Archive for category Business Writing
How to Correct Two Common Mistakes in Business Writing
Posted by jjhnsn in Business Writing, Marketing on June 29, 2011
The way something is written can say as much about the subject matter as the content itself. Applied to business communications, writing style and tone help reinforce a brand or company culture, while a logical flow of information creates both understanding and credibility.
To keep your readers’ eyes on the content you create—whether it’s a blog post, newsletter, or simple internal communication—proofread (at least twice) for both clarity and correctness.
You don’t need to know all the rules of grammar (and their wonderful exceptions) to edit your own content, and it won’t take much time. All you need is to recognize the most common mistakes, and know what trips you up as a writer and a reader.
Writing: If you’ve collaborated with someone on a document, were changes made to your portion of the writing? What feedback do you receive?
Reading: As a reader, what do you find jarring? Where do you get lost? Confused? Do you feel lost and confused right now?
Chances are that the prose suffers from one or more of the two most common mistakes in business writing –homonyms and sentence structure.
Homonyms
These are words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. In the sounds-like category, the “it’s,” “you’re,” and “they’re” offenses get the most attention. Other examples of homonym errors, briefly, include board/bored, where/wear/ware, lessen/lesson, to/too, hole/whole, role/roll.
The homonym errors involving contractions are most common because those are the words used most often in our communications (or, um, intended to be used). A good way to figure out the proper usage and spelling is to read the sentence as though the contraction were written out, mindful of whether there is a verb that would indicate two words joined together, as the contraction form.
Reading the entire sentence, or clause if you’re confident, is important because it gives context for proper usage. Here are some examples:
Its
Its is possessive; it’s is a contraction for “it has” or “it is.”
It’s (it is) a lovely day.
The dog licks its paw. (No contraction here. Adding the apostrophe [it’s form] would mean The dog licks it is paw. No.)
Your
You’re (you are) going to be so excited when you see your new walk-in closet.
Their
With their tutus and ballet slippers in hand, the little dancers sit backstage, waiting there until they’re called for dress rehearsal.
Their is possessive, there is a place, and they’re is a contraction for “they are,” whether you’re writing about tutus or technology.
Whose
Who’s (who is) going to the game? Whose vodka is this? The latter is the possessive form. And the vodka is mine.
Run-ons, Comma Splices, Sentence Fragments
Sometimes writers have a lot of ideas and they to cram them into a single sentence it makes it difficult for the reader to take in all those words without a breath between them but somehow meaning is agreed upon between writer and reader and the reader responds to the writer but may address only one of the ideas presented in the original communication because the other ideas got lost in the need for a single sentence per idea and a break between them whether it’s a semicolon to separate clauses that can stand alone or the use of a coordinating conjunction or breaking the content into separate sentences and for fuck’s sake a few different paragraphs too.
Independent clauses (ideas) need to be treated as such. Does the content read as a complete sentence? Two sentences? Can you make three? If the sentence (the thought) isn’t complete, make it so. Read the sentence aloud—how often did you pause for breath? Add commas and coordinating conjunctions (and/but/so) in those places to separate ideas.
Here’s how to untangle the unintelligible:
This is getting to be a long post_maybe I should create a checklist instead. {fused sentence—two whole sentences joined together}
This is getting to be a long post, maybe I should create a checklist instead. {comma splice—two complete and independent thoughts on either side of the comma}
This is getting to be a long post, so maybe I should create a checklist instead. {corrected using a coordinating conjunction}
This is getting to be a long post. Maybe I should create a checklist instead. {corrected by creating two separate sentences}
This is getting to be a long post; maybe I should create a checklist instead. {corrected with a semicolon}
In just about every industry where writing and communication play a key role in bringing a product to market, the subject matter is highly technical, scientific, subjective, or abstract, making it even more difficult to convey information clearly to create meaning with a target audience.
Simple business communication tools like email and instant messaging mean everyone creates, contributes to, or writes a business communication or two, no matter their role in a company.
Keep homonym errors and faulty sentence structure out of your communications, and you can keep jackasses like me from deleting you’re sales pitch because it’s grammar steels clarity from it’s message.
What Satan Taught Me About Content Marketing
Posted by jjhnsn in Academic Writing, Business Writing, Content Strategy, Marketing on February 23, 2011
Remember that English teacher who taught you to write five-paragraph essays? The pattern was simple: introduction, three supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Tell them what you’re going to tell, tell them, and tell them again.
From this basic structure, the writing assignments evolved. They moved from exposition to more complex arguments, pages instead of paragraphs, primary and secondary research, visual rhetoric, a companion video or slide deck.
For me, it all came together in a paper on John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, arguing for an interpretation of Satan as epic hero that differed from popular criticism. My desk was littered with the flotsam and jetsam of my efforts—the primary text (PL); a position to take; a list of key points, supporting data, and examples from the text; a somewhat annotated bibliography of my research sources; what might pass for a flowchart that laid out the argument and possible objections; and a rough outline of the paper.
That desk doesn’t look much different today.
Gustave Doré, Depiction of Satan, of John Milton’s Paradise Lost
Those same writing and research processes from academia are useful tools for any kind of business writing, but especially for creating collateral such as white papers or case studies, or posts aligned with defined blogging strategy, or the email messages used in a lead nurturing campaign.
As content marketers, our most fundamental goal is to persuade an audience and motivate them to take action. We take a position—our unique selling proposition —and we develop, support, and defend it.
Sure, it feels good to say our main goal is to inform, educate, and nurture our audience, but a business needs to keep the lights on.
Each message in the customer lifecycle, from marketing to sales and services, is another piece of evidence in support of that position. Its effectiveness in getting, closing, and retaining customers is more measurable now than ever.
The ROI of our efforts is splashed in bright colors across the pie charts and graphs of our CRM dashboards.
While the simple five-paragraph structure is hardly feasible (or desirable) in our marketing communications, the exercise is. The creative process of writing that paper for English class can be adapted to help content marketers develop a messaging framework, and then use it to produce content that’s consistent and value-based, across marketing channels.
From 5 Paragraphs, 5 Concepts for Content
Whether writing a post on the company blog, a case study, or a status update, marketers can deliver an effective and consistent message by keeping in mind five basic concepts:
- Audience
- Argument
- Appeals
- Evidence
- Opposition
Audience. The art of persuasion is equal parts writer and reader. Good content is adapted for a target audience, never one size fits all. Not only do we need to create content for a specific buyer persona, but we also need to set expectations for that audience, and deliver a content experience that meets those expectations.
In B2B marketing, there are often multiple people involved in the decision-making process, each for different reasons. Segment that house list for targeted communications. Offer content relevant for the end user (how a specific functionality saves time), and something for the business decision maker (how the complete package saves money).
Argument. Again, the Unique Selling Proposition. Who should buy your product and why? How will they benefit? Do existing customers feel good about their purchase decision, and will they stick around? A product or service can’t be the best at everything for everyone, so this core concept should focus on what differentiates that product or service from others in the marketplace.
Appeals. To persuade and motivate that target audience, look to the Aristotelian rhetorical appeals ethos, pathos, and logos.
- Ethos refers to the appeal of the speaker’s character or authority. It’s how we position the “About” page and our online company profiles, what we put in our bios. A good example of ethos in advertising is celebrity endorsements.
- Pathos appeals to the audience’s emotions. It can be used to convey feelings of confidence and integrity in a brand and trigger the desired response.
- Logos is logical appeal. This persuasive strategy is usually marked by facts, figures, and data.
The most effective content combines all three appeals.
Evidence. This one is closely tied to logical appeal but worth calling out on its own. General statements only bring an audience so far. Providing credible evidence to support a claim shows the buyer how other people just like them have realized tangible benefits from a product or service. And it doesn’t need to be boring. The statistics part may be a bit dry, but things like video testimonials, case studies, and online communities can turn this evidence into a more interactive experience for the audience.
Opposition. What are the opposing viewpoints in your marketplace? The reasons for not buying your product or service? If the price point high, for example, then provide some quantifiable ROI data from current customers. Opposition to a change in process or technology? Reinforce the benefits of making the change with evidence, and remember that change brings about feeling of both excitement and fear. Build on the former while addressing the latter with a solid nurturing program.
Putting these concepts together in an internal corporate essay, so to speak, with an introduction, supporting ideas, and conclusion helps clarify positioning, communicate value, and motivate the audience to the next step in the sales cycle. Those ideas make up the parts of the whole, the overarching narrative told through our website, blog posts, social media efforts, sales collateral, and customer service.
It’s worth noting that the essay outline mentioned earlier wasn’t so much an outline as a collection of sticky notes and pizza napkins that could be rearranged while the argument in my paper developed based on new research and perspectives.
The corporate narrative should be organized this way, too—it’s a fluid process as we learn more about our audience and how they interact with our communications, or introduce new products and functionality.
A messaging framework based on audience, argument, appeals, evidence, and opposition helps content marketers tell a consistent and compelling story. It may not be the same as writing about Satan, sex, and the phenomenology of sin in Paradise Lost, but the same concepts of argumentation that we learned in English class can inspire a content strategy that adds color to the marketing dashboard.
This blog post originally appeared on B2Bbloggers.
On Craft, Career, and Cabernet
Posted by jjhnsn in Business Writing, Creative Writing on February 10, 2011
Driving downtown to meet some writer friends, I roll down the windows, hoping the breeze will carry away the acronyms of my day (ROI, KPI, CPM, CPA, FFS), sprinkle in a few verbs, and drop them into a marketing plan.
I pull around to the back of the building, find a spot in the bank parking lot. My ride these days is a minivan, and it doesn’t fit in the compact parking spaces along Broadway like the little black car of my graduate student days.
It’s been five years since then, my last writing workshop around that blessed, beat-up and beloved table in Weld Hall library.
This whole writing thing—the impulse to create, revise, destroy, and begin again—is something that stays with us long after the MFA program, no matter the shape of our postgraduate careers. The craft and its dialogue are our pomegranate seeds, and those of us who ate at that old table would never really leave.
Tonight I crave the company of this community, the way it keeps the spirit of writing pure and its language real.
We’ve followed the trail of pomegranate seeds across the river and to another table. This one is dimly lit, filled with MFA alumni rather than students, drinking Cabernet instead of the viscous vending machine coffee on campus, gathered again to discuss current writing projects, curse creative hurdles, and pray for manuscripts submitted.
“It depends on how we define ‘professional,’” one of us would say, “and of what we’ve become the master.”
We’re discussing whether a creative writing degree has any value in today’s workplace for those not interested in teaching, and if so, how those skills might transfer. Participating in that conversation are a software developer (genre: screenplays), a local magazine editor (genre: poetry), a PhD student/professor (genre: fiction), and a marketing director (genre: fiction), all of us MFA program graduates. An interesting mix of viewpoints, to say the least.
Ours is just one of many conversations contemplating the merit of creative writing programs and the MFA degree. Popular arguments against it include the perceived homogenization of writing or the studies heralding a poor academic job market. Most certainly, the fact that academic jobs advertised in the English discipline have declined by 39.8% from 2008 to 2010* is cause for concern.
But the graduate writing experience amounts to more than “sedentary toil/And…the imitation of great masters,”* sealed with an advanced degree that may or may not lead to a professorship.
In fact, the degree is but a byproduct of an MFA program for the majority of those who attend them, writers driven instead by the craft itself, its exploration and promise of perfection. In an article contemplating what brings people to the table some 70-odd years after the first MFA program (Iowa Writer’s Workshop) was founded, poet/attorney Seth Abramson cites a recent survey finding that “fewer than 20% of MFA applicants consider the credential itself to be their top reason for pursuing a graduate creative writing degree.”*
Given that an advanced degree is typically required for teaching college-level courses, this sentiment signals a new generation of writers with designs on a nonacademic career, seeking the MFA experience in order to further develop the creativity, critical thinking, and communication skills that are very much in demand in today’s job market.
Daniel Pink argues in his book A Whole New Mind that “the MFA is the new MBA.” His logic makes sense: the routine entry-level tasks that help an MBA break into the job market are being outsourced overseas, and there’s an increasing demand for the kinds of people who can provide the “high-concept” thinking and strategy behind these inputs. Pink writes*:
…that something first must be imagined or invented. And these creations must then be explained and tailored to customers and entered into the swirl of commerce, all of which require aptitudes that can’t be reduced to a set of rules on a spec sheet—ingenuity, personal rapport, and gut instinct.
Though industry job openings might not explicitly state “MFA degree required,” the skills learned in graduate creative writing programs are transferable and quite employable.
Is there a large percentage of MFA degree-holders seeking academic jobs? Of course. But, unscientifically speaking, there are just as many who have no desire to teach. The program is driven as much by the trifecta of technique, art, and talent than by any professional goal, academic or otherwise.
Some of us simply focus on our writing. Others go on to become software developers, magazine editors, PhD candidates, or marketers.
Only the writer can determine how best to transfer her craft from workshop into the workplace. Like anything else, it is what you make of it.
The results of a postgraduate survey* from the creative writing program at MSUM , home of that beat-up table in Weld Hall, provides some interesting insight into the professionalization of the MFA degree, even if it’s just a microcosm. Here are some highlights:
- An equal number of respondents have attained postgraduate employment in a professional/technical writing capacity (44%) as those who hold teaching positions (44%).
- Of those teaching, 38% have attained the rank of Associate Professor or higher, including one Dean.
- 48% of the industry-employed MFAers are at or above the mid-management level in their careers.
- Common job titles include marketing, communications, public relations, and technical writing. The most interesting is perhaps “Teacher, Mortician.”
- Not reflecting freelance writing, 8% of respondents work full-time in publishing, either as editor, journalist, or publisher.
- Everyone has published something.
- 34% of those surveyed did not respond. We like to think it was because they were too busy writing.
Eat Here and Stay Forever
It’s late in the evening. The wine is gone, the crème brulee and coffee on the table, and we realize none of us have actually graduated the MFA program together. We were, in fact, barely classmates.
But we share the same experience of sitting around that table, where together we got to taste the seeds binding our community to its particular craft, to travel that underworld where ideas are translated into art and process is revered over end product.
Exploring the craft of writing before that forbidden lawn of unbridled creativity becomes unfamiliar or impractical is an experience that we’ll draw from inevitably in our careers, whether in teaching, corporate storytelling, or mortuary science.
The MFA graduate develops a mindset that allows for creative, critical, and analytical thinking–a stage on which to practice freedom in our art, engage in healthy debate and discussion, and advance our writing abilities both technically and creatively, all while participating in good conversation and community.
Sources:
* Modern Language Association. (September 2010). “Report on the MLA Job Information List, 2009-2010.” MLA Office of Research. Web. November 29, 2010. p 1.
*Yeats, William Butler. “Ego Dominus Tuus.” Yeats’s Poetry, Drama, and Prose. Ed. J. Pethica. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. Print. p. 66-68.
*Abramson, S. (2010). “The New Face of the Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts.” The Huffington Post. Web. Posted: October 28, 2010; Accessed 12/1/2010. Survey conducted by The Suburban Ecstasies.
*Pink, Daniel. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead Trade, 2006. Print.
* Minnesota State University Moorhead (December 2010). Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program Postgraduate Survey. Conducted online, November 1 – November 25, 2010.
*Tsetsi, Kristen. (2010) “Owning is a sloppy second to knowing.” this i believe. Web. Published March 17, 2010. Accessed March 18, 2010. Fellow MSUM MFA graduate Kristen Tsetsi writes, “I no longer know the grass of forbidden lawns, because I drive past it.”
Misery and Me: Grammar, Copywriting, and Laundry Soap
Posted by jjhnsn in Business Writing, Fiction on December 19, 2010
In an advanced technical writing class as an undergraduate, I remember the professor saying, “This should sound wrong to you all.” She meant simply that we should be able to identify grammatical and mechanical errors by sound (or more accurately, sight) by the time we landed in that class.
It occurs to me now, after so many years and blog posts and white papers and fiction pieces, that I’ve never actually had a formal course focused on grammar. A technical writing course that showed how to put those words into reports and documentation, and creative writing workshops that focused on how those words were used, yes, but never a formal study in grammar.
At this time of night, it’s probably best to lay off the coffee and go watch tv, but it’s interesting to contemplate whether writing is something that can and/or must be taught/learned (that question alone a longstanding debate that requires at least the length of a seminar paper).
Perhaps we absorb writing style and proper grammar more from what we read than what we practice in the typical classroom context that’s often hard to translate to any real-world rhetorical situation. And I mean what we read as in what we’ve always read, long before entering college, the profession, or the writer’s basement studio.
I remember reading books like Watership Down, The Call of the Wild, and The Catcher in the Rye as a kid, not because they were assigned, but because the stories were good. Soon after writers like Stephen King and Dean Koontz took the place of those fluffy animals and rye fields (which could explain a lot about my fiction writing, it seems).
Reading books served as writing instruction. We absorb the language we’re exposed to, it seems, which is what establishes the foundation for our awareness, understanding, and command of grammar.
Our university courses and professional writing excursions serve, then, as an opportunity to exercise those skills can be developed naturally through a love of works like, in my case, Misery and The Door to December. From there my time as an undergrad studying English resulted in a love of literary works most of my friends have never heard of, and my graduate writing workshops taught that, as creative writers, we have to know the rules of grammar in order to break them.
Long before my consumption of anything book-length, I practiced the strange habit as a child of reading each line of copy on packaged products. Any products. Shampoo bottles, cereal boxes, motor oil, bags of dogfood, soup cans, laundry soap.
I’m really not sure what the point of this post is, other than to say that writing is no longer the dominion of the English or communications major. The business world is now an extension of our private worlds. Brands and consumers alike “publish” their writing online everyday through social media, blog posts, and reviews.
Ultimately, the source of mechanics and style that we draw upon in our writing, whether consciously or otherwise, is everything that we’ve read up to the point where we sit down at the keyboard, be it Ars Poetica, the labels on personal hygiene products, or the stuff of nightmares.
Meaning, Montoya, and PostStructuralism in Business Writing
Posted by jjhnsn in Academic Writing, Business Writing on November 7, 2010
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means” ~ Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
Inigo Montoya
It’s been a while since the last post, so I thought sharing a bit of my current research project/obsession would be a good way to convey writing productivity simply through creation of another page on this blog. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
The nerd in me would like to highlight that this creates a rhetorical situation of authoring content with two potential outcomes–1) sharing what I think is an interesting element of professional writing, or 2) crafting an illusion of blogging productivity by re-purposing content originally (and 15-minutes-ago-recently) written to help sketch out a research interest.
Either way, here it goes.
Business and technical writing requires that the author and the reader are closely aligned in linguistic interpretation and intended/conveyed meaning.
Understanding Derridean linguistic and poststructuralist theories allows the professional writer to use language and narrative structure to strategically position a product or company in the marketplace. It also reinforces the need for consistency in internally adopted and externally promoted language to reduce interpretive misses.
The following is a summary of Derrida’s essay “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”* to help explain the notion of destabilized language and meaning.
Because it relies on the reader and changes due to the arbitrary nature of signs, Derrida presents meaning as decentralized and unstable; this status of discourse, and specifically language, produces a continuous (inter)play of signification.
The instability of meaning based on signs and symbols alone forces consideration of narrative structure as a method of making meaning out of this linguistic interplay. Derrida goes on to show how structure, too, can be deconstructed and destabilized based on author or audience presence, metaphysics, proximity, repetition, and disruption.
Derrida discusses Lévi-Strauss’ position that only nature can be universal, and dependence on social structure is indicative of cultural influence. He concludes that the interpretive process is a posthuman act of creating truth, performed in absence of a collective origin of meaning or affirmation of signs and their signification.
* Derrida, J. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Writing and Difference. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978. 278-294.
** Image Source: Unencyclopedia.
Splitting Infinitives with Abandon: The Technician vs. The Artist in Writing & Dance
Posted by jjhnsn in Business Writing, Fiction, Poetry on September 26, 2010
Freedom of form and expression is a religion for artists, whether they’re writers, painters, sculptors, or performers.
In order to find that freedom and use it purposefully, we learn and master the basic rules, conventions, and technicalities of our art, no matter the medium.
We do this so we can break those rules, make them our own.
Writing lends itself well to an analogy of movement, so let’s compare it to dancing as an example of this study-master-create-destroy relationship, specifically technical/creative writing and ballet/modern dancing.
Both are art forms best practiced on a foundation of technical knowledge, so it will never be a case of either/or but rather and/also—as knowledge and experience grows in one genre or discipline of an art form, it informs our work in other genres. It’s why the technical writer should take a creative writing class, the fiction writer a poetry workshop, the ballerina a modern dance class, the stage actor a ballet class.
The technician (the technical/professional writer, the ballet dancer) versus the artist (the creative writer, the modern dancer). The latter creates art, while the former creates understanding.
This echoes a concept in an essay I just read for class, if you’ll spare a moment for theory. In “Authors and Writers,” Roland Barthes proposes that language is a structure that can be redefined or lost entirely for the author who functions to create ambiguity (a means), while the writer is bound to language as a vehicle for clarity (an end).
Applied to the real world, it’s why undergraduate writers with romantic notions of coffee shops, turtleneck sweaters, and dark-framed glasses may perceive technical writing as boring, not as sexy and free as creative writing. (If only they knew it was really us in those dark glasses, jacked up on caffeine and pushing deadline for the script of a video that demonstrates new software functionality, not a wandering soul contemplating the influence of religious and social construct in the coming of age of the heroine in a new novel, which surely everyone will read…)
Anyway, as a creative writer I’ve lived through moments of sheer boredom in various gigs as a technical writer, like creating documentation for an open-source content management system that seemed to bear ill will toward the end user who hoped to create, organize, and manage their content. (This boredom came before I started thinking critically about the theory and practice of technical writing.)
However, I’d argue there isn’t a creative writer out there who wouldn’t savor the precision and power of language involved in technical writing, the first step toward artistry and manipulation of structure.
Getting there requires an understanding of the foundation of the technical aspects of the medium, be it movement or language.
The appeal of creative writing—and I am definitely in support of following this path—reminds me of my daughter’s attitude toward dance when she first started (granted, at 2 ½-years-old). She thought hip hop, jazz, or even tap would be preferable to learning the technique of a plié in the five positions at the ballet barre (skipping third), drawn instinctively to what seemed to be a total freedom of expression in movement in the other disciplines.
The freedom of creativity seems more accessible than rules, structure, and technique, at any age.
Just as the dancer learns basic language, positions, and articulations at the barre and puts them together in combinations at center floor, the writer both masters and challenges the conventions of their genre through practice not only in grammar and mechanics, but also craft and artistry in language and storytelling.
Again, we learn the rules in order to break them and re-create them. The act of creating itself is an act of discovery articulated through a re-creation of the set of symbols (language, steps) we learn as technicians.
In creative writing, this is the freedom to split infinitives with abandon, to fragment our sentences for the sake of authenticity or effect, to prefer ambiguity for our Dear Readers over clarity. It’s how we share what Joyce Carol Oates refers to as “the child-self…a sort of flame that continues to burn throughout our lives, to which the writer or artist is by nature more attentive than other adults.”
Too much precision and “correctness” would extinguish that flame for our reader. But of course, it’s the creative writer’s duty to ensure this ambiguity is a result of artistry, not poor command of language and technique. Working outside genre conventions? Make it a challenge to current thinking in the field, not an oversight.
Artistry is a product of both originality and technical mastery.
The trained dancer is bound to the same paradox of technique and control versus creative freedom and individuality. A good example here is in modern dance–you have to know where a traditional position is and be able to “hit it” in order to break it, as dictated by choreography or spirit of the moment.
This reminds me of a statement in a modern piece choreographed by a beautiful and brilliant master. It was a move aptly named the “oh, s%&t!” because it required not a specific form or number of steps, but rather the dancer (me) had to literally throw herself onto the floor—a move that couldn’t possibly be fully scripted or choreographed, and it varied each time. (Writers, ever revised your work with the same sentiment two times in a row? Didn’t think so.)
Technique came in, though, as the momentum of this throw—initiated by the action of an arm toss—recovered into a very specific turn that led into preparation for the next movement.
Creative writers make this “oh, s%&t!” move all the time. We throw ourselves into our craft and work toward something beautiful, but we cannot predict the finer details of the outcome nor the ways in which our audience will perceive it. The artistic and poetic will always grow out of our technical control, the fulcrum on which we balance our turns of creativity and clarity.
References:
Barthes, Roland. “Authors and Writers.” A Barthes Reader. Ed. Susan Sontag. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1983. 185-193. Print.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Introduction.” Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. xvi. Print.
What Milton’s Satan Can Teach Us About Writing Business White Papers
Posted by jjhnsn in Academic Writing, Business Writing on July 3, 2010
Many of us still recall the five-paragraph format for writing papers that seemed to be a favorite of so many English teachers.
I’m not one of them, having preferred a more natural approach to writing where the argument fleshes itself out along the way. The freedom to play with the transition of ideas throughout the paper rather than how many paragraphs I could produce that–within them–followed yet another structure, the main idea of the paragraph followed by supporting statements. Blah. Yeah, I was docked a few times for format, but to me, it was the writing journey that mattered.
To help us structure our ideas and content, there’s a general rule in writing that goes something like
- tell them what you’re going to tell them (the Introduction)
- tell them (the Body)
- and tell them again (the Conclusion)
Enter the “real-world,” out of academia and into corporate America. The 5 paragraph prescription doesn’t always work, and folks just doesn’t have time for you to tell them three times unless you’re really creative about it.
Turns out the time spent studying composition theory and writing research papers really was a fertile training ground not only for producing marketing collateral such as white papers, but also in writing things like project plans, business cases, grant funding applications, and just about every other form of business communication that goes beyond the transactional.
Who knew that writing “Satan, Sex, & Scripture: The Phenomenology of Sin in Paradise Lost” as a pompous young grad student would have a direct tie to my career in the private sector? To me this answers the question so many students in freshman English ask themselves and each other in classroom or on the campus lawn – what does poetry have to do with my degree, or my future career? Why do I have to read Shakespeare? Or Chaucer? Why are there no pictures in these books?
It’s because of the limitless opportunities these works present for students to structure and present their arguments “off the fence,” as one of my professors used to say. To take a side and think critically in order to defend it.
One of my favorite duties at “work” is writing white papers. The most recent are available here and here. The writing process for me didn’t much differ from that of my research writing days. And yes, ever the English major, both those white papers have semi-colons in their titles.
Those that read white papers are looking to solve a business problem, so the content has to be both informative and prescriptive. (Sometimes, the writer must first make that reader aware that they indeed have a problem.) It’s the equivalent of reading up on other critics of a literary work before beginning the research paper, then writing in such a way that the reader is guided in how to read the given literary work based on the writer’s interpretation of it. Other similarities include
- facts and citations from credible sources,
- an engaging tone that’s not too dry,
- addressing potential objections early on,
- a summary of the paper and its argument in the introduction,
- and a conclusion that answers the question, “So what?” (Why should a literary work be read this way? Why will the ideas presented help me do business more efficiently or profitably?)
One thing you’ll notice on this blog is that I absolutely love language–the words and their rhythm, texture, room for interpretation. Because of that I’ll include from time to time excerpts of previous papers or short stories that I’ve written. And maybe the occasional piece of marketing fodder.
That said, below is the introductory paragraph from the paper mentioned earlier, “Satan, Sex, & Scripture: The Phenomenology of Sin in Paradise Lost.” It does three things that are also important for the intro to a business white paper:
1) Establishes the author’s position on what will be the central argument in the paper (Satan’s character represents the Jungian notion of the shadow),
2) Addresses the opposing viewpoint (readers who are drawn to the character show evidence of their own sin),
3) Provides evidence to support the argument being proposed (Satan’s fall and temptation of Eve).
The ancients teach us that true knowledge of the self comes only after an examination of the other side—the vengeful, deceitful, contemptuous recesses of the psyche—in order to discover moral absolutes. As a symbol of evil, the author of sin and death in Paradise Lost, Satan becomes the archetypal, primal human being, in consciousness though perhaps not in form, and embodies the weaknesses inherent in mankind. Milton’s Satan contains the other, darker, elements of the human psyche, the tendencies toward envy, wrath, lust, and pride that make us complete. Identification with Satan signifies not the reader’s sin, as some critics have argued, but an active, positive response to otherness, facilitating the incorporation of human darkness which manifests itself as evil when repressed in the psyche. Through his own fall and temptation of Eve, Satan offers the reader the means to recognize, confront, and consume her shadow, a Jungian signification for the dark or unacceptable emotions and behavior which reside in the unconscious mind.
Book Review: Media Buying “Demystified” in New Advertising Book
Posted by jjhnsn in Advertising, Business Writing on June 21, 2010
Media buying is a fast-moving, complicated process that demands a mix of both hard data and intuition to be executed successfully.
It’s not as easy as making a few phone calls and plugging some numbers into a spreadsheet, neither for ad agencies nor the businesses and organizations that plan and buy their own advertising.
Each media channel is measured differently, and the formulas used to determine the best placements vary depending on the advertiser’s goals, the different media used, and how the campaign results will be measured. And if you stare long enough, the formulas can turn into one big circular reference.
There’s a mountain of information to collect and manage that—if printed out and piled—would rival the height of the campaign budget in dollar bills.
To make sense of it all, Michael J. Massey and Chrissie VanWormer offer their media buying experience and expertise in their new book Your Ad Here: De-Mystifying the Business of Media and Advertising. 
In fewer than 100 pages, the book provides a high-level overview of basic advertising concepts and how to implement them in a media plan. The chapters are laid out in an order that follows the process of a media buy, making it a quick read with easily digestible tips, tricks, and examples. It’s worth the time spent following the case study of retailer Crazy Boy Jeans, who is making a buy to promote an upcoming denim sale.
Not only does the book demystify the esoteric language of media buying by providing clear definitions for words like flighting and makegood, it also offers practical tips on negotiating placements and for managing and organizing all the information related to a media buy.
In the first section, Massey and VanWormer cover
- Audience profiling and targeting
- Budgeting
- Account management
- Avail requests
- Data management
- Trafficking and creative
The second section reviews all media and the strategy and tactics behind the ads—from broadcast to word of mouth—and provides tips for incorporating those media channels into an advertising campaign.
Your Ad Here captures some of the key challenges that media buyers face, especially when working with a tight budget. There’s also an overriding theme of “win-win” that applies to everyone who participates in getting the message out there—agency, media outlet, the business, and even the interns looking to get into the advertising space.
And above all, note Massey and VanWormer, the message needs to be good, too, to help it spread.
Read the rest of this book review at Avenue Right’s blog, including my top 10 tips from the book.
Learn more about De-mystifying the Business of Media and Advertising and purchase the book at www.YourAdHereTheBook.com.
6 Tips for Understanding the B2B Business Decision-Making Process & Engaging the Buyer
Posted by jjhnsn in Advertising, Business Writing, Content Strategy, Marketing on April 29, 2010
It seems that I remember the login info for this blog after all….
I wrote this as a guest post for a B2Bbloggers, and thought I may as well post it on my own blog, too. Enjoy.
Whether making a purchase decision for myself or for my company, I’m still a human. A communications strategy that recognizes this as every business buyer’s position can make the difference between an engaged prospect or an unsubscribe, a loyal customer or a lost sale.
The marketer’s goal is to get buyers into and moving through the purchase funnel of awareness, interest, evaluation, acquisition, and loyalty. The decision-making process for purchasing business software, for example, is longer and more complex than that which involves an individual consumer and an impulse buy.
Fortunately, business buyers don’t stop being human when they clock in for the day as managers, developers, and owner/operators.
Therefore, many of the rhetorical tactics and psychological triggers used in consumer marketing also work for B2B marketing, engaging the people who visit our websites, read our content, and use our products in their professional roles.
This post examines the business buyer’s position, how it differs from that of consumers, why it’s important to appeal to both rational and emotional decision making, and how to engage this audience throughout buying cycle and, later, the customer lifecycle.
(De)constructing the Business Buyer
Spending money on cute shoes you don’t need, or even an item with a longer consumer purchase cycle, like a flat screen TV, isn’t nearly as big a risk as signing off on an item with the company’s money, be it external marketing spend or a software solution.
The business buyer is in a position of high accountability for purchases, and often has multiple “buyers” to persuade. This presents some unique challenges to marketers:
• More people are involved in the decision-making process, representing different facets of the business. With a software product, for example, it may be the primary user who shows interest initially, but the IT team and business owner are also involved in the final purchase decision. The different roles have different needs, and your copywriter is dealing with any number of different buyer personas.
• The buyer isn’t spending their own money. ROI and other advantages must be clearly documented to justify investment in one purchase which may take budget away from another. This is the time for case studies, data, and proof of time/money savings.
• The risk factor is often greater. Buyers fear that a bad purchase decision could lead to loss of time/money/productivity/data/hardware/resources for their business.
Where the decision to buy the shoes was largely on impulse and based on design and emotional appeal (i.e., feeling good while wearing the shoes), the purchase decision for a business product such as a software solution takes considerably longer than the typical consumer purchase, even for higher priced items such as that flat screen.
This requires marketers and sales teams to build a relationship with their contacts and keep in touch as a prospect moves through the purchase funnel, however long that may take.
Why Buy?
At work here is both the rational and the emotional brain. In general, the rational brain craves a logical approach to decision-making, hard numbers and facts. The emotional brain responds to more abstract concepts such as safety and trust.
• The rational buyer is going to look for things like product feature specs and proof of benefit from other customers to build a quantifiable justification for the purchase.
• The emotional buyer is persuaded more by their gut feeling in a product’s ability to fulfill its promise, the safety and trust they can place in a company or brand.
Engaging business buyers requires an appeal to both parts of the brain, using one to justify the other.
Promising time savings is great, but suggesting what they can do with the time saved is even better—putting it toward business development and getting ahead of competitors in the market, for example. Tell them the improved workflow will lead to better internal communications, higher team morale, and a better atmosphere around the office.
Just as desire motivates consumers to buy, it also motivates business buyers. Desire for efficiency, profit, data security, or even recognition for acquisition of an innovate product that impacts the bottom line.
The other primary motivator is fear. Here this could mean fear of losing business to competitors if the competitor has better resources.
A good way to build trust and credibility while at the same time dropping a few statistics and testimonials to prove the value of your product or business philosophy is through content marketing—white papers, case studies, email campaigns, social media, and the company blog.
Of course, if the product isn’t great, none of this will matter.
6 Tips for Getting Business Buyers Engaged
Let’s face it. Things like “BUY NOW!” in big bold letters and other techniques geared toward pressure and impulse purchase don’t work with these decision-makers. They need to be educated not only on the product, but how it will improve their business and professional lives which will in turn positively impact their personal lives.
To get a business audience engaged, marketers need persuasive content that appeals to both logic and emotion. The communication strategy should serve prospective buyers as well as current customers with lifetime value.
The first step, though, is persuading the busy business buyer to open your emails, or read your blog, or take your touch-base calls.
Here are 6 tips for developing a messaging strategy and writing copy that engages and motivates a business audience, wherever they are in the prospect or customer lifecycle:
- Be relevant. Target your content and communications based on the individual’s role (technical decision maker vs. end user, for example), pain points, and activity history. Use personalized content in emails, such as names with the greeting and closure, or content based on product interests. Get the timing right—send relevant communications based on where they are in the buying cycle. Marketing automation is a must-have if this is to be done efficiently and effectively.
- Answer why and how. Tell them why they need your product, and how it solves their business problems and pains. Create a compelling reason for them to buy, or to download your content, or subscribe to your blog, follow you, etc. Re-enforce value and purchase satisfaction with existing customers.
- Pique their interest. Write concise headlines and titles that set expectations but leave little mystery. Tell your readers how they can solve a problem. You can even use “how to” in the title, such as “How to Eliminate Manual Data Entry & Improve Workflow.” Focus on solution and benefit.Use numbers. It helps organize information and sets expectations with the reader. And who can resist a question?
- Educate early. Provide white papers, case studies, tips, and best practice content, tailored to the contact’s specific pain points and position in the buying cycle. Become a trusted source of information and content for your industry and the challenges its professionals face. Good resource for content marketing and copywriting are Junta42 and Copyblogger.
- Manage risk. The business audience needs to manage perceived risk later in the buying cycle, and you can help them do that by providing case studies and statistics. Testimonial blurbs at this point usually aren’t enough—the buyer now needs hard facts and case studies from similar companies to make a rational justification for the purchase. Emotionally, this purchase decision could be tied to either a promotion or a severance package, depending on the price tag and how it impacts the business.
- Make it easy for them to purchase your product and maintain a customer relationship with you. Keep in touch after the sale.
(This article appeared on B2Bbloggers at http://www.b2bbloggers.com/blog/6-tips-for-understanding-the-b2b-business-decision-making-process/ )
