Keep it Simple

Writing is first and foremost a communication tool. What you say matter, but so does how you say it.

Your writing should be approachable. Friendly. Digestible.

Copywriting is a craft, not an art, but it has one thing in common with poetry. Every word has a job. Words that clutter your sentences and make them longer for no reason need to be cut.

Write like you talk, only better. Because we can slow down and edit, writing gives us the opportunity to communicate more articulately than when we speak. But some writers, especially beginners, overdo it. They use too many words. They aim for formal instead of relaxed, and their sentences are inelegant, awkward and at times incomprehensible.

If you can take some words out without breaking the sentence, take them out.

If that’s not enough, if you find yourself staring at a convoluted or constipated mess, ask yourself: what are you trying to say? Don’t look at what you’ve already written. Close your eyes and answer the question like you’re explaining it to a friend over coffee. Say the answer out loud, then write down what you just said. Chances are, it will be clearer than whatever you started with.

And break up your sentences into bite-sized paragraphs.

If you flip through some novels written in the 19h century, you’ll notice that entire pages go by without a single paragraph break. Some of those blocks of text are big enough to kill a human being. Even literature professors groan when they see them nowadays.

Hardly anyone writes that way anymore, but still, the more paragraph breaks you can squeeze in the better. It’s a bit counter intuitive, but if you break 500 words into eight paragraphs instead of six, the text looks shorter even if your readers have to scroll farther down the page to get to the bottom.

And shorter text is inviting. It asks to be read. It can be scanned. Long sentences and even longer paragraphs are off-putting. They look like homework assignments. Like chores.

Writing may be a chore, but if your web site visitors glance at what you’re written and think reading it will be a chore, they won’t read it.

Don’t be afraid to murder your darlings, as William Faulkner once put it. When it’s time to edit, scrutinize what you’ve written with ruthless objectivity. You may find that some of your favorite passages have to be cut if they bog down your work or take readers off into tangents. It may hurt a little (or even a lot), but sometimes it has to be done.

Lastly, if your final draft isn’t shorter than your first draft, you’re doing it wrong. As Blaise Pascal once said, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

Think Like a Publisher

Publishing is no longer an industry or a job. As technology consultant Clay Shirky famously put it, publishing is a button. “It’s a button that says publish,” he said, “and when you press it, it’s done.”

The ease of publishing anything and everything on the Internet is radically transforming the worlds of journalism, traditional book publishing, and marketing. News blogging revolutionized the media business. Self-publishing books is no longer a loser’s game—it’s a multi-million dollar business. And marketers no longer need to rent all their media real estate.

The big six New York publishers once viewed books as produce like lettuce or bananas that spoil on the shelf after a short period. New releases would sell for a few weeks and months, but they had to be replenished constantly with more new releases because most bookstores didn’t have the space for anything else.

Some publishers still think this way to an extent, but with the rise of e-books, print-on-demand and online booksellers like Amazon where shelf space isn’t an issue, books don’t go out of print anymore. Every title is now an income-generating asset that can turn a profit indefinitely.

Think of your content marketing the same way. An ad in a newspaper is produce. It spoils even faster than bananas and lettuce. Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s bird cage liner or fish wrap.

Ads are fine. So are newspapers, bananas, and lettuce. Engaging content on your brand’s web site, however, can attract new readers—and hence new customers—for years as long as search engines can find it. Like e-books in a publisher’s backlist, your company’s high quality blog posts and articles are income-generating assets. And you should develop those assets by dedicating the same amount of resources you use to develop your other income-generating assets.

How? By thinking like a publisher. Your web site is not just a web site.  www.americanwidgets.com is just as much a publishing platform as www.wallstreetjournal.com.

You have the same capacity to publish massive amounts of quality material as any online newspaper or magazine. And you don’t need to pay for it with subscriptions or advertising revenue like they do.
But don’t just throw something together in five minutes and call it good because it’s optimized for search engines and mentions your company. Ask yourself seriously if anybody would actually want to read it. Is it good enough for Wired magazine? How about The New York Times? Is it at least good enough for a local newspaper or trade magazine? If not, your content will be ignored by readers accustomed to the higher-quality content they do find in the media business and on other company web sites.

The best way to produce content that’s good enough for online newspapers and magazines—in other words, content that’s good enough to engage, build and sustain an audience—is by hiring writers and editors with experience working for online newspapers and magazines.

Intel is doing it with its tech magazine, IQ by Intel. John Deere did it more than 100 years ago with its agriculture magazine, The Furrow, which is still delivered to more than 1.5 million subscribers. Saudi Aramco publishes Aramco World, a world class magazine about the people and cultures of the Middle East.

In his book, Epic Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi writes that his company, the Content Marketing Institute, taught a workshop for more than a dozen technology companies and found and that every single one of them “had an open position for an in-house journalist, managing editor, or content marketing director.” They didn’t reinvent the wheel. Most of them hired experienced media professionals with the proven ability to engage, build and sustain an audience.

And that’s what we’ve done here at reddbug.

The Humanity of Social Media

April 25, 2015: Facebook shared the news, while tweets delivered the message and photos revealed the devastation. The first of two deadly earthquakes hit Nepal.

Within minutes of the tragedy, social media proved its greatest quality, to empower and create a global community for good. Trending hashtags rose with #prayfornepal #nepal and #nepalearthquake. These messages of news, hope and sympathy motivated friends, family and followers to reach out and help.  From the NY Times, to sports heroes and even beloved bloggers, a global community ascended to support Nepal.

This is the power of social media.

Over a month has passed and the efforts to help Nepal are still in motion. Just this morning schools and organizations used social media to promote charity events dedicated to this cause. Often times we forget about the gravity of a disaster, when we live far from it, but social media aids all “sharers” to remember and keep the humanity within all of us alive.

Why Businesses Need Content Marketing

Marketing is not what is used to be. Your customers can fast-forward past the commercials using their Tivos. Newspapers don’t use the ad revenue model anymore because the Internet killed it. Commercial-free web and satellite radio are replacing the old channels.

Your customers are skipping past what you have to say, not so much because they aren’t interested in it (if they’re your loyal or potential customers, they very well might be) but because they’re jumping ahead to the content they know in advance that they want—the next episode of their favorite TV show, breaking news in their hometown or music on their customized radio stations.

So how do you get their attention? By producing content yourself that they want.

There is a time and place for direct marketing, but your owned media—your company web site, newsletter and social media channels—provide the best platform for indirect  marketing that isn’t pushy and doesn’t read like it was written by salespeople. This is your chance to engage your current and prospective customers in a casual way when their guard is down so you can earn their trust and loyalty.

You don’t have to rent the media space, but if you want to engage, build and sustain an audience you’ll need to move beyond advertising. Think of your owned media like a company magazine.

Intel went all in and created IQ by Intel. It’s not “like” a company magazine. It’s an actual technology magazine published by their marketing department and edited and written by journalists. And it’s not all about Intel. It’s about technology in general. Intel is only a piece of it. In 2014, the site attracted almost six million unique visitors.

All magazines have ads, so go ahead and include them, but a print “magazine” consisting of nothing else will get round-filed along with the rest of the junk mail, and an online equivalent will just be ignored. An effective SEO strategy will get you plenty of hits from Google and Bing, but if the page readers land on isn’t engaging, they’ll click the “back” button in seconds.

Producing rich content, however, can help you attract new customers and turn casual customers into loyal customers. It can and should be related to your business, but the purpose is to educate and perhaps entertain people so they can get to know you, trust you, and make better informed business decisions.

If you produce relevant and engaging content, readers will want more of it. They’ll subscribe to your newsletter and won’t flag your emails as spam. They’ll follow you on Facebook and Twitter and look forward to your upcoming blog posts. They’ll share your content with their friends and family. Your business will grow.

So how do you do it? Stay tuned to the Reddbug blog to find out.