ProStylus: The Blog

Friday Link Love (already?)

Photo credit: Niffty

It’s been a challenging week, and I have the entire flat to myself tonight. And all that stands between me and the bottle of Tanqueray in my freezer is Friday Link Love post.

So, I’ll be brief…

Evidently, my post on ghost-blogging didn’t put the issue to rest for good and for all. It came up twice this week already.

First, on Wednesday, marketing communications pro, Mark Schaefer, tackles the issue with a man-on-the-street approach – only the street, in this case, is his blog. He asks “Can you out-source authenticity?” In fact, he asks a lot of questions in his post. And Mark wants answers. So, if you can read, go put in your two cents.

I’ve decided the ghost-blogging question has less to do with ethics as it does with effectiveness. I realized this while reading the post and comments under Jason Fall’s The Ethics, Or Lack Thereof, Of Ghost Blogging.

In essence, Jason writes at great length to clarify exactly what we mean by ghost-blogging versus ghost-writing until he concludes, in part, that ghost-writers aren’t wrong, ghostwriting is.

Before my pingback elicits a massive clarification from a purple-necked Jason, let me just say that I’m oversimplifying to the point of being flip and you should go read Jason’s whole post yourself. And don’t neglect the comments either, because there’s some good old Socratic dialectic going on there… Namely my trenchant conclusion that ghost-blogging is a symptom, not the disease. If a business feels it needs to hire a ghost-blogger to write for the CEO, it’s a good bet the blog (and business) lacks a clear marketing strategy.

See? You guys make me smarter.

The Nouriel Roubini of social media
Finally, while most of the Bloggerati were attending Social South today, David Spinks damn near stampeded the rest of the social media sphere by asking “Is This Social Media Bubble Deadly?”

What bubble, you ask? Read the comments to find out, and get a drink first because there’s a lot of them.

Friday Link Love

Photo credit: Nganguyen

There was a lot of good content on the blogosphere this week, and it was all I could do just to keep current on my reading. (Busy work week here.)

The news on newspapers
I managed some brief comments here and there, but the only post that still has me thinking was Leo Babauta’s “8 Valuable Lessons Newspapers Must Learn from Bloggers to Survive.” Part of the reason the post resonated with me was because I learned this week that our local paper now charges $250 for an obituary. Obits used to be a free service that newspapers provided – sort of like, you know, news.

Personally, I feel any newspaper that charges $250 to announce the death of a local loved one deserves whatever obsolescence is coming to it. It’s a parasitical business model. Blogs aren’t killing newspapers. Newspapers are killing newspapers.

Writing on writing
Other recommended reading includes Kickbutt Writing Skills Still One of the Most Effective Marketing Strategies, on Peter Bowerman’s seminal Well-Fed Writer Blog. The title is self-explanatory and if I had had more time, I might have argued that kickbutt self-marketing skills come before kickbutt writing skills – except I’m pretty sure Peter already knows that. Also, kickbutt writing gets you noticed only insomuch as an absence of mistakes gets you noticed. Good writing is really a sort of passive virtue compared to saving clients time, money and brain cells.

Blogging on blogging
Sonia Simone of Copyblogger.com offers some genuinely good reminders of bad blogging habits in The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging. One omission under Boorishness is abusing other bloggers for self-righteous criticism, like this new blogger did.

Conversation about conversation
And lastly, I’m am not a big fan of the celebrity interview – and Danny Brown is sort of a social media celebrity – but blogger Jay Baer does a pretty good Q&A that reveals, among other things, that Mr. Brown recommends spending 20% posting on your own blog and 80% commenting on others. Sounds like someone I know…

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.

New Feature: Friday Link Love

I’m still contemplating Part 2 of my series on legitimate ways to outsource content for corporate blogs. I’m probably over-thinking it. It’s a sticky issue, and… well, it’s a sticky issue, okay? I promise to work on it over the weekend.

For now, I’m launching a regular new feature on this blog, and it’s only slightly derivative. (Can I sell, or what? Yo…)

Every Friday, expect to find links to blogs or forums that inspired me to post a comment.

Photo credit: ArtemFinland

About a third to half of my “blogging” time goes to reading and commenting on some thirty blogs that I regularly scan. They run the gamut from marketing communications, social media, writing and lead generation, and they’re all excellent.

In fact, I’m constantly discovering valuable new bloggers to add to my Google Reader,  list every week. If you think I should be reading your blog, then add a link to your best or most recent post in the comments section. If you inspire me, maybe I’ll leave a comment on your blog – and not just the cursory “Hey, great post.”

I actually take time to compose my comments, and contribute something of value to the conversation. Commenting breeds reflection and, as a few of my past posts demonstrate, reflection on other blogs can generate interesting new threads to follow here.

The only downside is that none of the thoughtful stuff I participate in on other blogs appears here… until now.

Credit to Christine Hartter for her post about the importance – and difficulty – in keeping your blog and other social media channels current. This is the post that sparked the idea for Link Love.

John White took an interesting take on how to pitch social media to engineering companies. He gets extra points for patiently tolerating my insistent prodding, in the comments section.

Beth Harte has a knack for asking difficult questions, and sparking easy conversation on her blog The Harte of Marketing. This week her post entitled “How truly serious are you about being social?” raises that question in a hypothetical world where Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin (gasp) disappeared overnight. (Sounds like a Jerry Bruckheimer scenario to me.)

Beth also asked this week how to promote yourself to social media contacts without putting anyone off. That question was too big for me to tackle quickly. But it’s worth reading Beth’s post anyway.

Tom Martin got all meta-cognitive in a couple of posts this week, including the one I commented on: “What do you want from me?”

Corey Freeman is a 17-year-old entrepreneur and female freelance content writer and designer. More notably, girl can write. She asked this week how to decide if freelance writing is for you, and I answered.

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?

Why God Made Case Studies

In a recent post on Positive Disruption, blogger and marketing veteran Tom Martin wondered why prospective clients could intuit the benefits of social media as a marketing tool, and yet still demand some proof-of-concept before committing. An excerpt:

But alas… the lack of good case studies impedes the adoption of a [social media] strategy… People need proof in order to believe. Even God needed to show proof of his being, whether it was a burning bush, parting a sea or the ultimate case study, resurrection of his son from the dead.

…While we’d like to be able to just say something is so and have others agree, case studies are the currency of persuasion.”

Photo credit: Athena's Pix

Go read Tom’s post here, if you like. I’ll wait…

Tom is dead on. It’s a lot easier for clients to take a leap of faith (i.e. divert precious time, resources or money) when they know they’ll land on their feet.

Case studies testify to that. Written like a three-act play, they describe a problem, the solution you offered and the subsequent benefits enjoyed. By the last act, your prospective customer has real-world proof that a past client not only landed on their feet, but actually profited from putting faith in you.

The problem is the solution
The problem is that benefits don’t necessarily close the deal.

To take Tom’s theme one loaded step further, not even God could get people behind his program by simply promising its benefits – and nobody can sell the bennies like God.*

Many case studies (i.e. those written by less rigorous and talented freelance copywriters) make a similar mistake. They briefly identify the problem, briefly mention a product solution, and then spend reams of text describing the benefits. Benefits, the reasoning goes, resonate emotionally with customers. And that’s true.

The problem, in part, is that we’re not reasonable creatures. Prospective customers may indeed recognize the benefits of your solution. They may even trust you can deliver those benefits. But they’re only human, and humans don’t necessarily act in their own best interests. They balk, analyze, consider and reconsider their options no matter how attractive the promised benefits, or credible the source…

Irrational? Yes.

Wise? Also, yes.

Your customers should question how long and difficult an unfamiliar path will be before it delivers on the promised benefits. Some of God’s beta customers might have something to say about a forty-year desert sojourn that was not clearly disclosed in their contract to be the Chosen Ones bound for the Promised Land.

By the time God began preparing to update his book, The Testament, he realized he needed to invest less in selling benefits and more in educating people about the practical, progressive steps that would lead to those benefits. (How lucky for him he had a kick-ass marketing professional in the family who happened to know some crackerjack copywriters.)

Alright… dead horse… Let’s wrap up…

My point is this: Illustrating a clear path to benefits can be just as persuasive to customers as the promised benefits themselves.

Case studies can and should address the unconscious assumptions that lead the doubting Thomas’s to balk. They should illustrate how simple and painless your proposed path toward a better world can be. Some often forgotten questions include:

• How long before I can expect to see results?
• How much time and money can I expect to invest up front?
• What trade-offs or lessons learned, if any, have past customers encountered?
• What staffing resources will I need to divert before, during and after implementation?
• How much will implementation disrupt my day-to-day business operations?
• How well did the vendor anticipate and/or overcome unexpected challenges during past implementations?

These are legitimate concerns, and none of them have anything to do with the benefits your solution has provided in the past.

When case studies rush to describe benefits, they miss an important and often critical opportunity to sell a smooth implementation process – which, regardless of what you’re selling, contributes just as much to building trust in new business relationships.

*Opinions voiced here are not necessarily reflected, endorsed or even tolerated by Tom Martin, who is,  I’m sure, an altogether professional, decorous fellow who only occasionally uses salty content to illustrate a point.

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.

Freelancing Isn’t Free

It’s almost worth launching a blog just to post this video about client relationships. Hilarious.

For the record, none of my clients are anything like this… and there’s a reason why.