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.

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.

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.

Recently I read an anxious post by a fellow copywriter on a writers’ forum. She was relatively new to the business but had done well enough for herself by landing a steady stream of work from a fairly deep-pocketed corporate client. Unfortunately, she wrote, that stream appeared to be drying up into a trickle. She assumed she could find another sugar daddy somewhere, but where — and how?

This writer suffers from a mistake that many of us make, whether we write for a living or not. It’s called putting all your eggs in one basket, and it isn’t a good spot to be in. I know, because I’ve been there.

When I first launched my freelance writing career, I knew a little about writing but not much about how to run a writing business. I had two major clients who called me every once in a while and supplied me with enough work to pay my rent and (some of) my bills. It was a tenuous existence at best, but I was just happy to have any kind of freelance work at all. And it was so easy! All I had to do was sit around and wait for the phone to ring.

You can predict the next twist in the plot. One of my big clients decided to take the work I’d been doing in house, and the other went totally silent — I later learned that it had pulled out of town altogether without bothering to let me know. Instead of sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, I suddenly found myself just sitting around, which doesn’t pay terribly well.

So for any fellow freelance writers or other contractors out there, here are some tips for keeping abject poverty at bay:

Multiple eggs. It’s great to niche yourself so that your target market can zero in on your services and vice versa, but build some versatility into your offerings as well. You might want to learn how to work in multiple formats so you can create a press release, two-column video script or whatever else a client might need with equal ease. Or you could establish yourself as a generalist who can write on every conceivable subject from eyebrow tweezing to rocket science.

Multiple baskets. Build your clientele through a variety of channels, including online ads, a well-optimized Web presence, active participation on social media sites and face-to-face networking. Always play the “who do you know” game by asking your current clients and networking buddies for referrals. Make an effort to help others in the same way. Plug into the community and let it work for you.

Whatever you do, don’t wait until that stream has become a trickle. Whether you’re a freelancer or some other small business trying to remain strong, work on your eggs and egg baskets right now — and you’ll never find yourself without an omelet cooking on the stove.

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

I’m picky about my writing tools. It might be just my nature, though it’s more probably because I spend most of my waking hours banging out a living keystroke by keystroke. I know that various writers throughout history have had their favorite toys. Andy Rooney, for instance, used the same old manual typewriter for most of his career. (His voice haunts me now: “Didja ever wonder why I did that?”) Even back in ancient times, a monk or scribe somewhere was probably insisting on a quill made only from the feathers of that turkey over there.

I didn’t even draft on a computer early in my professional career; I used a pen. A Pilot Precise V5 to be, well, precise. Once I started using the keyboard for all stages of writing, I found myself gravitating toward those laptop-style models with the scissor-switch keys. When one of them died on my recently, I replaced it with the closest match I could find. It just feels right to me.

The other day I decided that I was tired of my creaky old version of Microsoft Word. Instead of shelling out for the current version, however, I stopped and thought: Now might be the time to switch horses. Word’s sheer wealth of capabilities seemed to get in my way at times, offering me so many options that I sometimes found myself thinking about the writing tool instead of the writing. What do I really want in a word processor? I want something that feels invisible and gets out of my way, giving me all the options that I need and none that I don’t.

That’s what businesses seek in selecting their writing tool — a professional copywriter. They want someone who will work quietly and efficiently in the background on their behalf. They want a skilled technician who can hammer their raw ore into a dazzling finished product with a minimum of muss and fuss. They want someone who, as Apple would put it, “just works.”

That’s what I strive to do. I keep my pricing, work processes and communication methods as simple and streamlined as possible. I offer my opinion when clients want it and keep my mouth shut when they don’t. I filter complex, often unfinished ideas into clear, effective messages. And perhaps most important of all, I take the time up front to get to know my clients so I can anticipate their needs before they’ve even expressed them.

Whatever your writing tool of choice — a pen, a keyboard, a word processor or a professional copywriter — go with the one that just feels right. You’ll get a lot more done with a lot less effort.

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

The opening credits play over a long shot of a multi-story apartment complex, a series of rather drab buildings surrounding a courtyard. Set into these buildings we see window after window — some closed with curtains drawn, others giving us glimpses of the various rooms and their occupants.

We get an intriguing look at the odd but endearing collection of everyday folks living out their everyday lives in these buildings, until we finally pull back just enough to realize that we ourselves are gazing out from one of the windows — Jimmy Stewart’s window, to be exact. We then pan downward from Stewart’s face to see that he is in a wheelchair, his leg in a cast.

What is Alfred Hitchcock doing in the opening sequence of his 1954 suspense classic Rear Window? He’s hitting us with a series of revelations. He reveals our environment, then reveals our cast of characters, then reveals our star, then reveals our star’s dilemma. Stewart’s character, L.B. Jeffries, is stuck in his apartment until he heals up, with nothing better to do than observe his wacky neighbors through the window. But he gets more of a show than he’d bargained for when one neighbor’s bedridden wife vanishes from the premises overnight.

Ever seen the same technique used in marketing? You bet you have. It works for a sales letter or web page just as effectively as it does for a film. Hit your reader with a series of colorful, fascinating opening statements while keeping them just off-kilter enough to feel compelled to look further. Stewart’s character feels the same compulsion. Why is Thorwald, the neighbor, coming and going in the middle of the night carrying a suitcase? Wait, are those his wife’s jewels in the suitcase? Where did his wife go? Why is Thorwald washing the bathroom walls? Why is that dog digging so obsessively at the flower bed?…

I won’t reveal the ending, in case you’re one of the three people on the planet who haven’t seen this movie yet. But the way Hitchcock drips information at us one astonishing dollop at a time keeps us on the edge of our set — we have to know what comes next.

You want your marketing content to lead your readers by the hand in exactly the same manner. Dump the whole load of information on them right from the start and it will just land with a thud, like the movie trailer that reduces a two-hour drama to a series of sound bites and car crashes. You have to build your story from one point to the next, giving your reader time to absorb each one.

That’s how you build suspense — in the movies, and in marketing.

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