Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Despite being a child of the 60s and 70s, I didn’t read Saul Alinsky until recently. I did so after several pundits (Salon.com, New York Times, Politico.com) suggested that the Alinsky, so vilified these days by Republican presidential candidates, provides a playbook for the tea party. (Interesting observation, that.)

So I read “Rules for Radicals.” Alinsky spends the first third of the book establishing his philosophical principles. The final third is all about his legendary community organizing tactics. Unfortunately there is no middle third. We know that Alinsky’s acolytes sought racial and economic justice for those denied it, but Alinsky only hints at who organized and funded them and what their strategies were.

But this is a blog about communicating and what I took to heart was Alinsky’s demand that people not shy away from simple words with big meanings; that they not dissemble but say what they mean.

“It is not just that, in communication as in thought, we must ever strive toward simplicity… It is more than that: it is a determination not to detour around reality,” Alinsky said. “To pander to those who have no stomach for straight language, and insist upon bland, non-controversial sauces, is a waste of time.”

Alinsky’s best example was the word power.

“Striving to avoid the force, vigor and simplicity of the word ‘power,’ we soon become averse to thinking in vigorous, simple, honest terms,” he said.

Words have power and there can be no substitute for the right word. So, inspired by “Rules for Radicals,” here are five “Rules for Writers.”

1.  Write in an active voice. Regular readers know how I’ve railed against passive writing, most recently here. The active voice forces you and others to be accountable for you actions.
2.  Spend the time to write tight. Clients sometimes think that, because they want me to write something short, it should take less time. On the contrary: Writing shorter is harder, because it forces you to examine every word. With fewer words, each one must be specific.
3.  Use strong verbs and don’t let vague qualifiers (“probably,” “maybe,” “often”) turn your intentions into meaningless mush.
4.  Count syllables. Prefer the words you learned in middle school over the ones you learned in grad school.
5.  Avoid jargon. People have used certain business-y words so much that they’ve lost their meaning. Really, what does “world class” mean? Can you prove that your product has fewer flaws than any of its competitors anywhere on the planet? Then say THAT. If you respond every tech support call within four minutes, say so; don’t just say your tech support is “robust.”

In a recent episode of the HBO series “Game of Thrones,” Queen Cersei threatened one of her minions by showing how arbitrarily she could order his death. “Power is power,” she said.

Words are power, too. Keep them as sharp as a knight’s sword.

This article by Copyblogger founder Brian Clark use the influence of social media to demonstrate how to frame a message to change group behavior. It shows that the language you choose can actually make people do more of the bad thing that you don’t want them to do.

“You want the momentum of social proof aligned with where you want to go, not with where things are,” Clark said.

The National Park Service experimented with signage to stop theft of petrified wood scraps in the Petrified Forest park in Arizona. This message — “Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time” – reminded visitors that “everybody does it.” This message – “Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest” – resulted in fewer thefts.

So what did I do? I took one of their examples and shared it on Facebook like this: “Researching an article on social media, I stumbled across this fact: Four years ago, 22 million single women did not vote. To my young, single female friends: Your rights as a woman — rights my generation battled for and won 40 years ago — are under siege. Go to the polls in November and support the candidates who commit to protecting your freedom and health.”

D’oh! In that post, I reminded my single female friends that it’s a hassle to vote and maybe can’t change anything. I should have left out the statistic and just posted the last two sentences.

Here’s a quick list of some handy tools and websites I’ve stumbled across lately.

• Microsoft has developed a sensational tool for creating panoramic photos. I can’t wait to use it! Learn more about it here.
• This website will proofread your documents for you.
• Torn  between two lovers? Feeling like a fool? Let Simon Decide and Lifehacker offer two options for better decision making.
• Hashtag? Meme? Reddit? WTF? Go to this site for a glossary of social media terms.

I’ve considered writing about this subject for some time. What pushed me over the edge was seeing Powerpoint presentations in which small blocks of copy whose left-and-right justified margins made them nearly indecipherable.

I know, it’s so tempting to click that  button. It makes everything neat and square. It feels like you’ve actually DONE something to your copy, instead of taking the path of least resistance and letting that raggedly old right margin hang out there all untidy.

Graphic designers may use fully justified copy for aesthetic reasons. (They’re professional drivers on a closed course. Don’t try this at home.)  As you’ll read here, justification can work in documents with lines of copy longer than 40 characters, but this site and others advise you not to justify copy on the Web. I’ll go a step further and encourage you not to do it anywhere.

In left-justified copy, the ragged right edge gives the reader subtle clues about what’s ahead. It reduces hyphenation. Like Raylen Givens, the lead character in the TV series, it has a certain spontaneity that is altogether likable.

This just in via LinkedIn and the Ragan’s PR Daily blog:  The AP Stylebook says that writers should not double space after a period. Good thing I was sitting down, because I felt a ripple in the time-space continuum when I read that.

 I recently judged marketing materials – print and digital — in a Michigan Economic Developers Association competition.  They encouraged the panel of judges to provide constructive comments.  Following are my most frequent suggestions for print publications:

•  Spend money on a good graphic designer
• Focus; be strategic.  A document that strives to be all things to all people is frequently nothing to anyone.
• Have a professional edit your copy.  (There are rules about capitalization.  Obey them.)
• Use testimonials
• Use a couple of strong photos instead of a lot of little ones and use pictures of people.
• Show your character.  Don’t be afraid to be colorful or quirky.

Two economic development websites caught my eye.  The top-level navigation on the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation’s site is designed to speak to their likeliest or most desirable customers.  On each of those main pages, the right-hand navigation is customized to that subject.

I know that the Eastpointe DDA didn’t go through an extensive or expensive branding process, yet its website looks like what Eastpointe IS.  The site is rich in social media, even Foursquare and Gowalla, and makes clever use of free web technologies, like a customized Google map.

On this site and elsewhere I have recommended a blog/enewsletter combination as a good marketing tool for businesses that sell expertise; sell products that are enhanced by knowledge, or have prospects who aren’t necessarily going to make an immediate purchase.

All these businesses benefit when they share information; that is, share enough information to demonstrate their knowledge and provide some real value to the reader but, of course, not enough to give away the store.

To succeed, though, someone has to want to write, to share information, to engage in a dialog with the readers.  The question I ask my clients is this: Are you curious?  Do you read your industry’s publications?  Do you read a daily newspaper or a general business magazine?

Better yet, this article offers 20 questions you should answer before you initiate a blog.  Here are three good ones:

•  What are your objectives?
• How will you link it to social media?
• How will you know it’s working?

A journalist acquaintance described her first reporting job, in the newsroom of a small daily paper with a curmudgeonly, old-school editor.  She turned in a story to him and he called her over to his desk.

“See this exclamation point?”  he growled, pointing at her copy.  “You only get three of these.  Ever.  In your career.  Are you sure you want to use it here?”

Because emails are brief, they risk also seeming brusque.  Thus, while you won’t see exclamation points in my news releases, I use them often in email. They’re a cheery signal of my benign intentions.

Honest to Pete, three days after I wrote and posted this item, the New York Times weighed in on this subject.  Their article quoted Will Schwalbe, co-author of the book “Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better,” who said, “E-mail has such a flattening effect:  it’s toneless and affectless.  The exclamation point is the quickest and easiest way to kick things up a notch, but not if you’re angry.  Only happy exclamation points.”

Have a nice day!

When I decided to write an article about how I don’t like those three word taglines I figured I’d be better off if I buttressed my opinion with those of others so I did a Google search for “three word tagline.”  Well.  I seem to have touched a nerve here.

April Dunford at Rocket Watcher says they often do not say why your company is different from (better than) the others. “Your competitors can probably claim to be just as ‘innovative’ or ‘advanced’ as you are,” she said.  Most such taglines just come off as bragging, Dunford said.

“Simplistic. Awkward. Ineffective,” says Tate Linden at Associations Now.  So many people use this marketing device that the words have lost their meaning.  Several other bloggers also linked to Linden’s content.

And then I found this satire by 37signals.com, which is so dead-on that, for a moment, I thought they were serious.  Most of the links on the final page of this 1999 site are broken and the first one is now a porn site, but “The Buzz Saw” and “Web economy bullshit generator” are funny.

Client Harvey Ovshinsky of HKO Media and I tag-teamed in this article for Ann Arbor’s NEW, a nonprofit whose mission is to help nonprofits succeed by strengthening nonprofit management and offering solutions to issues facing our nonprofit community.