reynoldswriting.com Blog

You’re too busy to create your marketing content yourself, so you sub that task out to a freelance copywriter. Problem solved, right? Well, up to a point. Your copywriter can work wonders to keep your blog posts, newsletter articles and other content fresh and up to date — but have you told him what you want far enough ahead of time to ensure that it gets done? It’s all too easy to bury yourself in other work and assume that your writer is fulfilling assignments you never assigned. Then one February 14th you sit bolt upright with the horrified realization that you forgot to request that special Valentine’s Day article.

If you’re familiar with this particular chill down the spine, then you probably need an editorial calendar. List your anticipated needs for content over the coming months or quarters, and then distribute that list among your marketing professionals. Your creative folks will always know which assignments are coming up and when, and you’ll have eliminated the “Oops, I forget to tell you” factor on your end.

In fact, it’s smart to have multi-stage editorial calendars for collaborative pieces such as direct mail postcards or newsletters, with separate schedules for idea submission, graphic design, copywriting, revision and publication. The whole project then comes together with Swiss-watch precision, and your team can roll right onto the next job. For example, a mortgage firm sent me a 12-month editorial calendar in January that showed me quite clearly what marketing pieces I’d be writing come December. As a result, we had a year’s worth of email blasts and direct mail postcards ready to go before Spring had sprung.

Of course there will be times when you need to respond quickly to current events. But that’s okay. You don’t have to give your freelancers license to bull ahead with a year’s worth of stuff. Just ask them to keep an eye on the upcoming month or quarter with a “subject to change” disclaimer. It’s much easier to change something that exists than something that doesn’t, and if you have no editorial calendar in place everyone’s just operating on the fly. This can hurt you if your freelancers are non-exclusive, because without prior knowledge they may be working on another gig when you need them.

If you’re a marketing firm ghost-blogging for multiple clients, then you face another obvious challenge. How can you prepare articles months in advance if you can’t always get your clients to send you the necessary background information in a timely manner? Here’s where you hedge your bets by adding alternate titles to the mix — pre-approved, evergreen topics that you can always fall back on. As publication time draws near, if you can’t get the intake on time, go to Plan B. Your copywriter composes the alternate title, you post it on time, and everybody’s happy.

Editorial calendars can make the difference between a last-minute scramble and a calm, smooth ride for your marketing campaign. Create yours today — and then assign the writing to me!

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Have you ever chatted with a professional in a different line of work from yours and walked away wishing you’d brought a translator to the table with you? You’re pretty sure it was English — at least, the little words sounded familiar. But 90 percent of it somehow managed to whoosh right over your head. Are you stupid? Do you have a hearing problem? Or have you simply been buzzed by wall-to-wall buzzwords?

We all fall into jargon from time to time. It exists for a reason, and it can be highly useful or even necessary among those in the know. Car buffs debate issues involving torque and fuel ratios, composers pepper their language with Italian musical phrases, electricians casually drop terms such as “resistance” and “capacitor,” and physicists no doubt talk like time-traveling refugees from Star Trek: the Next Generation. It’s only natural for people in the same profession to talk shop. The problem comes when the engineer or the musician or the IT expert suddenly has to speak to a general audience. We’re listening, but we just don’t understand. And after a few minutes of not understanding, we’re no longer listening either.

The problem isn’t limited to industry-specific terminology, either. I’m often asked to rewrite or edit content written by people who work in a more general business field, and I still have to spend half the project time figuring out what the heck these folks are trying to say. A lot of it tends toward the nebulous, stuff about “aligning verticals and utilizing granular compartmentalization to achieve a more impactful synergy,” yadda yadda yadda. Business-speak is a way for people to talk a lot without saying much. But if you’re trying to sell yourself or your product/service to a mainstream audience, don’t be shocked if you’re rewarded by the sound of crickets chirping.

As a first step in clearing up your verbiage, try to avoid jargony words that ordinary language can handle perfectly well, such as “agreeance” (agreement) and “incentivize” (spur, motivate). And watch out for whiz-bang phrases that describe something that isn’t really that amazing, such as “results-oriented.” (You’d never guess how many business professionals think it a huge feather in their caps to describe themselves or their company as “result-oriented.” As opposed to what, “sitting-around-doing-nothing-oriented?”) “Full-service” is another phrase I’ve attacked on this blog before. (Ever hear a company describe itself as “partial service?”) Finally, don’t overuse the relatively simple, easy-to-understand buzzwords just because they aren’t as likely to whoosh us — for instance, not everything has to be a “driver” for something else. (I see that one a lot too.) Get a thesaurus and give another word or two a chance. We’ve got lots of them.

If you’re not sure you can veer away from industry lingo, or you can’t tell how accessible your stuff is to your intended audience, get a professional copywriter or copyeditor to go over it for you. You may get a revised version that makes you exclaim, “Oh, so that’s what I was saying!”

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

If you sell products or services during the holiday season, you’re well aware of the need for a strong marketing/advertising push, planned and executed well ahead of time so you can amplify brand awareness and build up a head of steam for those big sales and specials instead of getting lost in the crowd. But if your business closes down for the holidays, you might as well suspend your marketing operations too, right? Well, I’m biased, of course, but I’d advise against it – because the consistency of your marketing and branding efforts in December will determine whether anyone remembers you in January.

For example, this article is being posted on Christmas Day, but of course it isn’t likely to get a lot of eyeball traffic today. It may not get much more attention tomorrow, either, as people continue to enjoy their time away from the office or engage in the mad scramble to return or exchange gifts (an epic struggle that merits its own Hollywood title — Christmas: The Return). Even so, this post, this little chunk of branding, is right here for whoever does see it. I’m displaying marketing activity, therefore I still exist. I blog, therefore I am.

Want to keep your marketing wheels turning and still enjoy a much-deserved break? Then plan for it. Engage your copywriters, designers and consultants early enough to construct the December leg of your marketing campaign well in advance. Many of my clients fast-tracked their December requests for just this reason. They knew I wasn’t going to be around that week, they knew they weren’t going to be around either, but they also knew that their business needed to maintain a degree of visibility and marketing consistency. The sooner you communicate with your marketing professionals, the better off you’ll be heading into January.

And speaking of January – have you got your 2012 marketing campaign ready for action? I have several clients who already have clear ideas and timelines for introducing new strategies while keeping up the current ones. Those folks will be able to launch 2012 with all systems go because they took the extra steps at the end of 2011 to load the rocket and clear the gantry. Of course you can initiate a marketing campaign any day of the year, but there’s something about the New Year that makes us want to start new things. In some countries it’s customary to clean the house top to bottom, getting all the old dust out of the way to make room for shiny new endeavors. January makes a great time for a clean sweep – so contact me if you’re ready to take a new broom to your company’s marketing copy.

That is all. And now, back to your (and my) vacation.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Oddly enough, millions of words have been written on the subject of writer’s block — it seems that writers never tire of writing about not being able to write. And there are as many different coping strategies as there are writers. Some just stare at a blank page or screen for days, months or even years, waiting for, well, something. Others write down anything and everything that enters their heads in the hopes that two or three consecutive words will actually be worth keeping. Ernest Hemingway used to end each writing day in the middle of a sentence so he’d at least have some direction for starting the next day. Then there are the compulsive rewriters and re-rewriters who must polish a sentence until it gleams before they can gather the courage to try another one.

As as you might image, articles about getting un-blocked, such as this one I found recently on Copyblogger, are popular among professional writers. But of course you don’t have to make your living at the keyboard to struggle with writer’s block, as countless non-writers have discovered for themselves. For what it’s worth, here are a few tips that I’ve found useful for blocking the block:

Call it something else. The very term “writer’s block” can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Gee, the words are coming slowly this morning. Maybe I have WRITER’S BLOCK.” Well, if you didn’t have it before, you probably do now. But isn’t it possible that you’re just tired, unwell, or distracted by some completed unrelated event in your life? If so, maybe you can’t focus on any particular activity just at the moment. You don’t have writer’s block, you have (fill in the blank). Deal with that issue and the writing problem may well resolve itself.

Sneak up on it. “I’ll just jot down a few notes.” I’m always telling myself that. When I’m not sure how to begin a piece of writing, I don’t bother with the beginning at all. I just start writing stuff that may end up going anywhere (or nowhere). If I forced myself to come up with a brilliant beginning before I could move on, I’d never finish. I just write with no preconceived plans or expectations — and before I know it, my “notes” have mushroomed into a full draft.

Take frequent short breaks. If you wear yourself out, sooner or later the ideas will dry up and you’ll find yourself stuck. That’s fatigue, not writer’s block. You can prevent it by forcing yourself to stand up and go do something else — anything — for a few minutes. (Don’t stay away too long, though, or you may never come back.) Recharge your brain a little and then get back to work. Do this at regular intervals, whether you feel like stopping or not.

And if all else fails, you can always hire me to do the writing instead.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

I’d love it if every business owner on the planet requested my writing services. The only snag is, I’d have to turn down most of those requests — and not just because of my own creative bandwidth, either. Believe me, I stuff my calendar like Uncle Bob at an all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffet whenever I can, even though my brain sometimes cries out for a seven-day fast. But in many cases these prospects haven’t yet arrived at the point where hiring a copywriter makes good sense for their current siutation. So how can you tell if you’re jumping the gun? Here are a couple of major indicators:

You don’t have a marketing budget. It alarms writers when their clients pay cash out their wallet or purse. Why? Because marketing payments should come out of a business’s marketing budget, not somebody’s grocery money. If you don’t have an official marketing budget, you need to make one that fits into your overall business plan, just like any other corporate expense. Save your grocery money for groceries, and pay your business expenses with corporate funds. If you don’t have any corporate funds, then maybe you have more urgent problems to solve before you go on a marketing binge.

You don’t have a strategy. Just as you need a marketing budget to fund any copywriting or other marketing expenses, you need a marketing strategy that dictates the most sensible way to spend that money. What are your long-term marketing goals for your brand? Which media channels can help you achieve those goals, and how should you use each of them in a way that strengthens your overall message? What is your Plan B in case Plan A gets a hole in it? These are questions for a marketing strategist, not a copywriter. If I get called in to write a press release and the client asks me, “What do you think we should say? Who should we write this for?” and so on, I gently steer them toward a marketing consultant who can help them figure those things out. Once you know how you’ll market yourself, then you can figure out whether you need a copywriter’s services.

If you’re not sure whether you’re ready to hire a copywriter — just ask. Most experienced writers are astute and honest enough to point out any preliminary measures you may need to take first. I’m always happy to refer my prospective clients to other marketing experts who can lend a helping hand. And if you know you are ready to pull the trigger, I’m right over here holding up the big red target.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

That great wise man and British TV personality Benny Hill — the portly comedian fond of bopping little old bald guys on the head — once recited an oddly touching little poem on one of his shows:

No birds
No bees
No flowers
No trees
No wonder
November

While different parts of the world experience various kinds of weather once autumn rolls around, I’ve seen my share of November days that seemed to fit that description pretty well. Now that Daylight Savings Time has ended and the days are growing shorter, dinnertime means nighttime. Unfortunately, a great many people suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) as autumn yields to winter. This “winter depression” can manifest itself in the form of oversleeping, grogginess, inability to focus, social withdrawal and overeating. There’s even a summertime version of SAD that tends to cause opposite symptoms, including anxiety, irritability and loss of appetite.

Your environment can have a profound impact on your productivity, regardless of whether you suffer from SAD. I’ve been searching for the perfect writing environment for years. I’ve never found it and I suspect I never will, though I keep on fighting the good fight. But the surroundings that support productivity for one writer — or sales manager, or business owner, or marketing director — may drive another to distraction. In my case, I’ve found that peace and quiet in a controlled environment works better for me than the bustling atmosphere of a coffee shop or restaurant. Other writers, however, spend their entire careers in cafes, with no concern for the noise and motion swirling around them. A few even require this environmental stimulation to get themselves going; I once heard of a writer did his most productive work while sitting in airport lobbies. Different strokes, as they say.

So if you’re getting less work done than usual, examine your surroundings. Is the room bright enough? Too bright? Is that leaf blower outside your window grinding your brain to a halt? Do you suffer from SAD? You might benefit from some new full-spectrum lighting, a pair of earplugs or other corrective gear. If you thrive on human interaction and solitude depresses you, maybe you need to abandon the home office in favor of the nearest Starbucks. Even if you’re not actually chatting with the folks around you, just being in the middle of human activity could cure your working blues — regardless of what kind of work you do.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Happy Halloween, fellow freelance copywriters! If you’ve been pursuing this line of work for any length of time, you may have noticed its “Trick or Treat” aspects. Most of the time you can fill your bag with candy, but once in a while, like Charlie Brown, you get a rock. Here are a few of the ghouls and goblins that might cross your path as you go from door to door….

The Sample Eater. This fearsome beast has an insatiable hunger for writing content. It lurks in the dark corners of the Internet, looking for half-starved writers who are willing to do anything for work. It promises an avalanche of article-writing and other opportunities: “Just fill out our application and submit an original writing sample on one of the following topics.” You can see where this is headed. Every writer who applies gets a “Thanks but no thanks” letter — and the Sample Eater gets an unlimited supply of free writing to pass off as its own. And guess what happens if the rejected writer decides to sell his work to another publisher? It gets stopped by the plagiarism checker, because there’s already a VERY similar article posted on the Web…. Of course, some requests for sample articles are perfectly legitimate. Just proceed with caution.

The Hurry Up and Wait Monster. This guy is almost a variation of the Sample Eater, except he consumes entire projects. His secret weapon is a magical ability to alter the flow of time. He may throw you onto a job with an urgent yet apparently arbitrary deadline. If you demand a payment before starting work, however, the fourth dimension suddenly begins to warp and flex. He’ll get the money to you soon. Oh wait, he’s having trouble with the electronic payment, so he’ll write a check instead. “What, you never got the check? how about we meet somewhere and I’ll hand you cash? By the way, we really need to get moving to make our project deadline….” The Hurry Up and Wait Monster is trying to pressure you into writing at least some of the job before you’ve received any money. If you resist, the “urgent” deadline may miraculously change. Or perhaps another writer is innocently writing the second chunk of the job, wondering where his check is….

The Ghost of Projects Yet to Come. This spectre haunts writers who are willing to accept inadequate payments (including the dreaded “writing on spec”), endless rewrites, redundant meetings and other abuse in exchange for the promise of a brighter future scenario. You may recognize this creature by its distinctive howl, which tends to include phrases such as “building a team,” “long-term relationship” and “future projects,” liberally seasoned with a dash of “eventually.” This association will do great things for your career — someday. But once you’ve gotten that distasteful “trial run” out of the way, don’t be surprised to see the ghost flicker and fade into thin air, as spirits are wont to do.

Keep your flashlight charged and your eyes open, and you’ll be able to sidestep these and other clients that go bump in the night, leaving you free to enjoy your work with the other 99 percent. Go for the treats, not the tricks!

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Sometimes prospective clients will ask me if I specialize in their particular industry: “Do you have experience writing for the automated-widget business?” Many times I can truthfully answer, “Yes.” Other times I can just as truthfully say, “No, and here’s why it doesn’t matter.”

So here’s why it doesn’t matter.

Most of us copywriters consider ourselves generalists — professionals adept at absorbing whatever information we need to write on the widest possible range of subject matter. Specializing in a particular industry or subject has its points, of course, both for clients and for writers. Specialists usually require less intake on the subject from the client, eliminating much of the learning curve on the front end of the project. From the writer’s perspective, a more specialized niche is easier to market to because that target market makes up a more cohesive group — people who tend to belong to the same organizations and speak the same lingo.

But as a generalist myself, I think general-subject writers have the edge in some notable ways. For one thing, the sheer cross-pollination of concepts, information and resources that we sift through on a daily basis, year after year, enables us to see the broad view of how your particular industry relates to others. If you work in the “green” industry, for instance, your product or service may impact the manufacturing, real estate, health and wellness, energy, electronics and other industries. Well, guess what? I’ve written for all of those industries and many others, so I can see the connections between them all — which means that I can help your audience see them as well.

At the same time, the outsider’s perspective counts for much. People who live and think in one field 24/7 start to assume that the rest of us know as much about it as they do, so they start speaking in buzzwords and technobabble without even realizing that we’re staring at them with a blank expression. A writer who can step in as Joe Q. Public and say, “What’s the bottom line on this stuff?” can see your products or services from a mainstream audience’s point of view.

Of course, everyone specializes in some way or other. For instance, even though I write on every topic under the sun, I focus on marketing pieces, or as I like to call it, “writing for short attention spans.” The work I do has a specific mission: to grab a reader’s interest and then nail a point home quickly and engagingly enough to inspire a purchase or a phone call. But as a general-subject writer, I can do that for any industry, product or service. So befriend a generalist today — and start getting your point across to the rest of us.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Copywriting mastermind Robert Bly recently discussed an extraordinary new technological advance — writer-less writing. This program, the product of a company called Narrative Science, apparently synthesizes facts and figures to generate news stories and other articles. I was intrigued by this idea and stumbled on a New York Times piece that explores the technology and its applications in more detail.

The software does more than simply throw sports scores or stock prices into a blender and hit the mix button. It can accept and work with colloquial expressions and even choose a specific story angle, such as a come-from-behind win by a sports team. The resulting work is coherent, well organized and professionally presented. The folks at Narrative Science see an increasing role for this kind of computer-generated writing in journalism as the technology continues to advance.

So is it time for us writers to put away our laptops, pens and caffeine habits for good? I don’t believe so.

Take a look at the sample news brief referenced in the Times article. Underneath the smooth grammar and coolly professional tone, you basically get a sequence of events and statistics. Yes, the program communicates the significance of this data, but it can’t speculate on what might happen next or evoke the participants’ feelings on the matter. And it can’t imbue its work with its own feelings either, because it doesn’t have any. That’s okay for an objective report, but what about persuasive writing?

Real writers do much more than just write. When you hire a skilled, experienced freelance copywriter, you gain a creative partner as well as a scribe. I’m constantly asked for editorial guidance, creative brainstorming sessions, and opinions on what that next round of blog posts should explore or what tone a sales letter should employ. And yes, I rely on previous experience, collected facts and basic logic in my work — but I’m not stuck with those options. I can also leap beyond logic by drawing on such uniquely organic resources as intuition, humor, opinion and emotion. I can do more than just extrapolate story points from facts and figures. I can use those facts and figures as a launchpad for sailing into uncharted “What If” territory. Irrationality has its downside, but it also allows us to create, imagine, wonder and dream. That’s the extra edge a flesh-and-blood writer brings to the table.

Now if they ever start making computers as nutsy as humans, then we’re ALL in trouble.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

We had a hot summer here in Central Texas. Now that may not sound like an earth-shaking statement, but I’m really talking hot. Hot as in 80 days of triple-digit temperatures. Hot as in 23 days that topped 105 degrees, with a couple of 110s and 112s in there just to kill off anything that might still be alive. Hot as in, our hottest summer ever. That kind of hot.

What did I do? Most of the time, I hid in my office with the blinds drawn, which worked out fine because I got a lot of writing done with minimal distractions. I avoided the worst of the worst by escaping to New Mexico for a week. Then it was back to my air-conditioned cave to await the inevitable break in the heat.

What did thousands of others in my area do? They went jogging, riding their bikes, sunbathing, walking — and they loved every minute of it. On the absolute hottest day of the year, in fact, many of them were burning their insides as well as their outsides at the annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival.

Could you sell me a hiking trip or cycling tour during the dog days of August? Would I drive for miles in 112-degree temperatures to eat hot sauce? No way, Jose. But some people will. You can sell them a bike at the height of a Texas August. You can sell them on a hot sauce festival when the air itself is practically on fire. In other words, you can market products or situations that totally fly in the face of common sense from your perspective, because there’s always somebody somewhere out there with a different point of view. You just have to find that person.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “He could sell ice cream to Eskimos.” Well, I’d bet you the compressor pump on my AC that plenty of Eskimos and Arctic dwellers devour gallons of the stuff — just as many folks in hot climates can’t get enough sun, sweat and salsa. I might not share or even understand their enthusiasm, but I’m not marketing to myself. I’m marketing to that precise niche of individuals who really want what I’ve got, and that market always exists somewhere. It’s your job to isolate it, target it as accurately as possible, and pitch away. The only products or services you can’t sell are the ones you’re pushing onto the wrong people. Pinpoint that ideal target market and you’ll find that you can sell ice cream to Eskimos or hot sauce in a heat wave.

And now if you’ll pardon me, I have to go crank up the fan.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.