Writing Archives | Jenuine Marketing

A bio written in the first person

I’ve been slowly making my way through Danielle LaPorte’s “The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms“. It’s a really thought-provoking book that begs to be read more than once, and it will definitely help kick your butt into action if you happen to need that sort of impetus, which a lot of us do. But there was one short nugget of advice, tucked away in the lower left-hand section of a page, that kept sticking with me.

It read: [blockquote cite=”Danielle LaPorte”]”For the love of God and the information highway, please write your bio in first person — we all know you wrote it anyway. One of the most highly trafficked pages on small business websites is the ‘About’ page. People are hiring you, paying attention to you, coming to see you. So they want to hear from. . . you.[/blockquote]

The idea kept eating away at me. It went against much of what I had learned in business school and throughout my career about presenting myself in a professional way, learning how to give a good handshake, wear a nice suit, and write a kick-ass bio that sounded like I had been interviewed by Canadian Business.

At first I thought, ‘no way could I ever write in the first person’. People would know that I am working on my own, that I don’t have a ‘team’ here in my home-based office, and they would be turned off by my utter lack of business decorum. But then I took a look at the About page of my website and realised that it was boring. Painstakingly boring, stuffy, and unoriginal.

Reading LaPort’e advice was liberating. It’s as if someone was suggesting, maybe even giving me permission, to drop the stuffy pretentiousness and just be me. What a refreshing concept. And also a bit scary. Because writing in the first person can be personal and open, but it can also feel vulnerable to put yourself out there.

I have always avoided the use of first-person pronouns such as “I” and “Me” in every piece of somewhat professional writing I had ever done. This includes everything from my website to my LinkedIn profile to my blog posts. But I was curious. I put my expert Googling skills to use, took a peak at what other people were doing… And you know what? There are lots of people out there who write in the first person. People who I respect, admire, and also would kind of like to emulate. So I took a deep breath, deleted all of the copy on my About page, and started typing.

It’s still a work-in-progress, but I’m proud of my website’s About page (https://jenuinemarketing.com/about/jen-hames/). I think that if you read it, you get a sense of who I am, what I’ve done, and where I’m going. After all, if you are interested in working with me, you should have an idea of how I operate, how I communicate, and what exactly you’re getting yourself into. You should know that I will send you emails full of exclamation points, use fun words like ‘awesome’, and tell you that you are amazing. And if that doesn’t work for you, that’s okay. You’re still amazing 🙂

[divider_advanced color=”#BC0070″ paddingTop=”6″ paddingBottom=”16″ thickness=”1″ width=”100%”] Interested in liberating your website’s “About” page? Please fill out the form on my “Contact” page and we can get started on sharing your own wonderful self with the world.

Just do it… Start generating content

Blog, How-To, Writing

Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/hussey

I always tell my clients that the hardest part of posting content on the web is getting over your personal hurdles, no matter what they may be. Things like, “I want my first Tweet to be perfect” or “I want to write the most interesting blog post anyone has ever read”. The problem is, these desires to be great and wonderful and perfect can actually become roadblocks that prevent you from getting anything at all done. For me, lately, the hurdle has been, “I want to wait until I have time to sit down, clear my desk, and get into a writing mode”.

Well, that never happens. Right now, I’m writing this surrounded by unfiled papers, with three different browser windows open with who-knows-how-many-tabs open in each browser, and I realised there is never the perfect time. There is never the perfect post. There is never the most interesting content ever written waiting to spring forth from your brain.

The point is, sometimes you need to seize on the moments you have and make them work for you. Dash off a blog post between meetings. Post an interesting thought on your Facebook page while you’re waiting in line for your morning coffee. Just start writing content. Some of will be good, some of it will be bad, and some of it will even be great.

So what are you waiting for? Go do it!

Writing for Web – Why are you writing a tome?

Blog, Writing

In case you didn’t know, a tome is a very large book, often part of a larger series of books. Exactly what a blog post should not be. And yet every day I see these huge long posts that make my brain want to crawl under a rock and take cover in the fetal position.

The problem is that writing for web is often much more challenging than people think. Because if you actually want people to read what you write (and isn’t that the point?), you need to optimize your content for online viewing. Here are some suggestions to bear in mind:

Use paragraphs. This helps to separate your content into different sections for each unique point or thought, and it also creates lovely white space on the page that is visually appealing to our eyes and brains, increasing the odds that your readers will read the entire post.
Be aware of ‘the fold’. When a person looks at their computer screen, whatever content is visible without needing to scroll down the page is referred to as “above the fold’. It makes sense to put your most engaging points at the top of your post, in order to draw your reader in and give them a reason to scroll down the page to read more.
Use the ‘thesis’ approach. In my university English class, we had to practice writing essays in the following format:
- Opening paragraph with a sentence about the topic, followed by the three to five points you want to explore.
- Three to five paragraphs about your topic, with one paragraph per point.
- Closing paragraph that reiterates the points explored and that summarizes your thoughts on the topic.
Use a list. See, I’m following my own advice already. It doesn’t matter if the list uses bullets or numbers; the point is that a list organizes your points in an efficient way and encourages you to write more succinctly.
Write succinctly. People read online content much differently than books or magazines. Generally speaking, your audience is probably looking to find information quickly. So help them out by writing short sentences, omit unnecessary adjectives, and strive to write good content with less words.
Consider splitting your post into a series. If your post is longer than one and a half pages in a Word document, I would recommend dividing your content into sections, and then posting each section as part of a larger series.

What suggestions do you have for writing online content?

Four online marketing lessons from David Ogilvy

Blog, How-To, Writing

Somewhere along my path to becoming a marketing consultant, an advertising executive gave me his copy of David Ogilvy’s “Ogilvy on Advertising”. Originally published in 1983, it was written well before the boom of online marketing and social media; however, Ogilvy was one smart cookie and his advice still rings true.

The first chapter alone has so many good nuggets of advice:

1. Do your homework
I know, no one likes doing research. But as Ogilvy puts it, “You don’t stand a tinker’s chance of producing successful advertising unless you start by doing your homework“. And this means studying the product, determining what kind of advertising your competitors have been doing (and with what level of success), and finally researching the consumers to find out what they think about the product, what language they use when they talk about it, and what promise would be most likely to make them buy the brand that you are marketing.

Lucky for us, the internet makes research quick, easy and inexpensive:
[blockquote align=”right” cite=”David Ogilvy”]You don’t stand a tinker’s chance of producing successful advertising unless you start by doing your homework.[/blockquote]

You can easily study the product and industry by a quick Google search
Determine related keywords by using Google AdWords: Keyword Tool
Set up Google Alerts to monitor new stories and blog posts about keywords related to your product and industry
Visit competitor websites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, blogs, etc. to learn about what your competitors are doing and how well they are engaging consumers
Use free services such as the “@ Connect” and search options on Twitter, the online application TweetDeck, or else a paid tool, of which there are many, to monitor conversations about your company and industry

2. Brand image
Ogilvy discusses the need to decide on an “image” for the brand your are marketing, and he defines image as “personality”. He tends to use a lot of cigarette and alcohol companies as examples (hey, it was the ’80’s), and talks about Jack Daniel’s whiskey to illustrate the idea of brand image/personality. As he puts it, most people don’t try different types of whiskey and then choose their favourite based on taste alone – they choose their favourite brand based on the image that most appeals to them.

So think about your favourite brands – what images do they project? Do Coke and Mountain Dew appeal to the same audience? What about Nike and lululemon?

Then decide what image should be associated with your brand (or define it, if it already exists). And make sure that the brand’s personality is consistent across all channels, including print advertising, online advertising, social media marketing, email signatures, voice mail messages, etc.

3. The positively good
“If you and your competitors all make excellent products, don’t try to imply that your product is better. Just say what’s good about your product – and do a clearer, more honest, more informative job of it“. In today’s crowded marketplace, this is extremely sage advice. Since you already did your homework and know what your competitors are saying (see number 1), go out there and do a better job than they do.

4. The lessons of direct response
One lesson in particular stands out to me as being relevant to online marketing. Ogilvy points out that most advertisers like to broadcast their commercials during prime time, but direct response advertisers have learned that they make more sales at night. Take a quick poll amongst your friends (or look at the time of their Facebook updates) and you’ll discover that a lot of people are online late at night and on the weekends. That might be a good time to update your Facebook page or publish a new blog post. Or perhaps your target audience are businesses, in which case you may want to experiment with sending your e-newsletter early in the morning, mid-week. There are lots of online resources out there that show when people tend to be online, so do some research. And remember to experiment by changing the day and time that you share online messaging – you may discover a pattern that is unique to your own company or brand.

And there you have it, online marketing lessons from Ogilvy. For someone who was born in 1911 and died in 1999, it’s amazing how his insights are still applicable. I only wonder what he would have thought about today’s marketing landscape?

The problem with quick and easy websites

Blog, How-To, Writing

The other day, I visited a client who runs her own photography business. She does amazing work and gets great referrals by word of mouth but is looking to increase her rankings for some very specific keywords.

So I took a look at her website and made up a few suggestions, based on two different options: stay with her current website or trash it and start again (my recommendation is to trash it, but probably not possible until after the busy wedding season is over).

The client is using photobiz, a company that offers quick and easy websites geared especially to photographers. Her website looks great, due in large part to her amazing photographs. But the problem with the website is that every page has the same URL address. I have seen this before with other website services such as wix.

The beauty of these programs is that someone who is not very knowledgeable about websites and HTML can create a great looking website in a very short amount of time, without having to pay lots of money to a website developer. The downside to quick websites is that these companies often charge an ongoing monthly fee, in addition to your hosting costs, and the websites are not set up in a very SEO-friendly manner.

After some digging, I discovered that my client is unable to create unique page URL’s or link to her blog (hosted by another company) or Facebook page from the home page. Both of these are really important to having a search engine-friendly page (in fact, the blog should actually use the same URL).

So before you take the quick and easy route, do some research. Type the name of the website you are considering into Google, followed by “review”, and read the positives AND negatives that people have said about the service. If you need a website right now, maybe it’s best to use a quick website set-up service. But if you have time, or if you’re considering changing your website, make a list of what’s important to you and then ask someone who specializes in SEO what would be important to them.

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