quick testing of content.
4. Go outside: Subscribe to your own newsletter (even better, do so on an older computer than you usually use so you get a better sense of limitations that your readers might encounter) and walk yourself through the steps involved to receive and read the product. Is the experience consistent with the buying experience you want your customers to have every time they do business with you?
5. Get a second opinion: If you’ve been developing content in-house and have noticed a drop-off in new subscribers, consider hiring a professional writer or editor to review your product both in terms of content and delivery. More than just breathing new life into your copy, a professional diagnostic should include a thorough examination of your objectives, target audience, delivery tools and readership metrics.
6. Re-measure: Smart marketing is measurable. After you’ve completed your newsletter tuneup, invest in tools to re-measure your readership rates, including hard and soft bounces, unsubscribes, messages opened and click-throughs. As always, content marketing professionals can help you make the right choices for your newsletter so that it continues to perform as a key component in your sales toolbox.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
About the author: Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
