They will write blogs, not term papers

The words “term paper” strike fear into the hearts of students, followed closely by “essay.”  I remember those dark days of burning the candle to finish a term paper in college. It usually wasn’t fun if you had been assigned a specific topic.

I was lucky that my English professor, Dr. Edward Chalfant, didn’t require term papers, but simply asked us to write what we felt about an American novel or a Shakespearean play.

He was ahead of his time and foretold the coming of the blog, an informal style of writing that can enable a more personal connection between students and professors and between companies and customers in the business world.

Blogging for Grades

The New York Times weighed in on this topic recently, quoting educators who advocate trashing the old-fashioned term paper and those who still preach that students need the discipline of the format: make a point, defend it, repeat it.

Championing the blog as a legitimate and more modern style of writing is Cathy N. Davidson, an English professor at Duke, who has written extensively about learning in the digital age. She wants to replace the term paper with the blog and says, “This mechanistic writing is a real disincentive to creative but untrained writers.”

Instead of term papers, she assigns her students to publish 500-1,500 word entries on an internal class blog as essays for public consumption. Many professors at other institutions are following her lead

The New Way of Writing

There is no doubt that writing has become informal with the advent of the Internet and social media. But don’t blame the Internet for everything. The trend towards a more conversational style started long ago when television entered almost every home. We’ve become accustomed to receiving information in “sound bites.”

Let’s face it: we want to be entertained. Fox News leads the audience ratings because the network understands this new paradigm.

Training students to write term papers and dissertations that no one will ever read again is not training students for the workplace. Yes, students must learn the basic rules of grammar. People won’t read poorly written blog posts just as professors will downgrade poorly written essays.

Out With the Old, In With the New

But the format for writing has changed:

Old

• Make a point
• Defend it
• Repeat it
• Summarize

New

• Grab attention
• Make your point
• Support with evidence
• Persuade to your point of view
• Call to action

Communication Preferences

Students who enter the workforce will soon learn the rules. How do their managers want to receive information: verbally, by email, in a written document? They sure don’t want something that reads like a term paper.

The most important element to any communication – written or verbal – is the call to action.

During our entire work lives we will be required to persuade others to our points of view. That’s how we assume more responsibility and authority. It isn’t good if no one pays attention to you.

George H. W. Bush famously insisted that his staff prepare one-page summaries on important issues. The President had the power to start conflicts, appoint Supreme Court Justices and approve or veto legislation. Yet, he wanted his information in short takes and felt that was enough to make a decision.

Blogging is the New Term Paper

Kudos to those professors who understand that the way we communicate has changed forever. Holding onto to old communications vehicles – like the term paper – is self-defeating. Worse, it doesn’t prepare students for the real world.

I was in a new business meeting the other day and suggested that starting a company blog had the potential to increase visitors to the company’s website. We all know (don’t we?) that Google rewards dynamic content so posting regularly will eventually boost your rankings.

Why Blogs are Abandoned

The designer I was with said “Oh, no” that won’t work. I couldn’t blame him. He had designed websites and blogs for a number of clients and within a short time the blogs had been abandoned.

It’s a commitment to write a weekly or twice-weekly blog. Who will write the blog – someone inside the company or will we outsource it? What will we write about? Where will our ideas come from?

These are legitimate questions, but I believe it is a lack of will and commitment from top management that is behind the failures.There isn’t a plan in place to keep the blog going and building momentum.

Tips for Bloggers

So, if you, or your company, have abandoned your blog here are some steps to take:

• Make a commitment. Decide that you want to increase traffic to your website by x% within six months, or whatever benchmark you want to establish. A blog will help you do that. Static websites don’t cut it.
• Choose categories, or “buckets” of stories. Suppose you’re an accounting firm. You could decide to write about how to finance your retirement, tips for cutting taxes, and estate planning. Over time you could add more buckets.
• Assign responsibilities. Like any other marketing activity, you’ve got to allocate the necessary human and financial resources. Identify content experts in the company as sources for information the writer will need. Think carefully about assigning revenue-producing employees to write. They will usually find an excuse not to do it – I have a client calling, or I need to go to a new business pitch, etc. Better that they supply the writer with the facts she needs. Let accountants be accountants. Let writers be writers.
• Build an inventory of posts. Set a launch date for your blog and then prepare a schedule of posts for the first three months. Write your launch post and at least four other posts from different categories before you begin publishing. The first day, have a launch post that introduces your blog and why you are writing it. At the same time, publish the first four (or more) posts. Why? Because a single post will look like an orphan all by itself. The posts will contain great content and encourage readers to subscribe.
• Offer an incentive. Give readers a reason to subscribe, such as a special report, or something free that would otherwise cost them.
• Solicit guest posts. Ask clients and other experts to write guest posts. You will get backlinks to their sites (another SEO boost) and provide your readers with differing points of view.
• Post to social networks. Now that you have a blog you can automatically distribute new posts to social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. You will be reaching new audiences who may visit your website and decide you’re a company they would like to do business with.
• Repurpose the content. Turn your blog posts into articles, slide shows and electronic brochures. You will be leveraging your investment and distributing your content through other communications channels.

Beat the Competition

It’s true that many companies have abandoned their blogs. Shame on them. They are missing out on a great opportunity to establish the company’s authority on topics of interest to clients and prospects.

Most people still get their information about a company from its website. Your blog will serve as a sort of Pied Piper, luring in readers searching for valuable information to improve themselves and their businesses.

Why not have them come to you and not a competitor?

Related articles

• The benefits of business blogging: Part 1 (marketing.yell.com)
• 12 Business Blogging Shortcuts for Time-Crunched Marketers (hubspot.com)

Have you noticed that infographics have become the rage?

According to that trusty source, Wikipedia, information graphics, or infographics, are graphic visual representations of information…that present complex information quickly and clearly.”

A lot of infographics are useful, like this Washington, D.C., subway map that helps you to figure out the correct train to reach your destination.

Source: Wikipedia

But I’ve become bleary-eyed trying to figure out most infographics. Arrows and winding paths through mounds of graphic designs leave me dizzy and confused. I get lost in the maze of information most of the time.

Entire websites are devoted to them. I’d love someone to help me figure this one out.  It’s only one small piece of a diagram about the use of social media by airline passengers:

Source: Cool Infographics

Or this one that diagrams money wasters:

Source: Killer Infographics

What happened to narrative and bullet points? Death by PowerPoint is looking good.

Do you think these infographics clarify or mystify the information presented and do you have a favorite infographic? Thanks for your help

[tweetmeme]I subscribe to quite a few blogs, including social media experts such as Darren Rouse at ProBlogger and Michael Steltzner at Social Media Examiner. Or, I’ll stumble on a website when I’m doing a Google search. If I have something I’d like to add to the discussion I leave a comment. The problem is — I often can’t easily locate where to do that. So, please make it easier for me to comment.

Image via Wikipedia

Most blogs enable you to scroll to the bottom where there is a box for comments. But there may be dozens of comments before yours — your scroll wheel gets a real workout and I, and others, may lose interest before getting there. I just copied this from a popular site –

Showing 98 comments

Ugh! I guess I should ask myself why would I want to comment there, anyway.

As a result of this informal research, I added “Leave a comment” right next to my byline at the top of my post. So if someone is so inclined, s/he can click and leave a comment without scrolling down. Or, there is still the comment box at the end of the post. Two easy choices.

What ARE Those Letters?

Also, is it necessary to make people type in a jumble of letters to prove you’re a real human being and not a robot? Captcha is the biggest pain in the neck. Sometimes I have to go through the process two or three times before I can actually read the darn letters. That might discourage a lot of people from submitting their comments. I don’t use Captcha and I rarely have spammers – my spam filter seems to be doing a good job.

Anyway, enough griping. I need time to go leave some comments.

[tweetmeme]As you know, if you’re a subscriber or frequent visitor, I’m passionate about blogging. I believe a blog can be the centerpiece of a company’s social media strategy.

But writing a blog post is different from writing, say, an ad or product flyer. A blog is an informal conversation with your readers. You’ve got to put your personality into a blog. Visitors want to know what you stand for and your honest opinions about things – both good and bad.

Stick Your Neck Out

When writing a blog, stick your neck out

You’ve got to stick your neck out a little and risk offending. You don’t want to be hurtful, but as an example, in my post about Home Depot, I wanted the company to know that the needs of Manhattan residents without cars are different from folks who live in the ‘burbs with big minivans to haul things away from the store. I guess they’ll never hire me to write a blog for them, but that’s the chance I took.

In social media, you hear the term “authenticity” all the time. You’ve got to be authentic in everything you write and every connection you make. There’s just too much information out there about you to get away with half-truths or exaggerations.

Informal Rules of the Road

So what would a blog post be without a list? Here’s mine about writing a blog:

1. Be authentic. Say what you mean and mean what you say. You’re building relationships and you want them to last.

 

2. Write in the first person. Remember when you were a kid, your parents taught you that humility is a virtue and don’t use the “I” word too often. In journalism school, you were taught to write objectivity. Leave yourself out of it. Blogging turns that rule on its head. Whether editorializing is correct in a news organization’s reporting is a story for another post.

 

3. Respect your readers. Don’t talk down to them. Try to understand and respond to their information needs. Ask for their feedback. You’ll learn a lot that way.

 

4. Respond to comments. If someone is nice enough to comment, send a thank-you note either via a reply in the post, or with a quick email.

 

5. Don’t stuff your post with key words. You want readers to find your posts – if no one reads a story, does it exist? So naturally you use key words to attract visitors. But if you’re writing about social media, don’t use the term in every sentence. That’s called keyword stuffing and readers are smart enough to know it and tune you out – maybe forever.
6. Make it readable.  Break up copy into short takes with headlines. Make it easy for your readers to get through your copy. I read a ton of blogs and when I get to a site and all I see are long paragraphs of dense, small type with no sub-heads, bold face or graphics, I don’t stay long.

 

7. Write with emotion. This may sound strange. But really enjoy what you’re writing about. Put yourself into it with gusto. Laugh a little if you’re writing a post primarily to entertain. Feel the pain if you’re writing about a serious subject like the misery of the people displaced by the tsunami in Japan. It’s called empathy and your readers will embrace you for it.

 

Thanks for visiting. I really appreciate it.

[tweetmeme]I’ve been using Zemanta for quite a while, but in case you are a blogger and don’t know about it, click on the link below for a 60-second tutorial. It’s a Firefox Extension and WP plugin. I just installed an update and it inspired me to write this post.

Image via CrunchBase

When you begin to write, Zemanta pops up in the right margin. As you flush out your copy Zemanta will show you images that you can drag into your post — like the Zemanta image here. Below the Media Gallery are articles on the topic. For example, for this post up popped these headlines, “Zemanta for Better Content and More Traffic”, “Blogging with Zemanta” and several others. You can go in and see what other people are writing and possibly use a citation in your article or list them below your blog as further references for your readers.

Zemanta also enables you to include links to names of companies or topics you mention — see the link above — without having to search for the link on the web. Zemanta is a neat tool that will enhance your blog and save you time.

Zemanta in 60 Seconds from zemanta on Vimeo.

P.S. As my friend and colleague Bea Fields points out below, there is also a WordPress plugin for Zemanta.

[tweetmeme]There are more different types of blog posts than I can count on my fingers and toes. Tone of voice is important, too. For example, if you’re writing for a business audience, should you use humor in your blog posts? Will your readers think you aren’t serious?

The question you first need to ask yourself, “What is the objective of this article?” If you’re writing to entertain, then it’s OK to use humor. And, yes, business people like humor, too.

When writing about a serious subject such as unrest in the middle East and its implications for business, though, humor would be out of place.

I’ve concluded that many posts fit into the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How Come formula that I learned in journalism class that guided me as a business reporter. See if your posts answer at least one of these interrogatives. It will help to give your blog focus.

The Blog Post List

1. How to. People always want to learn how to do things better, faster, cheaper, safer. How-to blogs appeal to every demographic. Want to learn how to mow your lawn? Head over to Consumer Reports.

2. Promoting a Cause. You may feel passionate about a cause. A particular passion of mine is women and heart disease. I could make the case about why my readers should join the Go Red campaign to educate women on the risks of heart disease.

3. Analysis. In this type of post you can demonstrate your expertise by including your own opinions and those of other experts – linking to authority sites also boosts your SEO. I wrote one recently entitled “The New Leadership Paradigm: Rule by Community” that described the spontaneous formation of new communities of leaders made possible by the power of the Internet. This type of post is also called a Roundup.

4. Reviews. What’s your field? Has an expert written a new book you can review? I just downloaded the Kindle version of Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book “The Thank You Economy” and will write a review after I read it.

5. Q&A. This a great way to conduct an interview with a guest. You can make life easy for readers who don’t like a lot of dense copy. Also, it’s more personal. I interviewed Pat Weber for three blogs that I posted on the elevator speech. She interviewed me for her site and then we decided to turn these posts into an ebook, “Repairing the Elevator Speech to Burnish Your Personal Brand,” which is available to new subscribers of Write Speak Sell.

6. Entertainment. Some blogs are simply meant to entertain. They can be about serious topics – like a lack of service that I experienced at Home Depot in a post “Don’t Forget to Bring Your Own Saw to Home Depot” but written with humor with the primary purpose to entertain your readers.

7. Promotional. You may have a new product or service that you feel the world can’t live without. Write a post – but don’t be too sales-y. Remember that the reader is always asking “What’s in it for me?”

8. Lists. Like this one on blog posts. How about a list of what you consider to be the best books on leadership, or recipes for apple pie?

9. Inspirational. Posts that ask people to be better citizens, to follow their passions in life, to tap their inner spirit are examples of topics that will hopefully inspire your readers to action – and make you feel better, too.

10. Problem/Solution.  A demonstrated winner. I wrote a post a while back “Why Can’t WordPress Tutorials be Written in Language for Regular People? I received a lot of comments and I was most gratified by this one, “This was so helpful!!! I’ve been trying to figure this out for almost 24 hours!!! …LOL.”

11. Instructional. I recently wrote a post entitled “How to Insert the Name of Your Website into Your LinkedIn Profile” that received many thank-you’s. So simple, but many LinkedIn users don’t know how – just take a look at some profiles.

Do you have a favorite type of post? What have I left out?

[tweetmeme]LinkedIn has made it more confusing than necessary to insert the name of your website into your profile. I see many profiles with “Personal Website” or “Company Website” or no website listed at all. Even the author of a book about LinkedIn doesn’t have the actual name of her site in her profile.

Why is it important to have the name of your website in your LinkedIn profile? Your website is your brand – what you want to be known for. “Personal Website” or “Company Website” reveals nothing about you or your company. Those words are not compelling and don’t offer a reason for the reader to click on the links to learn more.

I think one reason people don’t list the names of their websites is because they follow LinkedIn’s instructions! I know that sounds contradictory but it’s true.

Editing Your LinkedIn Profile

I’ve gone into the edit mode in my profile and here is a screen shot of where you include your website information.

In the first window there is a drop-down menu with several options. Do NOT choose Company or Personal Website. If you do, your profile will show those words and not the name of your website.

Instead, choose Other. Then, in the next box add the name of your website and in the third box the URL.  By the way, just because the options are Websites, you’re not limited to websites. You can also add your blog and a link to a page with information you want people to know about.

My website is Write Speak Sell. It’s actually a blog and my posts are obvious in the center column. So I’ve used the second website window to link to my Blogs and Social Media page, because that’s what I’m selling. The third window links to my Work With Me page where people can learn more about my approach and services.

Here is how my LinkedIn profile looks:

But you don’t need to go to LinkedIn to learn about me. Everything is right here! Just click on the tabs in the navigation bar. Or to get in touch, leave me a comment.

[tweetmeme] I regularly receive invitations to join the network of other LinkedIn members.

Today I received this compelling invitation:

Good evening Jeannette, we are both members of NYEBN. I viewed your profile and based on your experience and expertise, I feel you would make a great connection. Please let me know if there is anything that I can help with.

Would you mind connecting?

All the best,
Al

I was intrigued and went into his profile and, indeed, our companies and services are highly complimentary and he’s someone I’d like to know better, so I accepted his invitation. We both live in New York so I’ll be in touch to explore how our mutual interests might lead to collaborating on business or referrals to other people.

I am not a LION, or open networker on LinkedIn. Those are members who are open to connecting with anyone who extends an invitation. The original premise of LinkedIn was to connect with people you know, but that restriction loosened over time. So most members are agreeable to linking with people when it makes sense – and when the invitation is personalized.

How NOT to Write an Invitation

I don’t respond well – and most people don’t – to the default LinkedIn invitation:

I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- Joe Blow

Many members delete these invitations because they are not personalized.  The canned invitation seems spamm-y and shows no interest in me as a fellow professional. Who says I want to join your network?

Give me a reason, like Al did. Notice that he offered to help me – and didn’t ask me for anything in return.

So, the next time you want to connect with someone new on LinkedIn, take the time to craft a personalized invitation. It’s only polite and will lead to better results and stronger connections.

[tweetmeme] I was pleased when BloombergBusiness Week accepted my blog post “Why Small Business Owners Need a Blog.”It’s featured in “Today’s Tip” in the SmallBusiness Department. Every day Business Week features three bloggers who offer practical advice on a variety of topics. The two other bloggers discuss “Make the Logic Clear for a Reluctant Shopper,” and “Design Comparative Ads to Fit Shopper Psychology.” Good advice.