VOLUME 16, ISSUE 10 – OCTOBER 2017
THIS MONTH’S MENU:
I. APPETIZER: DO YOU LEARN FROM BILLBOARDS?
Yours Truly Sees BB’s as Wonderful “While-You-Drive” Teaching Tools
II. “FIELD” GREENS: ARE YOU “SANDWICHING” YOUR BAD NEWS?
Writing/Marketing Pro Offers Up Proven Strategy for Having Criticism Be Heard
III. MAIN “MEAT” COURSE: A PAINLESS PRODUCTIVITY BOOST?
CA SEO Writer Reaps Rewards (& Better Sleep!) from User-Friendly System
IV. DESSERT: SWEET SUCCESS STORIES & TIPS
NYC FLCW’s Great Writing Impresses a Story Source, Lands Steady Client!
TIP:Yours Truly Serves Up a Kinder, Gentler Approach to One’s “To-Do” List!
I. APPETIZER: DO YOU LEARN FROM BILLBOARDS?
Yours Truly Sees BB’s as Wonderful “While-You-Drive” Teaching Tools
I love billboards. Let me rephrase that. I don’t love the visual blight they wreak on our highways, but heck, most highways aren’t paragons of natural beauty anyway.
What I meant was I love how they’re, arguably, the ultimate test of a writer’s ability to craft effective communications. Because your audience is in motion and otherwise engaged (or better be, if they want to “arrive alive”), a billboard has to be clear, brief, to the point and able to communicate to the seriously distracted.
Of course, they rarely are. Too often, they try to say too much, accomplish too much, get too detailed, cover too many points, be too clever, and generally assume a much less divided attention. As such, they’re absolutely worth studying.
Assuming you’re moving briskly down the road when you encounter one, note which ones are lost on you and which ones you “get.” And then later, perhaps, when you’re passing that way again, and not moving very fast, you can figure out why some fall flat and others are so effective.
The lessons you pick up from those observations are easily transferable to most other kinds of marketing writing:
- The importance of brevity
- Talking about things that matter to your reader
- Focusing on benefits, not features
- Highlighting what you do better than the competition
- Not assuming much on the part of your reader; and more.
And every now and then, you find one that’s fun and really works. Came across one on a drive up north this summer. This link should take you to an image that scrolls through several tag lines for the same basic “look”—all in the “Hi, I’m Bill Board” theme.
The one I saw was a static billboard (as opposed to a dynamic digital one), with the tag, “I work evenings and weekends.”
Part of me thinks it’s almost too clever for such an “immediate” medium as this (given that it took me a few seconds to get it…), but it gets so many things right: It’s visually compelling and appealing, it’s brief, and it limits what you have to “figure out” to one short line—a very wise strategy in this realm.
Plus, it was an award-winner (though, in the incestuous and self-congratulatory ad world, that’s not always proof of effectiveness…).
So, now you can be honing your craft while you’re out and about. On that “continuing-ed” note, let’s eat!
II. “FIELD” GREENS: ARE YOU “SANDWICHING” YOUR BAD NEWS?
Writing/Marketing Pro Offers Up Proven Strategy for Having Criticism Be Heard
Got this great Marketing Minute (7/5/17) from Marcia Yudkin. I love Marcia’s no-nonsense, practical insights on a wide array of marketing topics. The power of this one is the structural template she offers for delivering bad news or criticism in any professional or personal setting (i.e., you don’t have to think about how you’ll go about it). Thanks, Marcia!
If I had to single out the best communication tip I ever ran across, it would be the “Sandwich Technique,” learned from Boston-based speaking coach Laurie Schloff more than 25 years ago. I use it at least once a week—not only with clients and business contacts, but also with my relatives.
When you have something negative to communicate, you make it more palatable by placing it between two nice comments. Begin with something complimentary. Then deliver your critical message. End with something positive or conciliatory.
The angrier you are or the more you think the other person is being idiotic, the more helpful and constructive this strategy ends up being. Why?
Because when you need to come up with two nice things to say, you’re nudged to imagine the situation from the other person’s point of view, which in turn helps you state your original point less aggressively.
And with your complaint or contentious comment sandwiched between pleasantries, the other party becomes more receptive to what you’re trying to get across—with much better results than if you baldly stated what you were thinking.
III. MAIN “MEAT” COURSE: A PAINLESS PRODUCTIVITY BOOST?
CA SEO Writer Reaps Rewards (& Better Sleep!) from User-Friendly System
Interesting piece from SEO writing pro Katherine Andes on how she permanently cleaned up her desk AND is getting more done with less stress. “Not another productivity system!” you wail. Well, this one seems pretty doable. Thanks, Katherine!
My desk has stayed clean now for five months. It used to stay clean for maybe five hours if I was lucky. What happened? Last year, I started productivity guru David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system.
What’s GTD, in a nutshell? Creating a series of lists made up primarily of “next actions” and projects with the idea being to get EVERYTHING, personal and professional, out of your mind and onto a particular list that’s regularly reviewed.
GTD takes all your projects and to-do’s clamoring for attention in your mind, and breaks them down into “next actions” that you put mostly on a series of lists. It’s hard to imagine a system of lists being so revolutionary, but it is. And it wasn’t easy to set up.
It took me several days, all the while wondering if it would really work. It has. And, it’s easy to work and easy to maintain. If I get out of the routine for a few days, it’s surprisingly easy to get back into it.
In fact, it was so easy, I was suspicious. I thought maybe I was just being efficient on my own and it wasn’t the system. Then recently, the system was tested.
A health-related call from my daughter at college had me hit the road to visit her, suitcase and laptop in tow. She turned out to be fine, but I decided to stay for the weekend. After that four-day trip, I was dreading going home.
In the past, even a two-day, well-prepared-for trip left me with horrendous job of “catch-up.” Given this trip wasn’t planned, I figured it’d be far worse. When I got home and began my next workday, I went through my lists and figured out what I had to do.
The morning was busy but not so bad. I scheduled an impromptu, three-hour, out-of-town lunch with a business associate, yet still got a lot done in the afternoon and early evening.
The rest of the week was filled with various schedule-killers like hair appointments, but I got all my work done and more. That’s never happened before. Usually, it takes me a week to catch up!
The beauty of the GTD system is that it’s not rigid, but rather, intuitive, and hence, livable. I’m not only getting more done, but doing it with a lot less stress. And because things are not “on my mind” anymore, I’m sleeping a lot better, too.
Allen says it takes about a year of working GTD to really get soaring. I can’t wait. Learn more by watching this 45-minute video at a corporate Google seminar. And let me know if you jump on the GTD bandwagon.
PB NOTE: When I contacted Katherine to get her OK to run this, she said it’d been years since she wrote that piece, but added, “I still do the GTD system. And it still works!”
IV. DESSERT: SWEET SUCCESS STORIES & TIPS
NYC FLCW’s Great Writing Impresses a Story Source, Lands Steady Client!
TIP: Yours Truly Serves Up a Kinder, Gentler Approach to One’s “To-Do” List!
Got this cool success story from New York City FLCW Alison Rodriguez. I love how one thing led to another and yet another, but all starting with her proactivity. Great lesson and good for you, Alison!
After that, a simple little Jedi-mind trick (sort of) to help you get more done—without the regular beatings we will often mete out to ourselves for inaction!
I’m a freelance writer in NYC. A huge part of my hesitation to start writing came from the idea that writers were poor; I never thought it would be possible to make a living (and a good one!) writing, until I read your book.
I started cold-emailing prospective clients and landed a few. One of my clients wanted neighborhood stories with useful life information, so I reached out to a dog walker to see if I could feature them. Both would then share the write-up through social media.
The dog walker ended up loving my write-up on him and his advice so much that he reached out not too long after to see if I was taking on clients. Surprise! I was 🙂 He has ended up being one of my larger clients because of all the additional content he wants rewritten, in addition to a monthly retainer for his blogs/social media.
This wasn’t a referral. It was me finding him through Yelp since he was so well reviewed and had a strong social media presence.
And since it worked out so well, I now always check to see if future prospective interviewees have a blog and how updated it is (not that I’ll skip them if their blog is updated regularly). My dog walker ended up being low-hanging and very sweet fruit indeed.
Is this you? (I know it’s been me…): Too much of our self-talk around building our commercial-writing practices takes the form of what “I need/should/must/have to do,” or else be a slacker/loser/slug, etc. Sound familiar?
Now, I’m no head-in-the-clouds dreamer, who thinks businesses of any sort build themselves, in the absence of some pretty proactive “off-your-butt-getting” activities. Getting any business to a profitable stage takes a TON of work.
But, how one views that laundry list of required activities can make a big difference in how—or if—they get done. And one small shift in the language you use with yourself in considering all those activities can be pretty effective.
Instead of all the mandatory/required/compulsory verbiage, why not, instead, think in terms of, “What’s possible? What could I do to build my business today?”
Small shift, but when I use that sort of verbiage, it frames the activity quite differently: Instead of an opening to self-flagellation if I don’t do it, it’s just something I could take on today to move my business forward. And that’s far more inspirational.
I don’t focus on what happens (or what kind of person I am) if I don’t do something. Rather, I think about how I’ll feel if I do—and the results I’ll reap.
We’re all human, and there’s a healthy lazy streak in all of us. So why not talk to that lazy side in language it might just respond to? More to the point, has using “beating-yourself-up” language ever been terribly motivating?