Specialist or Generalist? How to Choose the Freelance Path for You.

Photo Credit: piccadillywilson

Is it better to be a copywriting specialist or a generalist? Should you do one thing very well, or be a jack of all trades?

Today’s the day that all-around copywriter Peter Bowerman, and white paper expert Michael Stelzner will go head to head on that topic in an online debate.

I predict the debate will conclude that choosing to be a generalist or a specialist is a matter of personal preference. (If the conversation continues beyond that, I predict it’ll focus on how to pitch the path you’ve chosen.)

So, let me begin where I think today’s debate will end:

You choose your path, and then your marketing strategy, not the other way around.

Archilochus, the old soldier poet from ancient Greece once said:

“The fox knows many things, and the hedgehog knows one big thing. But they both gotta hustle if they expect breakfast.”

Okay, I may be paraphrasing that a bit. The point is you can choose to be a fox or a hedgehog, but without clients you can’t eat. Either way you go, you need to communicate what value your services return.

The hedgehog
A specialty makes it easier for prospective clients to find you – in fact, they’re already looking for you. They’ve already decided they need to outsource a white paper or case study. Or they need someone intimately familiar with their particular industry or market.

They’re not quibbling over whether they should hire a writer. They’re actively searching for the best writer in the niche.

The trade-off for specialists is often geographic. Although their target market is actively searching for their services, it’s a smaller market than what generalists enjoy. So, specialists need to build visibility and credibility where their market congregates.

Luckily every market congregates on the internet. So, pitching a specialty through SEO tools is an easy approach. Launching a blog is a little more challenging, but it builds credibility. Specialists reaching for the brass ring will find the time do speaking engagements, or publish a book on their area of expertise.

The fox
Generalists have to hustle more, a lot more. They can solve a wider range of copy-related problems, but fewer businesses are looking for them. So, raising visibility isn’t as critically important as building trust.

The hard reality generalists need to accept is the market doesn’t particularly value how well they write. Unemployed staff writers and journalists are flooding the freelance market. Meanwhile, websites like oDesk.com and Elance.com are awarding assignments to low bidding writers, and writing shops in Asia are underpricing even them.

The market perceives generalists as a commodity, and prices them accordingly.

So, generalists who hope to survive and thrive are wiser to avoid piecework, and instead build and maintain strong relationships. Finding sustainable work as a generalist is an inside job, gained by referrals from past clients and through word of mouth.

The majority of businesses out there don’t intuit the value of good copy, much less the value of outsourcing it to a freelancer. So generalists need to get close to their prospects and listen. They need to be able to identify business problems that good content can solve. They need to have a realistic idea of how better copy can solve it. And they must be able to make a compelling case for the value of their solution.

Freelancing is a business, and keeping a business is hard enough in a good economy. Whether you choose to be a fox or a hedgehog matters less than how intelligently you market what you do, and how passionate you are about what you write.

The Fearful Secret of Copywriting Success

Photo credit: bobster855

I owe my professional success, in part, to knowing which fights to pick. Picking this one may not represent my smartest play, but here I go…

Let me state up front that I have no professional or personal ax to grind with organizer Michael Stelzner, or the other copywriting luminaries putting their time, expertise and necks on the line at the Copywriting Success Summit 2009. I’ve actually purchased and read publications offered by several of the Summit’s speakers. I frequently read many of their blogs; and I’ve even exchanged friendly correspondence with a few.

Even so, this is one copywriter who won’t be shelling out the $297 early bird rate to hear any of them speak at the Summit.

A brief, but relevant digression
Social media guru Chris Brogan has taken hits lately for profiting off the professional network he took years to build with free content and advice. The profits in question stem, in part, from his publication of Trust Agents, a well-received New York Times bestseller about social media relationships.

For more on that debate, visit here and here. My take on the issue is very simple: The decision to put a price on content belongs solely to those who create it. The rest of us can vote with our wallets.

Which brings me back to the Copywriting Success Summit 2009, and why I won’t be attending…

Apologies in advance for pissing anyone off. I recognize I could just as easily cast a silent vote. But there’s a discussion worth having here about whether our profession benefits more from a communal or competitive model. Put another way, should our relationships with other freelancers be governed by capitalism or communism? (For the irony impaired: IRONY!)

I’ll be brutally honest with you. I tend to be a capitalist when I’m providing a service, and a communist (IRONY!) when I’m receiving one.

So, it’s more a reflection of me – not the Summit speakers – that when I read about these kinds of events and products, I find myself wondering whether their expertise reflects an ability to attract new clients, or extract money from new copywriters. Did success lead them to promote their methods, or did promotion of their methods lead to their success?

I digress. This isn’t about me, and it isn’t about them. It’s about all of us.

Here’s my question
What is gained and what is lost when we pay others for the secrets to their success?

Bob Bly, the Godfather of copywriting gurus, once said that tapping the proven methods of veteran copywriters can reduce your learning curve from 100 hours to 10 hours. I agree.

I still have dog-eared copies of Bob’s books, and others from Peter Bowerman and Michael Masterson on my shelf. They were constant references when I launched my freelance career nearly eight years ago. They provided some very sound advice, such as:

• Establish a niche for yourself. It’s easier to grasp the value of a specialist, than a generalist.
• Define your ideal client before getting started
• Demonstrate, rather than promote, your skill at writing persuasively
• Sell the benefits, not the features of your copywriting services
• Learn the comparative application and benefits of marketing tools – for example, email vs direct mail, blogging vs e-newsletters

All very good stuff and – another disclosure – some of these lessons came from online seminars similar to the upcoming Summit. I think it’s wise for budding copywriters to invest in materials and events that will help them cultivate expertise. I do.

But I also believe that there are certain traits to successful freelancers that, by definition, can’t be taught. These I rarely ever see the experts breathe a hint about. Among them:

• Enthusiasm bordering on a compulsive desire for the self-employed lifestyle. (Today’s enthusiasm becomes tomorrow’s hard-boiled commitment when business gets slow)
• Dogged – and I mean dogged persistence at marketing yourself. That includes building and sustaining a network of prospective clients
• A high pain threshold for risk, uncertainty and a sometimes fickle marketplace. It’s not personal, deal with it.
• A rock-solid perspective about when you’re beating yourself up, and when you’re letting yourself off the hook for mistakes
• Confidence – not cockiness – confidence that you know what constitutes good copy
• A self-sustaining and monstrous work ethic
• Attention to self-care: Your creative side is linked to your physical, mental and emotional health. Working on your writing means working on yourself
• Savings: There are no unemployment benefits for the self-employed. Debt and insolvency are not your friends, particularly when you’re sitting at the negotiating table
• And lastly, an ability to be in the right place at the right time (i.e. everywhere)

Just because these things can’t be taught doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be mentioned. Freelancing is not an easy business, and not everyone is cut out for it.

Maybe that’s my problem with seminars, kits and books that make success seem like it’s the product of a secret formula. These materials highlight the potential road to riches, and proven methods that have worked for others. But they don’t talk about the external risks, and they ignore internal factors.

They don’t tell me about me – my strengths, my weaknesses, which flaws I can correct and which I need to work around. This stuff gets brushed aside in the promotional materials because it doesn’t sell. There’s no profit in it.

And yet, I would argue that my second list of bullets plays a far greater role than the first in determining a freelancer’s long-term success.

Bottom line: I’m not out to take food off the plate of any expert who wants fair recompense for his or her expertise. But neither do I want to see the genuinely challenging path of freelance writing to be presented as a cakewalk – if you only know the secrets.

Here’s the fearful secret of copywriting success: Freelancing can be damned hard at times – anything worthwhile generally is.

So do we cultivate the next generation of freelancers by billing them for our hard-won expertise, or by freely sharing our experience and support through networks, blogs and mentorships?

What say you?

Legitimizing the Corporate Blog (and Ghost-Blogger)

Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital

Earlier, I defined corporate blogging as a new marketing medium that invites direct, authentic and personal interaction with the corporate authority. That definition places access as the central value of the corporate blog. If it was just about the posted content, then there’s nothing to distinguish a corporate blog from a press release.

Unfortunately, as a rule, CEO’s and their ilk have little time to compose thoughtful content – much less respond to comments – which invites the impulse to delegate. But delegation raises its own issues.

For one, the C-level blog loses marketing cache and credibility with each rung it descends down the ladder. Leveraging a ghost-writer, meanwhile, compromises the content’s authenticity, and undermines the ability to respond to comments.

So, by traditional standards, ghostwriters have no legitimate use on the corporate or company blog. At best, they make it an ineffective marketing platform, at worst… Well, just go here.

It would appear then that the corporate-level blog is doomed to failure, beset by the conflicting interests of credibility, legitimacy and the executive’s higher priorities. That prediction, however, is only half right…

The fact is, the corporate-level blog isn’t going anywhere. No need to go out on a limb to make the following three predictions:

1. There will continue to be the aberrant CEO or CTO who finds the time and voice to prove the C-level blog can be done effectively
2. This will encourage hundreds if not thousands of other corporate execs to launch me-too blogs that will remain largely unread, and lastly,
3. As long as there continues to be corporate blogs, there will continue to be corporate ghost-bloggers

In other words, corporate blogs built on C-Level vanity are doomed to mediocrity, then obscurity, and then failure.

I’ve always been fond of the quote, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” So, I’d like to propose a fourth possibility, one that could reinvent the corporate blog as a genuine marketing instrument that generates credibility, authority and a loyal readership. And, best of all, it enables content to be delegated freely and legitimately.

An immodest proposal
First, let’s discard the notion that a corporate blog must be written by a C-level blogger. Admittedly, the Corner Office can offer a unique perspective into the company, the brand and the industry in which it competes. Yet, this model really defines a celebrity blog, not a corporate blog. It’s personality driven.

One alternative is to pull focus on the CEO, and create a company blog. I view this as more of a B2C platform, however, since it’s generally aimed toward building community around a brand. Also, since brand management is better handled internally, the company blog falls outside my jurisdiction.

The third alternative – and the one which I aim to propose – is to pull focus even further, and launch an industry blog. Think of it as a self-interested, online industry trade magazine focused on larger trends within the company’s value chain, end-markets, IP, government involvement and/or global competition.

If this sounds more ambitious than a vanity blog, that’s because it is. I never said this marketing model would be easy, just credible, legitimate and logistically viable. Plus, done correctly, it can reap benefits unattainable through conventional marketing collateral. Consider:

Credibility and authority: As Forrester Research reported last year, people intrinsically distrust company blogs. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that’s because people distrust companies. Expanding the scope of your blog to the market in which you compete puts legitimate distance on the company agenda.

Influence: The goal isn’t to abandon the company agenda, but rather frame it against a larger context: namely what’s best for the market in which you compete. By creating a clearinghouse for information and perspective on industry trends, your blog can attract media as well as prospects, and establish you as the go-to authority for answers. No need to be totally objective. You’re entitled to a point of view, as long as you educate readers in the process.

Lead-gen via education: Social media in general, and blogs in particular are about attraction, not promotion. If done correctly, an industry blog can first attract and then educate prospective leads about an unfamiliar or complex technology. This is particularly effective for businesses fielding early technologies, such as advanced batteries, nanomaterials, smart grid technologies, video-over-IP or even social media.

An open channel: As an active player in the industry on which you blog, you’re entitled to occasionally use that blog as an open channel to broadcast corporate announcements. Standard rules apply: If you flood the channel with news only a CEO could love, then expect the Chief to remain your only loyal reader.

Delegation: Lastly, this new model of the corporate blog legitimizes delegation. But don’t be cavalier in your selection. This isn’t an intern position or piecework for a freelancer. Ideally, you’ll find a corporate strategist or consultant who can become thoroughly familiar with your company’s collective expertise and capabilities, as well as the issues and challenges confronting the industry at large.

Candidates should also know how to build and enforce an editorial policy to imbue the blog with a consistently representative point of view. This last skill is not only essential when deciding what issues to cover, and how to cover them. It will also be critical if, when and how the blog must address negative comments.

Overall, we’re talking ghost-blogger candidates with conventional editorial skills, which are in plentiful supply given the state of industry trade magazines these days.

Tell me what you think about this proposed model. Did I miss any benefits, or drawbacks? Do its benefits warrant a place among corporate strategy? Is it even a new idea? If not, I’d love to see some links to representative blogs in the comments section.

You Land Where You Look

Photo credit: ClickFlashPhotos

The following story ended up among my comments on Copyblogger this week. But I had originally intended to blog about it here. So, I’m reclaiming it.

It’s about my brother, and the last training jump he made during his distinguished career as a paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne Division.

Spoiler alert: He lands on an ambulance.

Clearly, he didn’t begin with that goal in mind. He made an orderly departure from the plane, deployed his chute and skillfully guided his descent toward the assigned landing zone.

A little to the side of the target area, however, this ambulance was parked as standard protocol, in case anyone landed poorly.

My brother later acknowledged he had a selection of safe landing spots on every side of the ambulance. But once he began drifting toward it, he began thinking to himself, “Don’t hit the ambulance. Don’t hit the ambulance…”

Then he hit the ambulance. Smacked into the back panels and kissed his knees hard. Fortunately, he escaped with only a few bruises and a deeply enriched sense of irony.

When I asked him later why he didn’t guide his descent elsewhere, he reflected that he simply went where he had focused his attention.

And therein lies the lesson for us all: Our focus tends to decide our actions (or lack thereof), and our actions tend to decide our destination.

The point here isn’t that we should be forever focused on a specific goal. It’s that we should occasionally detach from where we’re focusing long enough to ask, is that where I want to land? Am I focusing too much on a projected end-goal, rather than on the next necessary step… or vice versa? Are fear and anxiety distracting me from altering a potentially disastrous course?

The trick isn’t always to avoid the ambulance. It’s to replace the ambulance.

That’s an important message in a highly competitive economy where things appear to be moving much more quickly than they actually are.

Take a breath. Stop. Think. Refocus.

No Respect: The Freelance Writer and Social Media

The late, great Rodney Dangerfield

This is the first of a two-part post about the future of freelance copywriting in social media and relationship marketing. Part one, below, sets the stage by discussing how social media has introduced a completely new paradigm for content development. Part two will discuss what freelance copywriters can do to remain relevant in this emerging world.

I backed myself into this blog-off competition a while back. I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say that the host promised me and my competitors would deliver two weeks of “social media and marketing thought leadership.”

Normally, such hyperbole would have made me nervous. I could have expressed everything I knew about social media marketing, at the time, in 140 characters or less. I was so new to the game, I kept confusing Robert Scoble and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And there I was, preparing to post my first blog entries ever in public competition with strategic marketing professionals, SEO wizards and veteran bloggers.

Robert Scoble and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Regardless of my competitors’ superior knowledge, however, I felt they were at least competing on my turf: Content. I had the writing chops, I felt, and wasn’t that really what drove blog traffic?

So, yeah, I lost big time. Didn’t even place in the top half of the field.

Fortunately, I’d been competing to learn, not win. And I did learn, although everything I know about social media marketing still fits into 140 characters or less. Here it is:

Social media marketing qualifies as neither social nor marketing without three elements: Context, Content and Conversation.

As someone who butters his bread by generating business copy, I’d love to believe that Content is truly king. I recognize that businesses and brands that hope to make an impact must pay liege to the quality of their content. Strong copy equates with a strong presence in the market, and powerful influence.

But like the kings of old, Content is one step removed from the top of the divine hierarchy. Extending the feudal analogy a step, if Content is king, then Context is God.

Context determines Content. Anybody who graduated high school has at least an elemental grasp of this. It isn’t difficult stuff in principle (in practice, it’s another matter). Context simply comprises your

• Intended audience (e.g. customers, investors, employees, etc.)
• Intended goal (e.g. to educate or persuade) and its
• Intended format (e.g. brochure, web copy, annual report, etc.)

Businesses who underthink context invariably miss their target audience (or worse), and instead generate content that only a C-level suit could possibly love. (I’m looking at you Dan Hesse)

The second kingdom
But social media has introduced a sort of second, coexistant kingdom, Where traditional static marketing collateral depends on Content, social media marketing thrives on Conversation. I’m talking specifically about executive blogging and microblogging (i.e. Twitter).

Social Media: The Second Kingdom

Many businesses don’t see the benefits of conversing about their brand with customers, and I’m not going to go into that here. But I’d like to point out three reasons why this defining element of social media marketing might intimidate C-level executives and their PR handlers:

• Logistical concerns: Who has time to engage customers on a regular basis when there’s a corporate ship to steer?
• Strategic concerns: Relationship marketing, by definition, means loosening that iron grip on the corporate message, which contradicts the instincts of the corner office and PR pros alike.
• Personality concerns: Let’s face it, some qualities that make for a good corporate officer – like cut-throat aggression, single-minded ambition and intolerance for whiners – will not translate smoothly in active public discourse.

Let’s put those bullets in simpler terms. Executives are reluctant to engage in social media because it requires their time, creativity and commitment. In other words, social media asks them to provide something that they normally pay other people to do… people like freelance writers.

The value of a freelance writer isn’t in providing a skill that everyone learned in high school. Writing is simply a feature. The benefits are time (e.g. increased productivity), creativity and commitment (e.g. reliability to standards and deadlines).

So, you would think copywriters would be in increasing demand as social media marketing expands its role. And they are. New opportunities from corporate blogs to ghost-tweeters have slowly begun to emerge.

Therein lies the problem. The whole value of corporate blogging revolves around the first principle of relationship marketing: direct communication with the top dog. Implicit in this is the notion that the corporate blog reflects the corporate executive’s own thoughts, in his/her own words. The same applies to their responses in the comment section, only more so.

Hiring someone to handle the corporate blog raises issues of authenticity, as Beth Harte recently pointed out on her excellent blog, The Harte of Marketing.

Her post specifically addressed the lack of authenticity in the context of public relations. But this paragraph jumped out at me:

I don’t know about you, but these days when I read an article, a tweet, or a blog post I want to know that the person’s name on the article is the person who actually wrote it…  And if I find out that Jane Doe at an agency really wrote it, well all credibility is gone in an instant.

That resonated with me because ghostwriting is a service that’s buttered a lot of bread indeed for me. My first two years as a freelance business writer were spent ghostwriting trade articles and white papers for the companies I once covered as a journalist.

I don’t agree with Ms. Harte’s assertion that those contributions made my clients inauthentic. Mostly, I contributed my time and my personal knowledge of what would appeal to editors. I couldn’t possibly affect the Context of these articles, and in terms of Content, I limited my role to converting highly technical and disorganized material into polished syntax.

Blogging is a different medium, however, and authenticity is valued at a higher premium. Content isn’t an end here, it’s a beginning. It sparks conversation. Conversation sparks relationships. Relationships spark customers, then advocates – or so the thinking goes.

If the first link of the chain flows from a hired mouthpiece, then what value do the subsequent relationships lose?

I have some ideas of my own, and will address them in a future post. But I invite you to respond to that question, and whether there’s a work-around for executives and the people who make them look good on paper.

Are You Organized or Anesthetized?

There are two kinds of people on this planet:

Photo credit: Ross Angus

1. Those who organize themselves with a To Do list, and
2. Those who distract themselves with a To Do list

(And, no, I’m not forgetting people who navigate their day without making any lists at all… I’m ignoring them.)

Ignoring things – particularly difficult tasks – is one of my many useless skills, like being able to wiggle my scalp without touching it (A talent I evidently share only with Billy Tyler from the eighth grade.)

Distracting myself is a marginally more functional, if not useful skill than wiggling my scalp. Why? Because they carry collateral benefits.

For example, you can tell weeks when I have a particularly challenging writing assignment because the dishes are washed and stacked, the bathroom is scrubbed, the laundry is washed and folded, the beds are made and the flat is vacuumed…

And the vacuum bag is changed out…

And old bag is carried out with the trash…

Some of my busiest weeks occur when I’m explicitly not doing something, like staring at the blank page that every writing assignment begins with.

Like many people, I list important goals for the week, and some of those goals can be pretty daunting. The problem is that lists – my lists, anyway – can become rote. Every week has its invoices, its client prospecting tasks, its blog posts. But if that’s all that makes my list, chances are I’m focusing on the trees, rather than the forest – and that’s the surest path to professional mediocrity.

I wonder how many of us confuse maintaining our jobs with advancing our careers. How many fail to set time aside to examine long term goals, dream big, or maybe chart a path to that project we’ll start whenever things “calm down” a bit? How often do we stop to wonder why we’re always running, and never getting closer to our lifelong goals?

This blog was, for many months, too daunting a task to ever land on my To Do lists. Now that I’ve launched it, however, I’ve become dimly aware that I’m putting off even bigger challenges. Things like developing and adding registered content to my website. Or launching a direct mail or email campaign to help build my business. Or maybe actually drafting a kick-ass creative essay just to remind myself that I can, and then pitching it somewhere.

The trick, of course, isn’t to simply add “write essay” to my list. It’s too big. No, the trick is to list small and innocuous steps, like carrying around a notebook to start collecting ideas when they occur. Next week, I might plan to sift through those ideas to search for themes… and so on.

I’m convinced I’m not alone here. Most people, I think, have some higher goal or project that they think about – or maybe even talk about occasionally. Why not add a small step toward that goal to your To Do list RIGHT NOW?

Are You Planting? Or Just Digging a Hole?

Those of us who write for a living like to be paid for our talents. Is it counter-intuitive then for professional writers to launch a blog that could drive prospective clients away, and never return a dime for the trouble?

Photo credit: foxtongue

Jeffrey Seglin evidently thinks so. Mr. Seglin writes a weekly column on ethics for The New York Times entitled The Right Thing. He also maintains a blog, entitled Observations, that’s associated with his column. As Seglin closes one recent blog post:

“But if you’re going to… write something for free, then make sure that whoever reads it can’t tell the difference between it and the stuff for which you got paid.”

Bravo. Couldn’t agree more.

Being a writer can be a little like being a celebrity. People love to catch you in mid-stumble. Maybe I’ve got a little of that too because, while Seglin’s blog post includes several statements that I fully endorse, like the one above, the entire piece somehow manages to fall one spell-check short of bass-ackwards.

Seglin’s post makes two assertions. First, he proposes that writing for free is a bad idea because it can breed bad habits. This implies a sort of buddy ethic, wherein writers can’t be trusted on their own, and need the constant supervision of an editor lest they damage their careers.

The risk in launching a no-income blog to showcase your work, says Mr. Seglin, is that some editor might actually read it and – gasp – find you’re a lazy writer, or that you lack talent. (Right. Best not to tip your hand until after you’re hired.)

But Mr. Seglin follows this cautionary bit of advice with an even more dire warning. He writes:

“Your work has value. If you start giving it away for free, then it diminishes that value and makes it harder for others to charge for their work as well.”

So… writing for free not only breeds bad writing, it breeds bad writing with the power to threaten the job security of competent writers, like say, NYT columnists.

Stating that blogging devalues writing is like saying Flickr devalues photography. It’s an apples to aardvarks comparison. The professional business copy I get paid handsomely to write does not serve the same function – and is therefore valued by an entirely different measure – as what a blogger writes.

Seglin flippantly dismisses any and all possible counter-arguments with the magical words: “Forget all the talk about ‘new revenue models.’”

Okay, but what about the old revenue models? Like, for example, marketing your talents by putting them on display? Or committing to a regular blog to distinguish your established freelance business from the million or so freelancing-until-my-next-real-job dilettantes out there?

According to Seglin’s model, my local baker devalues muffins worldwide by putting pre-baked samples on display. Forget those new revenue models though. Instead, he should stand idly behind his empty countertop until you sign a purchase order for his muffin-creation services.

Yes, I’m being glib. But, at least my logic is sound.

Look, as a professional writer, I aim to compose everything – from formal client proposals to Linkedin Q&A’s – so that it reflects the same standards that I apply to my paid work.

Does any of this generate a dime for me? No, not directly.

Should prospective clients ignore my writing services if I can’t compose my simplest communications articulately and well? Yes.

I launched this blog with the express intent to demonstrate just how readable my writing is. But it’s also intended to provide a signal to prospective clients that I actually study my craft, and work constantly to improve it BEFORE they ever hire me.

Mr. Seglin says my free content devalues his paid writing… I sincerely hope it does. Perhaps The New York Times will recognize talent when they see it.