Global Copywriting Blog

Mining Giant Turns to Content Marketing to Attract Quality Candidates

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:40:00 -0800

Have you heard about the skill shortage in the resource industry? Regardless of where you live, nearly every country with natural resources is battling to find skilled professionals to fill the roles. Australia, Canada, South Africa and many more countries are courting a small, transient, global workforce of engineers, geologists and metallurgists to keep their mining, oil and gas, and energy operations running. What can these major corporations do to secure the right talent? If you’re Rio Tinto, you turn to content marketing.

Mine for the Future
Late last year I predicted interactive content would be a big player in 2012. I was impressed to learn the Australian office of Rio Tinto is using interactive content to set themselves apart from the many other companies competing for the same talent pool. The ‘Mine for the Future’ initiative is designed to attract candidates into the autonomous haulage project – Rio’s world-first technology using driverless trucks and trains in their Western Australia mines.

Multiple types of content
Mine for the Future uses an interactive globe containing an images gallery, video, a game and a jobs board. Visitors to the site manipulate windows on the globe to enter different regions of the site. The highlight of the content is the Truck Controller game. Designed to pull people onto the site, the game encourages repeat visits by running a leader board. Perhaps more enticing, jobs for the Mine of the Future project are posted on the site. I’m not a miner but I would think this approach is a lot more attractive to qualified candidates than dealing with headhunters and recruiters.

New approach for a new market
So are a game and a jobs board enough to attract the right people? According to the Careers and Industry Guide, it seems so.

“Intent on revolutionising the future of mining, Rio is also looking for a new kind of employee wanting jobs in mining. If you’re energetic, switched-on, and ready to tackle world-first technology, they want to know about you."

Tackling the skill shortage with better content
I love what Rio has done with Mine for the Future. Recognising the need to differentiate themselves in the marketplace, they’ve developed content to drive their recruitment campaign and find employees they may not have considered previously. Nothing can be done to quickly alleviate a challenging labour market. A diverse suite of content designed to hook people into coming back over and over again is going to give them competitive advantage over traditional methods of recruiting.

Have you played the Truck Controller game?

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Why the World Needs More Missionaries

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:18:00 -0800

Have you read the Steve Jobs biography? I only ask because I’ve pretty much been banned from speaking about it at home. It’s getting that way at work, too, except one of my colleagues is just as fascinated with the book as I am. One reason I like the book is because it defines visionary and I’ve been desperate for someone to do that. Here’s why.

I’ve written before about gobbledygook, the irritating habit of marketers to describe everything the same way using the same tired words. Small business owners are particularly guilty of this although plenty of large organizations with big budgets for copywriting do it too. It’s that word ‘visionary’ that drives me ‘round the bend every time.

What is a visionary?
Getting back to my new favourite subject, the Jobs book gives an in-depth look at what it means to be a visionary. Steve Jobs was a difficult man driven by a clear vision of how he thought the world should look. He didn’t buck trends; he created whole new markets. He obsessed. He was a bully and completely unlikable. He left a wake of human relations disasters, both professionally and personally. Realistically, he’s not the kind of guy you would want on your team. In the brief time he did hold a job, he was made to work alone on the night shift because he was impossible to be around.

Don’t you mean missionary?
Compare that behavior to what you do. I see so many B2B companies sell themselves as visionaries. It’s even more common with consultants. Copywriters and marketers are not immune to the visionary boast. When you’re selling your services, aren’t you really agreeing to help people find their way? Don’t you help businesses achieve their goals, meet their targets and improve their earnings? Aren’t you mapping out short-term and long-term strategies? What about providing services or products to assist in all of these goals? That’s what you’re doing, right? It sounds an awful lot like missionary work to me.

Trust me on this
Think about the power of presenting yourself to the market as a missionary. What could be more appealing than knowing your service providers and vendors are on a mission to help you succeed? Personally, I don’t want a visionary on my team. Yes, I want bright, creative, thoughtful people to help me. I don’t want an autocratic, inflexible tyrant. If I could eliminate one word from the marketing jargon of the world it would be visionary. I’ve done my level best with my own clients but plenty of people don’t want to hear it. Steve Jobs was a visionary. You’re not.

Am I right about this missionary thing?

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Manual Intervention: Why it’s important to edit an automated newspaper

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:58:00 -0800

Have you seen a paper.li newspaper? It’s one of the coolest pieces of content I use. If you don’t know, paper.li is an old-fashioned broadsheet newspaper but completely online. The articles are sourced from Twitter based on any number of criteria you specify. The paper is generated and distributed automatically. Once you have it set up, paper.li is a great resource to provide aggregated content from wide-reaching sources to your audience and you don’t have to do a single thing. Unless you’re like me.

One of the newspapers I produce every day is called the Mining, Oil and Gas Jobs News. My editorial direction for the paper is to provide jobseekers in the resources industry with career advice and employment information. Of course, I want to feature our daily blog post and the 2 jobs we feature on Twitter every day. Paper.li allows me to go into every issue and arrange the articles the way I want them, remove articles I don’t want, and add articles that didn’t make it into the paper. Why would I go to all the trouble?

Location, location, location
The most influential articles in any newspaper are ‘above the fold’. In other words, the stories published in the top half of the front page have the best chances of getting read. I want my daily blog post to be holding that spot and any other strategic content I tweeted from the MiningOilGasJob account.

Beating the competition
Despite the common belief social media, and Twitter in particular, is an open source of information, I have no intention of giving my competition space in my newspaper. I go through each section to make sure no one competing for business with me has their content on my page. You can block a website, and I do, but that doesn’t stop guest posts and articles my competitors write for other online publications.

Negative publicity
Protestors, activists and anarchists love social media. The last thing I want is an anti-mining article in my newspaper. I comb the paper to make sure the haters haven’t infected my content.

Offensive content
I once opened a paper.li newspaper published by a very smart business woman. The first thing I saw was a full-length photo of a man. The only thing he had on was socks and an erection. Do I need to say more?

Bad advice
For as much great content is swirling around the web, there’s just as much bad stuff. I want to make sure my articles are coming from reputable sources and providing valuable information. I don’t have to read every article but I made sure I scan the headlines, source and description of each one. I usually dump about 20% of the articles every day due to poor quality.

Building authority
The Twitterverse is full of super smart people. Every day I find new people to follow and articles on my topic of interest I hadn’t seen before. It’s a rare day I don’t find 2-3 things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The editorial process forces me to read each and every page of my newspaper and I discover lots of treasures.

Be an editor
I’ve written before about the dangers of content marketing on autopilot. While it may seem counterintuitive, adding a manual step to your automatic newspaper improves your brand and increases your authority. A newspaper with a strong editorial focus enjoys higher circulation. When then content is laid out properly, it also enhances your brand and increases your authority. The benefit far outweigh the time it takes to do a quick edit and schedule a tweet.
When do you make a manual intervention?

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Content Marketing Prediction 2012: Interactive Content

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:57:00 -0800

What happens when someone asks your opinion about a topic you’re particularly passionate about? What if they don’t put any restrictions around your answer? Every year for the past four years, Joe Pulizzi and the folks from the Content Marketing Institute do just that. They ask marketing experts from around the globe to predict what they expect from content marketing and social media in the following year. It took me about two seconds to dash off an answer because I think exciting things are on the horizon.

Leading marketing experts weigh in
The Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2012 piece contains opinion from over 75 contributors. The predictions give insight into the future of content and what marketers believe will happen in the next year. It’s a good read with a lot of variety if you’re thinking about content marketing or planning your strategy for the next year.

Interactive content
My prediction is content is going to be become a lot more sophisticated.

“Brand marketers are going to move into interactive content and do it in the biggest way. As consumers became more accustomed to custom content, they also became more demanding, driving the need for better ways to engage.

Thought leaders in this space will begin to develop content which will lead the viewer on a path of discovery. People enjoy doing things; content giving lots of options to click, open and move around will be viewed longer and more thoroughly. Skimmers will be drawn into spending more time with a particular product. In addition, interactive content will be shared more often on social networking sites.

Interactive content will mean marketers have no choice but to include design into the budget, planning and development of branded content.”

Terrific examples
The first time I really understood the power of interactive content was when I ran across an infographic called Get the Facts About Security at the Minerals Make Life website. It’s not appealing subject matter - at least not to me - but the infographic lured me into spending a fair bit of time on the site. Each section of the infographic is incomplete until you open more information by clicking a box. Not only did I click on every box, I read every bit of the content as it appeared on the screen. I digested information I wasn’t interested in, have bookmarked the page and gone back several times. Isn’t that exactly what we wish would happen with all our content?

Another great example is an interactive infographic called Envisioning emerging technology for 2012 and beyond. I challenge you to have a look and not play with the chart.

Why is interactive content so powerful?
Humans possess many different ways of absorbing information. Historically, we’ve been given our education in some form of text. It’s a tried and true method but it’s also boring. YouTube has proven consumers accept education and information in video format. The rise of the infographic adds to the mounting evidence we yearn for something different – more entertaining and easier to digest. Webinars have become incredibly powerful tools with current research showing the only marketing tactic more effective is in-person events. And then there’s social media, the most popular and widespread application of interactive content around.

Interactive content = sticky content
If you view your content as an asset to your business, make it as interactive as possible. (If you don’t think content is an asset, you should read my posts on Asset-Based Marketing!) Social media channels, mobile apps and the gaming industry figured out long ago getting audience participation is key to long-term success. Interactive content is sticky. People are attracted to it; they remember the information and they come back to it. It combats the skimmers and engages your target audience. When you think about your content strategy for 2012, think about how you can add some interaction into the mix.

What’s your view on interactive content? Have you seen a great example?

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Google Panda and the New SPAM Order

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:23:00 -0800

Have you noticed a change in the SPAM comments you’re receiving on your website or blog? Over the past two weeks, I’ve been hit hard and I can tell the SEO crowd is scrambling to combat Google’s new ‘Panda’ algorithm. Because original, quality content is now being rewarded in search engine results, some popular methods of search engine marketing (SEM) are no longer effective. Those unsavoury characters trading on SPAM comments are going down swinging. Here are some of the new tactics I’ve discovered on my own blog.

Plagiarism: The new SPAM tool
If you check out the second comment (boxed in orange) in my moderation queue, you’ll see a reference to Junta42, Joe Pulizzi’s company. Joe is the founder of the Content Marketing Institute and publisher of Chief Content Officer magazine. I was thrilled to see he’d left a comment on my blog - except he hadn’t. I plugged the comment into a plagiarism checker and discovered it was part of a blog Joe wrote over a year ago called, How Much Should Brands Pay for Content Marketing. It’s the first time I’ve seen a SPAMMER work so hard.

Obviously, whoever scraped Joe’s site to leave a comment on my post was putting some thought into what they were doing. I checked out the link to the website left by the SPAMMER and assumed the company must not be aware the SEM outfit they’d employed was up to no good. Being a good citizen, I filled out their contact form to let them know. The reply I got back leads me to believe they’re in it up to their eyeballs.

hi,

Thanks for your notice!
But I wonder which is your website!
Thanks,I won't let them do again!
Sorry to bother.

BEST REGARDS!

I take no joy in the fact they’ll remove me from their SPAM target list and continue on. I would never buy any of their products.

New SPAM techniques
Earlier this year I wrote a post on spotting SPAM comments. With the new release of Google putting pressure on the SPAMMERs, new techniques are in play.

Volume
The increase in SPAM has more than doubled on my blog. Just when I thought it would diminish due to Google’s focus on original content, the SPAMMERS have stepped up their game.
Copycat
Many of the SPAM comments I’m receiving are doing a cut/paste on my own copy. Most of the time it’s from the same post but sometimes it’s from another article on my blog.
Broken English
Because Google is now expecting real content, many SPAMMERS are trying to write their own comments. It's obvious some of these people have little or no command of the English language and are too lazy to use Google translator.
HTML Dump
I’m flummoxed by comments containing dozens of lines of HTML code. Maybe they think no one will figure out it’s a blatant attempt to get backlinks?
Friendly comments
“Lindsey” left this comment on a post called 9 Tips That Improved My Blog:
Hello, I just wanted to say that your blog has been really useful for me..
I need all the help I can get, lol.. Thnx
If you follow her link, it seems Lindsey is running a nasty little online pharmacy with no blog attached. I’m not laughing out loud or feeling the love.

Want traffic? Get content
Google’s new focus on content has the SPAMMERS scrambling to support a sinking model. They’re getting more sophisticated in fighting a losing battle. Of course, the harder it becomes to leave SPAM comments and secure unearned backlinks, the more these cretins are going to charge their customers. A wiser investment would be developing your own content to attract search engines and prospective customers.

What changes have you noticed in SPAM?

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How Much Does Content Marketing Cost?

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:42:00 -0800

How much of my budget should I spend on content marketing? That’s probably the question I hear more than any other. It’s a welcome question because businesses don’t budget for something they don’t think will work. I was particularly happy to be asked about content marketing budgets yesterday while speaking at the PCO Conference in New Zealand. PCOs (professional conference organisers) can be a tough crowd, especially if you’re trying to convince them to divert budget away from the ‘in person’ experience – food, beverages, venue costs, entertainment and travel expenses.

Yesterday the Content Marketing Institute along with MarketingProfs released their annual report on content marketing: B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends. The international survey comprised the results of nearly 1100 people (most of them in North America) almost equally split between micro, small, mid-size and large organisations. Right across the board, content marketing activity is on the rise and business is increasing content marketing budgets. The report states:

“On average, 60% of respondents indicate that they plan to increase their content marketing budgets over the next 12 months.“

The overall spend on content marketing is 26% but it’s interesting to note smaller companies spend a larger percent of their budgets on content. It’s a good indicator to me content marketing is working, regardless of the size of your business. Respondents who considered themselves most effective at content marketing spent 31% of their budget on content marketing.

Good news for PCOs
It was interesting for me to note the most effective form of content is still in-person events. Undoubtedly, spending big on an event is still going to give you a good return on your investment. Content marketers are finding video events to be the next most effective kind of content. Anyway you cut it, the PCO isn’t going anywhere.

My advice
Next time someone asks me the question about how much to budget for content marketing, based on this new report I’m going to answer ‘about 25% - 30% of your total marketing budget to be effective’. If you haven’t adopted a content marketing strategy it’s a good rule of thumb figure to include in your planning. Make sure you download the free report, it's a good read with lots of useful information in it to help you plan your content marketing activity.

Are you increasing your spend on content marketing next year?

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BRIEF: 3 Easy Steps to Building an Effective Sharing Tweet

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:03:00 -0800

Are you interested in getting your content distributed to a wider network? Of course you are. In an earlier post, I advised on the need for sharing widgets. How you construct a link for sharing on Twitter can make a big difference on how often it's distributed. You won't be surprised to hear I have an opinion on how that should be done.

1) The title of the article or post
The very first thing you'll want a reader to see is the name of your post. Your title should have relevant keywords and entice people to open the link. (No one knows better than me that's easier said than done.) Do not put your company name, Twitter ID or any other information in front of the title. Remember, it's not about you, it's about the content.

2) A link to the post
Directly after the title, your reader should be able to click on a link and go to your article. It's not so important the link is shortened because Twitter will do that for you now.

3) The source
After the link, you'll want to identify the source of the article. This separates your content from SPAM and encourages people to click. You don't, however, need more than one identifier. If your Twitter ID easily describes your website, don't include the name of your website.

Good examples

How to silence noisy neighbours http://bit.ly/uch4rM via @smh

Need a resume? We can help: http://bit.ly/ussM1Z via @MiningOilGasJob

Not so good

RT @HarvardBiz - Job Seekers: Get HR on Your Side - Amy Gallo - Best Practices - Harvard Business Review: http://s.hbr.org/uNUREl

Study reveals youth are stressed | Sunshine Coast Health | Fitness and Medical News in Sunshine Coast | Sunshine Coast Daily: http://bit.ly/rqlkRe via @AddThis - This tweet is already 19 characters over the 140 limit on Twitter!

The Take-Away
Take it from one of the pack, readers are a fickle, lazy bunch. The urge to share your content is fleeting, especially if it's too hard. Make sure your Twitter sharing widget is constructing short, sharp tweets leaving plenty of room at the end for a personal endorsement from the reader. People like me are just waiting to share your content with the Twitterverse.

How do you like to see a Tweet constructed?

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Who Owns Your Social Media Activity?

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:24:00 -0800

Last week I visited the east coast of Australia speaking to hiring managers and recruiters about how to use social media in their work. Many of the people I met with had expressed equal parts of interest and trepidation about entering the social media fray. Nearly every one of them was concerned about doing more harm than good.

Today I ran across a blog post from Craig Thomler speaking to the very heart of the problem.

”A number of those being employed in these new social media advisor roles don't have the mix of skills required to hit the ground running. I've heard of people with little or no experience with professional use of social media being employed as social media advisors simply on the basis of their personal use of these channel and therefore presumed competence.”

I completely agree with Mr. Thomler. For years I’ve been attending social media conferences where the largest demographic – by my guess – is young people between the ages of 18 and 22. Why so many? When I ask them why they’re there, most of them tell me it’s because they think a job in social media would be fun.

Be very afraid
Interestingly, businesses often assign social media activities to inexperienced staff members because they have used them in their personal lives. A kid running a Facebook profile aimed at their friends is a lot different than a business using social media to extend their brand. If you’re planning on running a rave or hijacking a party, by all means give it to the young people in your organization. In 2008, Corey Delaney proved he could get results with Facebook by throwing a party that made international headlines. He was celebrated and vilified but the end result was a trashed house and a big clean-up bill from the city. Is that what you want for your business?

Social media is still media
When you participate in social networks, you’re broadcasting your message to a global audience. The person planning what, when, where and how to deliver it should have the experience required to manage an international marketing campaign. That person should look a lot more like me – a middle-aged business person – than a teenage party boy. Social media is not about the tools you use. It’s about your overall marketing strategy. Social media lets you implement it in another channel you may not have approached before.

An ad-hoc approach to social media is sure to backfire
The Qantas Twitter disaster is proof throwing money at social media doesn’t necessarily work, either. With four full-time employees dedicated to social networking, Qantas still got it incredibly wrong. While I’m not privy to Qantas marketing, it sounds to me like there was a disconnect between the social media message and the folks at corporate marketing. The scary part is most organisations simply take an ad-hoc, stick-the-toe-in-the-water approach to see what happens.

I ask, would you give the keys to a Ferrari to someone with a P-plate?

Where social media fits
Here’s the problem. Young people are attracted to the ‘social’ part of social media. They usually don’t have an appreciation for how it can affect an organisation or a brand. They certainly don’t have the experience or wisdom required to run a comprehensive social media program. Social media should be part of your overall marketing strategy. It should be driven by the message and content your organisation is distributing to the market.

Sound advice
Anyone approaching you with a social media strategy should be viewed with suspicion – especially if they’re not sporting a few lines on their face or grey hairs earned in the trenches. The most successful social media practitioners (I shudder at ‘social media expert’) are good communicators with strong marketing backgrounds. You may employ young people in your organisation to help implement the plan, but don’t let them drive your brand into a ditch.

Who runs your social media activity?

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Image credit: The fabulous Adrianne Barba from bird.STUDIOS

I'm Not Sharing and You Can't Make Me

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:43:00 -0800

You already know from the title this is going to be a rant, right? I’ve been using social media sites for business since before the turn of the last century - before the term ‘social media’ was even coined. I kicked off my freelance writing career in 1999 with guru.com and have been hooked ever since. I’ve written about it a lot and I’m out here every day adding to the conversation. When someone tells me I’m doing it wrong, I get a little touchy.

Social media is full of marketing, media and creative people. It’s the space I’ve inhabited, as well. While the group has its scraps, cat fights and the occasional good old-fashioned dust-up, mostly it’s an orderly chaos with everyone following prescribed rules of online behavior. We all want to promote our stuff so we tend to be agreeable about the “do’s and don’ts” as long as no one tries to hem us in too much.

Now I’m in a new sandpit with new players and lots of peripheral participants looking to get a toe in. It seems the weapon of choice is social media and they’re not shy about issuing edicts on what and how I should be sharing information.

Commercial information
For the record, no one has an obligation to share commercial information just because you’re online. You especially have no obligation to reveal financial details of your business if you’ve never broached the subject yourself. A couple weeks ago, someone I have never met or even heard of before posted this question in a discussion group geared towards people looking for employment:*

I am interested to know who has actually advertised upon COMPANY NAME and if you have had any success at all?

Nice try!
I give the person credit for trying and posted this reply:

You can look at the site to see who's advertising. If you want specific detail, I can have someone from our sales team contact you to discuss it. I'm not sure this is the right forum for us to be divulging that sort of information.

If you missed it, that was my not-so-subtle way of saying ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

Round two
And then I received this nasty little lecture:

I do believe this is a group for your COMPANY thereby making it the most appropriate channel/forum to discuss my question. Linkedin is about open and honest communication and I know your COMPANY is in its infancy stage so information is key to allow your COMPANY to either crash like so many that have tried to compete with MASSIVE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITOR or grow.

I trust you will now be a bit more open minded and understand the point of linkedin!

Suffice it to say, my mind was anything but open at that point. What sort of person would expect anyone to share financial information in an online forum? Is it just me or could you hear a chair being pulled up for the latest small business crash-and-burn show?

How to deal with social media knuckleheads
What do you do in this situation? I followed my own advice from 3 Easy Steps for Dealing with Social Media Hecklers (after my blood pressure returned to normal). In short:,

Acknowledge the complaint
Show empathy
Give them something to do

Here’s my reply:

More than anyone, I appreciate the need for honest, open communication on LinkedIn or any social media channel. It's also important the discussions here are appropriate for the audience intended. As described in our Group Rules:

"This group is intended as a place for Job seekers, in particular, to find information, make contacts, network and to gain better insight into working in the XXXXXXXXX industry in Australia and throughout the world.”

We absolutely value your contribution and hope you'll hang around. We also have pretty strong ideas about where commercial discussions belong. For instance, we don't advertise on our FREE INFORMATION SITE or our blog.

Thank you for acknowledging we're in our infancy. We definitely are. We also definitely have independent companies advertising with us. We know they're getting application success rates in line with SIMILAR BUSINESSES which far outstrip the rates seen with MASSIVE INTERNATIONAL BUSINESSES. We also know we have a lot of work ahead of us and hope the Australian XXXXXXX industry get behind us and support this initiative.

All the money (we) earn on this initiative will be reinvested into training, development, upskilling and reskilling of the Australian workforce specifically to tackle the burgeoning skills shortage. Be assured, we're in it for the long haul.

Again, if you'd like to speak to someone from COMPANY NAME directly, we'd be happy to give you a ring.

6 lessons learned
That put an end to it but there are several lessons to be learned here.

1) It pays to write and rewrite your replies to a confrontation until you have something that’s not emotive. It took me at least 3 tries in each instance to get the tone I wanted to portray in public.
2) This exchange started and continued on a Friday evening. It’s not unusual for heckling to come at times when people are relaxing with a drink (or ten) or recreational drugs.
3) Make sure you have tightly written rules on your blog, discussion groups and forums. If you can quote them, you don’t look like the heavy.
4) Whatever you do, don’t let some misanthrope pressure you into doing something you don’t want to. This is the most important point of all – there’s nothing that says you’re obligated to divulge anything just because you’re on social media.
5) Whenever someone quotes 'best practice' guidelines as part of a disagreement, they’re usually trying to justify their own bad behavior.
6) Other people are watching. I’ve had favourable comments about the way I handled this situation from people I had no idea were even looking at our discussion group.

One of the biggest concerns most businesses have about social media is someone harassing them or making derogatory remarks about their company. It’s a rational concern but good business etiquette and sound communication skills will alleviate nearly any situation. You should never, ever, say or share something you don’t want to. They might try, but they can’t make you do it.

Have you had a similar experience? How did you handle it?

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* I’ve intentionally removed the identifying terms in this story. I’m not so worried about protecting the guilty as preventing this post from showing up in search results for prospective customers of my new venture. The conflict is of no concern to them but does make an ideal discussion for this blog.

Image credit: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

4 Great Ways to Limit Traffic on Your Blog

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:57:00 -0700

How often do you share blog posts? I’ve been working the social media channels hard the past few weeks and am becoming increasingly frustrated. As many of you know, I’m working on the AMMA miningoilandgasjobs.com project full-time. The focus of my online reading has been around the resources industry, career advice and recruitment. I find terrific content but often end up not sharing it with my large network. Here’s why.

Part of any good content marketing strategy will involve curation – the habit of finding expert and complementary content and distributing it to your network. Jay Baer at Convince and Convert reckons the sweet spot is a 40/60 split – 40% of your social media activity points back to you, 60% of it is external to your business. Blogs and website pages are ideal material for this. But you know what? A lot of businesses and website owners are making it hard to distribute their material. Are you?

Sharing Blues
1. No sharing widgets – If I’m pressed for time or feeling so-so about content, I won’t bother to share an article or blog post if there’s no widget to do it. With universal sharing widgets like Add This or Share This, I find it hard to believe anyone would park their own content but I see it happen every day.

2. No formatting of content – A sharing widget isn’t enough. When I click on a tweet widget and am presented with the URL and nothing else, I often get discouraged. At the very least, put the name of the page in your sharing results.

3. URL is not shortened – This is less of a hassle as nearly all social media channels provide some sort of URL shortening now. Still, why not provide that service? If you use a URL shortener like bit.ly, you get the benefit of metrics on every link they shorten for you.

4. Limited widget selection – If the sharing options don’t include channels I use – like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – I’m not likely to share something if I’m pressed for time. Remember, it’s not about where you’re hanging out, it’s about where your readers hang out. A bunch of obscure bookmarking sites probably isn’t going to bump your distribution much.

By the way, your commenting sucks
If I really like a post, I’ll leave a comment. Any blogger will tell you there’s nothing better than receiving a blog comment, especially if it’s from someone outside your normal circle and not full of SPAM. I can’t believe the number of blogs that don’t have comments turned on. I’ve also run across plenty that give me errors on things like my name or my email address. Make sure your commenting software is easy to use and error free. (And, yes, I know my own commenting software is a hassle. I’m in the process of changing that so hang in there with me.)

The Take-Away
Have a look at your website and blog and see if any of these peeves apply to you. Approach your blog as a reader would and run a test. Can a total stranger help you distribute your content? Can they do it easily? Can they leave a comment? I often wonder if the site owner hasn’t just turned everything over to a developer and assumes it’s all working. Give your blog a test run and see if it needs some work. The online audience is fickle; make it tough for them and they’ll go somewhere else. It's not enough to create good content, you have to make it easily accessible, too.

What bugs you about sharing content?

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Image credit: Ohmega1982 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Most Measurement Sucks - Chief Content Officer Australia

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 05:17:00 -0700

The Australian edition of Chief Content Officer is out today, bigger and better than ever before.

If the cover story and title, don't catch your eye, make sure not to miss these articles:

Marching to a Different Beta by Jonathan Crossfield
Okay, I admit I'm not impartial. I'd probably read the back of an envelope if I knew Jonathan Crossfield had scribbled on it. In this must-read article, Jonathan sizes up Google+. I immediately picked up the phone and called my web developer after reading his story.

Are Generic Photos Killing Your Content? by Paul Pichugin
Content marketers spend a lot of time mulling over words, coming up with titles and trying to figure out the most effective distribution methods. Professional photographer Paul Pichugin suggests we should probably be doing a better job with our images. I'll never feel the same about Flickr again.

Keep on Bloggin': How MYOB built a wildly successful corporate blog by Emma Mulquiney
I've been bugging the mob at MYOB to share their story since the inception of Chief Content Officer magazine. If you're even flirting with the idea of starting a blog, don't do another thing until you read Emma Mulquiney's account of what worked and what didn't. With over 5000 comments in two years, any blogger can learn from Emma and the blogging team at MYOB.

I'm busy chasing stories for the next issue of Chief Content Officer. If you know anyone doing a great job with content marketing or doing something particularly innovative, let me know. I'm always looking for new ideas, new contributors and the best content marketing stories in Australia.

The Rise of the Content Marketing Scrooge

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 06:11:00 -0700

It’s getting to be that time of the year. Invitations to holiday parties are rolling in. My family are deliberating between Christmas cake and Christmas pudding so I can begin chopping and soaking fruit. I’m trying to remember which of my grandmother’s springerle recipes works best in the Australian climate. The content marketing contingent has started the insufferable debate about holiday cards.

Green façade
You know the drill, right? The deliberation about whether it’s better for the environment to send eCards at Christmas is getting as old as St. Nick himself. I’ve written before about business playing the green card in a veiled effort to reduce their own expenditures of time and money. I can’t help but feel this is exactly the same situation.

‘Tis the season
The holidays are meant to be a time to slow down, enjoy a few extravagances and reflect on what’s important in life. Whether you observe a faith-based celebration, follow a cultural tradition or just cash in on the abundance of public holidays, most of us survive the festive season with at least a faint recharging of the batteries. We socialise more, correspond more, eat and drink more than usual. We labour over elaborate food, search for the perfect gift and plan special gatherings. So why, for Pete’s sake, would content marketers try to shirk out of a prime opportunity to impress?

The Scrooge Effect
Here’s what I think; it’s just easier and cheaper to send an eCard. Few people will mention this because they don’t want to admit that’s the motive. By adopting the Scrooge attitude, you’re missing a perfect chance to connect with your best customers. Believe me, no one gets a warm, fuzzy feeling when faced with a mail merge effort. What’s the point of spending all year crafting content designed to pull people in then give them a big brush off with an eCard?

You want to pull them in? Then make an effort.
Hire a graphic designer and have custom-designed holiday cards made. Have them press printed on expensive stock. (Remember, print is not dead.) Do it now so you have plenty of time to write a personal note, by hand, in each one. Address the envelope by hand, too. Lick the stamp. (I’m not kidding. Do not use a franking machine at Christmas.) Take them to the post office yourself. I recommend starting a little ritual to celebrate the end of your holiday card project – toast your success with a coffee or a drink and reflect on your content marketing prowess.

Swamped for the holidays
Okay, so maybe you’re truly too busy or your designer is booked out until the end of the year. Send New Year’s cards instead. I did it last year and was surprised at how much traction I got from the exercise. (That’s an image of my card at the top of this story.) Holiday cards tend to get binned shortly after Boxing Day. I was delighted to visit a client’s office in July this year and see my New Year’s card prominently displayed. You can’t tell me an eCard could ever have that sort of reach.

Get busy
I encourage you to splash out this year. Toss your inner Scrooge to the side and lavish a little attention on every client with a personalised, handwritten greeting card. Consider the staying power of the printed card in comparison to the glut of eCards routinely filling inboxes at the end of every year. Reflect on how easy it is to push the delete button on electronic correspondence. Remember the little thrill you get when you find a ‘real’ card in your post box. You’re making an effort everywhere else, make sure you do the same with your seasonal content marketing.

What do you think about holiday cards?

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Image credit: Card design by the talented Adrianne Barba at bird.STUDIOS

6 Ways to Improve Your Workshop Experience

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:09:00 -0700

How often do you attend conferences? Last week I was in Sydney speaking at the Retailer's Essential Guide to E-Retailing, part of the Online Retailers Conference & E-Commerce Expo. I was invited to speak by John Debrincat, CEO at eCorner, the workshop sponsor. John and I have known each other for years, often meeting when one or both of us is presenting. As we watched people file into the room, I wanted to hand everyone a little instruction card on how to get the most out of John's workshop - one they paid to attend.

I rarely see attendees get the full benefit of a presentation. Often these events have a cost attached so you're making an investment in both time and money to be there. I can tell you from personal experience most speakers labour over their presentation and hope you go away with better information or insight you didn't have before you arrived. While these tips may sound obvious, plenty of attendees I encounter at my speaking events don't take them into consideration.

Six things you can do it improve the return on your investment:

1. Arrive early - Allow plenty of time to battle traffic, find parking and source a cup of coffee before the start of the presentation. Conference organisers put pressure on the speakers to start and end on time. If you slide in right on time or even a few minutes late, you're likely to miss a portion of the first talk.
2. Sit in the front - It's always interesting to me to watch the back of the room full up first. The best experience is front and centre of the room. Remember you're at a live performance, the closer you are the better. I don't know anyone that goes to the theatre and insists on sitting in the back row.
3. Ask questions - Believe me, you will not be viewed as a dolt if you ask a question. The presenter will love you for it. I can guarantee other people in the room are wondering the same thing. There's nothing better than an interactive presentation so don't hesitate to be the first one to raise your hand.
4. Chat with the speaker - Conference and workshop organisers work hard to find people with the right expertise to speak. The speaker has invested a fair amount of time preparing the presentation and getting ready for the event. Once they're away from the podium, take advantage of the opportunity to speak to them directly. People that speak in public generally enjoy being around people and are very happy to chat, in depth, on their topic. It's a chance for you to get some free consulting.
5. Network with the other attendees - At big events, you may only know one or two other people in the room, if anyone at all. Make good use of your breaks and introduce yourself to someone you don't know. It's an excellent way to get new ideas and hear how other people are facing the same challenges you have. It's also a great way to extend your business relationships.
6. Review the material when you get home - I'm guilty of this myself - you attend a big event and come home loaded with information. You also come back to a desk bursting with things to do. It's easy to let your conference material languish. Schedule time to go through everything you've been given. The supporting collateral prepared by the speakers often has extremely valuable nuggets of information you can put to immediate use in your work.

One extra thing you can do to help the speaker
Before you leave the workshop, conference or presentation, make sure you fill out the feedback form. Standing up in front of a crowd is often a one-way street. The feedback forms provide extremely valuable insight to the speakers and organisers on how to improve for the next time. As long as the criticism is constructive, it will be entirely welcome. It's not as important for you to leave your name or contact details as it is to provide an honest review of the day's events.

What's your advice for getting more out of a conference experience?

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Image Credit: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

5 Good Reasons to Include Hyperlinks in Your Content Marketing

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 06:23:00 -0700

How often do you click on a hyperlink? If you’re not familiar with the term, you probably already know what it is. Sometimes called a ‘live link’, hypertext, or a ‘hot link’, a hyperlink is word or phrase in online content that, when clicked, takes you to another web page with related content. They can make a big difference in the effectiveness of your content marketing.

Here are my top 5 reasons for including hyperlinks in your content.

1. Credibility
Think of it as a new age footnote, whenever you’re naming a source, citing a reference, or referring to another publication, a hyperlink lets you do it in the body of your content. It takes you out of the ‘they say’ mode and lets you explicitly show you’ve done your homework.

Example: A tough job market presents challenges to both skilled and unskilled workers.

2. Increases page views
By referencing other articles on your website or blog, a hyperlink has the ability to keep readers on your site for longer. Make no mistake, those “Related articles” notes at the bottom of every article are hyperlinked to another page on the same site. With Google taking note of page views, routing readers to another page is a smart idea.

Example: Read my post, Do-it-Yourself SEO, for more ideas on how to improve SEO.

3. Improves SEO
We hear a lot of talk about the importance of the coveted back link, when another site links to your website. Don’t discount the power of a forward link. When you link out to credible sources, Google takes note and rewards you for it.

Example: A recent article from the Content Marketing Institute contains more information on this topic.

4. Assists the Call to Action
When you add a hyperlink into your ‘call to action’ mix, the chances of a conversion improve. People are lazy creatures. Hyperlinking to your contact page, your subscription form or a landing page on your website nudges those prospects along the path of conversion.

Example: Subscribe here to have new posts from the Global Copywriting Blog delivered by email.

5. Usability
If you want something done, do it yourself, right? Apply that to hyperlinks. It’s so much easier for the reader to verify your reference material, find related content or answer a call to action when you’ve given them something to click on.

Example: Contact me if you have any questions.

The Take-Away
People like to ‘do’ things when they get to a site. Give them a hyperlink to click on and reap the benefits at the same time. It’s simple to add them with modern CMS editors. Regular use of hyperlinks will improve your SEO and make life easier for your readers.

When do you include hyperlinks in your content?

Image credit: Hyperlink by DAE-SoftChalk is Fun, on Flickr

How an XXX Project Changed My Business

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:24:00 -0700

You may have heard I’ve been busy. I put a ‘sold out’ sign on my Contact page several months ago. My clients have been spun off to other freelancers. Family evenings and weekends are conducted while I’m beavering away in my home office. Lately, my working day starts between 3:30 and 4:00 in the morning and often finishes around 11:00 pm. I’ve been caught in the grip of an XXX project.

Exciting, Exhilarating, and Exhausting
That’s right – in this case XXX stands for exciting, exhilarating and exhausting. (Sorry folks; I can’t wait to see if that title generates more traffic than normal. Consider yourself part of a test market.) On 5 September 2011, the AMMA miningoilandgasjobs.com website went live. An industry owned and operated employment centre for the resource sector of Australia, the mammoth Careers and Industry Guide is my baby.

Content Marketing ‘Best Practice’
I had been working with Jobs in Industry Group (JIIG) for about a year when they suggested I join forces with them. I resisted at first but then they offered the opportunity to implement a ‘best practice’ content marketing strategy on a new business. When I suggested that meant developing hundreds of articles using professional writers, they didn’t bat an eye. When I laid out a long-term strategy using multiple content types, they got excited. When I said it would require a commitment to social media - both in time and money - they asked what I needed to get started. When I said they would have to hire professional designers to make the content look fantastic, they were in complete agreement.

The next time they asked me to join their company as part owner; I jumped at the chance.

What does it mean for Global Copywriting?
Global Copywriting still exists as a brand. I’ll still be blogging and speaking about content marketing and social media. I still edit the Australian edition of Chief Content Officer. I wouldn’t consider giving up my aged care work. I just won’t be accepting anymore freelance assignments through Global Copywriting as I have more than a full-time job at JIIG. There will be no shortage of lessons learned and practical advice to share in this new role and I’m going to continue to spill my guts here.

Special Shout-Out to Alyka
It’s easy to get excited about your own projects and push yourself to exhaustion. (Read this terrific article about how to tell if you’re doing your life’s work.) It’s not often you find service providers prepared to dedicate the same energy. Bernie Chia and the gang at Alyka proved to be exceptionally adept at working in a GREAT BIG HURRY and producing fantastic quality at the same time. They managed to do it with incredibly good nature and professionalism. I can’t say enough good things about them.

Finally . . .
In the midst of this huge project, I missed an article in Smart Company listing this blog as one of the top 25 business blogs in Australia. I’m excited and exhilarated all over again.

Have you ever had an XXX project?

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The Universally Misunderstood Contact Page

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 06:53:00 -0700

Last week I had the pleasure of judging the Australian Web Awards 2011. It was a wonderful experience affording me the pleasure of digesting a lot of terrific web content. It also highlighted a particular pet peeve of mine - the Contact page. I’m convinced it’s universally misunderstood and it drives me nuts.

Regular readers are accustomed to my complaining about content with an inward focus. . The first rule of content marketing is 'it's not about you'. You know what? The reverse is true when it comes to your Contact page. Nothing drives me away from a site faster than a contact page with no actual contact details.

Who wants to fill out a form?
Think about it. If someone is visiting your Contact page, it’s because they want to get in touch with you. You’re moments away from the coveted conversion. A passive viewer is about to make contact with you but they can’t. Why? Because all you’ve given them is a form to fill out. If that viewer is me, you’ll lose your chance to convert me to a prospect. I'm not hanging around waiting for you to get in touch with me. I'm going to go find someone who wants to speak with me at my convenience.

Sorry, we might not like you
Have you ever encountered a successful business with no doors, blinds drawn against the light of day who only allowed people with a secret handshake to enter? Would you be interested in dealing with a company who treated you as if you may offend them before you even opened your mouth? Of course you wouldn’t. Far too many websites are protecting their own best interests with the convenient contact form and doing it at the expense of potential business.

It's all about you!
A form on your Contact page is about you. Actual contact details like phone numbers, email and physical addresses aid your prospective clients. I’ve heard people say they don’t want to deal with SPAM or junk mail and use a form to deter unwanted contact. Well guess what? If you’re doing that, you’re also deterring people like me - cashed-up customers who want to spend money with you.

What’s your opinion on the Contact page?

Image courtesy of Free Digital Photos.

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The Arrogance of Bloggers

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 03:14:00 -0700

Have you spotted arrogant bloggers? It’s taken me a long while to admit to being a blogger. If you read my first post, you’ll see how uncomfortable I was with the idea of keeping a blog. I worried about saying anything relevant. What I didn’t share was my worry about establishing a vanity vehicle for my own opinion. It struck me as an arrogant thing to do. I see a lot of arrogance amongst bloggers and it drives me nuts.

What do you mean by arrogance?
I’m not talking about arrogant opinions of writers or arrogant topics on a blog. I’m speaking about arrogant behaviour in people keeping a blog. A web log –or blog – is intended to attract, engage, discuss and share your ideas. It’s on the internet precisely for these reasons, to create an interactive community of people. Bloggers all over the world yearn for someone to read what they’ve written and comment on it. And yet I see people circumvent the spirit of blogging all the time.

4 ways bloggers demonstrate their arrogance
Here are four ways bloggers express their arrogance and, in some cases, disdain for their readers.

Me, me and more me – I’ve written about it before, the stifling inward focus of a blog. Unless someone is an absolute expert in a field, I don’t want to read a personal tome to the writer’s own greatness. I want the writer to pull me in, to make me relate their points to my own experience. The experts know this, only amateurs prattle on about themselves.
Gated content – Every fibre of my content marketing soul says I shouldn’t have to pay for gated content, especially on a blog. I’m still grappling with the idea of pay walls for newspapers but I will never, ever, pay to read someone’s blog. Ever.
When I read something good, I want to share it. If there’s no sharing widget or even a tweet button, I find it incredibly annoying. Ideally, I like to see a universal button that allows me to pick my network. In lieu of that, please provide the top three: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Unanswered comments – I’ve written more than one post about commenting. Nothing - but nothing - smacks of arrogance more than someone who writes a blog post and won't answer comments. It’s akin to ignoring someone speaking to you in person and an indication your readers are not worthy of your attention. Even the blogging greats monitor comments and answer when appropriate including Darren Rowse, Joe Pulizzi and Jonathan Crossfield. And, yes, I know Seth Godin doesn’t answer comments but he doesn’t allow them either. When you get on his blog, you know it’s a one-way discussion before the first word.

Honest ignorance or intentional arrogance?
Some of these mistakes are made out of honest ignorance. I’ll retweet an article even without a sharing widget but I’m a lot more likely to do it if I get a leg-up from the blog owner. I never read gated blog content. I rarely go back to a blogger-centric site. The one that hurts the most is unanswered comments. It’s a terrible feeling to pour your heart into a comment and get no reply from the writer.

If you have no intention of interacting or helping people participate in your blog, I recommend you switch mediums. Keep a diary or an offline journal but leave the blogosphere to the goons like me – people who are looking for information and entertainment and want to have a good old chin wag about it.

Where do you see arrogant behaviour in the blogging community?

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Image credit: What is your conversation strategy? by cambodia4kidsorg, on Flickr

The Dangers of Content Marketing on Autopilot

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:39:00 -0700

This morning, at 4:14, my husband left for work turning the lock behind him. A typical engineer, he wouldn’t dream of leaving his sleeping family exposed with an unlocked door. You can argue it’s nature or training or experience but one thing’s for sure. He doesn’t take risks when it comes to his work or his family. While content marketing doesn’t present health and safety issues, I see evidence of risky behaviour all the time and am guilty myself.

Going on autopilot

The content marketing recipe for success is simple – develop original content, make it findable for Google and distribute it through social media. Early on, we talked about how it’s all free of charge, too. But here's the problem; to implement a content marketing system successfully takes:

Time
Writing talent
Networking capability
Decent idea about how Web 2.0 works

Not many businesses, especially small ones, can become publishers and still run their core business. So what happens? We start taking short cuts or go on autopilot to manage the load. Here are some examples:

Content aggregators
Not long ago I saw an update on LinkedIn perfectly illustrating the problem. A book publisher I know writes about literacy and curates excellent content on the topic. The post in question was talking about literacy in tarot card reading. I knew immediately it was an example of content marketing by autopilot. I read the post and, sure enough, it was a low quality, SPAMMY article scraped from several sources and loaded with prime keywords. It also had the ability to levy brand damage if the reader didn’t know the business as well as I do. When I alerted the publisher, they admitted to using a service to provide content and didn’t know what was being posted.
Not doing your homework
I’ve been caught in the same trap myself. I volunteer with Women in Technology, WA (WITWA). Part of my work involves running their social media activity. During a deadline crunch, I posted an article on Twitter from Fast Company titled, How come there aren’t more women in technology? It’s a good publication and the title reflected our mission of getting more women into science, technology and math careers. I didn’t read the article. It was full of pseudo-science concluding women just weren’t up to it due to their “hormones, brain anatomy, and mirror neurons”. Believe me when I say I was called on the carpet in the biggest way.
Social Media integration
Social media tools pitch the ability to integrate with other products. Appealing to the harassed and harried content marketer, they seduce us with “post once to all your profiles”. The problem is you don’t have the same audience on every channel. If you did, there wouldn’t be any point in having more than one channel. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve tried to engage with someone on Twitter only to find out it’s a ‘bot version of their Facebook stream.
Auto posting
Auto posting can be useful when you’re away from your desk for certain periods or have something that benefits from repetition - like conference details. You can appear to be active even when you’re not. Herein lies the problem; you’re not really there. When abused, auto posting turns you into a full-fledged ‘bot and all the work you’ve done to build a community is quickly erased.

Despite early claims, content marketing isn’t free. It’s not a particularly difficult practice to grasp but it takes dedication and persistence to deploy. While tempting to take shortcuts, the risks to your business and your brand are significant. At the very least, make sure you read every word you post. Only distribute your content to channels where you plan to be active. Avoid the lure of autopilot content marketing and you’ll save your brand from a crash and burn.

Have you ever been embarrassed by something you did on autopilot?

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Image credit: cockpit by gcfairch, on Flickr

Are Facebook and LinkedIn violating your privacy?

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 05:48:00 -0700

Have you noticed the buzz about privacy this past week? I speak and blog about social media and privacy issues so I keep my ear to the ground. What surprises me lately is how often I see wall posts on Facebook about privacy violations. LinkedIn ended up in hot water with their members for the same sort of thing. Here’s what made people nervous this week and why.

Facebook loosens security settings
If you’re a Facebook user, chances are you saw this post pop up on the wall of someone you follow. Four people in my relatively tiny network posted this message:

FB has quietly changed something! Take a look at your URL address (the top box on your screen.) If you see "http" instead of "https" you DO NOT have a secure session & can be HACKED. Go to Account - Account Settings - Account Security - click edit. Check box (secure browsing), click Save. FB has automatically set it on the non-secure setting! Do your friends a huge favor, copy & re-post.. Mine was on the non-secure setting and had to change it.

I checked mine and, sure enough, I was no longer on a secure session with Facebook. It’s quick to fix once you know about it. I encourage you to make sure you’re operating on a secure session.

Did you even know you had those phone numbers?
Another recent Facebook transgression had to do with phone numbers for people in your contact list. Another batch of warning notices started appearing:

ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS IN YOUR PHONE are now on facebook! go to the top right of the screen, click on ACCOUNT, click on EDIT FRIENDS, left side of screen and click CONTACTS. you will see all phone numbers from your phone (FB friends or not) are published that you have stored in your mobile phone. TO REMOVE, go to RIGHT column, click on "this page." Please repost this on your status, so your friends can remove their numbers and thus prevent abuse.

I checked my Contacts and, sure enough, I saw phone numbers of people I had no idea I even possessed. It was especially worrying for people who had synchronized their iPhones with Facebook. This allowed phone numbers from your mobile phone to be stored in Facebook.

According to an article in TechCrunch, it’s not as sinister as the alarmists would have you believe. Still, it’s confronting to see the personal phone numbers of everyone in your network. Facebook is notorious for changing privacy settings on a whim. In my opinion, it’s just better to get rid of them . In the name of privacy, I would encourage you to remove all imported contacts; I did.

What is LinkedIn thinking?
The thing surprising me most this week was LinkedIn assuming they could get away with using members names and photos in their advertising campaigns. By adding a new section to your Account Settings called “Manage Social Advertising”, LinkedIn assumed tacit permission. In LinkedIn’s own words:

LinkedIn may sometimes pair an advertiser's message with social content from LinkedIn's network in order to make the ad more relevant. When LinkedIn members recommend people and services, follow companies, or take other actions, their name/photo may show up in related ads shown to you. Conversely, when you take these actions on LinkedIn, your name/photo may show up in related ads shown to LinkedIn members. By providing social context, we make it easy for our members to learn about products and services that the LinkedIn network is interacting with.

I quickly changed my account settings denying LinkedIn permission to use my name and photo in their advertising campaigns. You can do the same by:

Go to ‘Settings’ in the pull-down menu under your name in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
Click on ‘Account’ in the last box on the left-hand column.
Click on ‘Manage Social Advertising’ under Privacy Controls.
Remove permission at the bottom of the pop-up window.

Fair Warning
No one is ever surprised when Facebook changes privacy settings without notice; they have a long history of privacy violations. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg routinely dismisses concerns with weak explanations about improved user experiences. The LinkedIn situation worries me. It’s indicative of the huge lure these free networks must experience when it comes to advertising dollars. The information and marketing intelligence stored in the membership databases of the popular channels is awesome to consider. You can’t depend on a social media channel to protect your privacy. The only way to ensure your personal details stay private is to resist storing them online.

Do you think your privacy is being violated?

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Image Credit: privacy by Sean MacEntee, on Flickr

Here's a bullet-proof tip for business writers

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 02:16:00 -0700

When researching a blog post on terrible business writing, I kept running across the work of Ron Denholm from Essay Audit. He had great examples of terrible writing and a lot to say about how to fix it. Knowing it's better to learn from the master, I asked him to guest post for me and he graciously agreed.* Ron has a BA and MA both in Classics. He headed Learning and Development for the Australian Federal Police in Sydney where he developed effective e-learning writing courses, and received a Commissioner's Commendation for improving Ministerial writing. (I say give the guy a medal!) Ron has trained over 2,500 people in efficient writing. Over to Ron.

If you’re in business, your time is valuable. You love a quick-fix read over a donut and coffee. You leap at numbered iron-clad reasons, scanning bullet-proof tips, and delight in tight analysis and compelling opinion. And your mouse click is judge and executioner.

You’ll tolerate a few glitches in grammar spellling and punctuation but not so long sentences with a lethally toxic cocktail of poor articulation excessive tangential clauses spiced with malodorously inflated and archaic vocabulary and technical specification terms the author uses of which you may not be aware but of which the ramifications of you not picking up on them are that you may miss a really prescient comment hidden fathom deep in the meandering syntax of a lazy writer using comic sans font in 10 point size enveloped in long paragraphs or a sloppy direct translation from another language too fond of emotionally charged redundant adjectives and wonderfully conjured adverbs that hide the message.

Where did you give up reading in the last paragraph? How patient were you with the language? How much of the message did you understand? Few readers would struggle through unless the read was mandatory. And let’s face it, reading time is valuable because we are time-poor.

What's poor writing costing you?
Writing inefficiently is part of a hidden economy and it’s costing us millions. Of course, it will not always read like the horror above, but it will have some common elements. Now take a look at my presentation showing how inefficient writing can be very costly.

Our company, MiningNexus, recently studied 5500 web sites for their readability. The research found an average 35% of surveyed text was not efficiently written. The big risk in inefficient text is that potential clients and investors will go elsewhere, because they are time-poor readers, and readily click off writing that strains their patience. And there is enough excellent business writing out there to make competition fierce.

Nifty Tool
But identifying and measuring the problem is only the first step. What about a solution? MiningNexus worked on that one too. We invented a handy electronic document checker we call EssayAudit: a bullet-proof benchmark for business writers. The program reports on the amount of known fact, analysis and opinion, and the impact on the reader. It also assesses your document for readability. Here is an example.

A great example
EssayAudit is the world’s first writing checker to benchmark both content and readability. It helps give readers what they deserve: a compelling message wrapped in an easy read. Seasoned bloggers and article writers are using EssayAudit to maximise reader impact and to make sure their text is consistently highly readable. Businesses, web copy writers and schools are also using EssayAudit to set writing benchmarks.

OK, you’re now at the end of my post and here’s how it rated with EssayAudit:

Get in touch
If you’d like to use EssayAudit, contact ron@writeabilityworkshop.com.

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* I have no affiliation with Ron or Essay Audit; I just appreciate what he's doing.