Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category
Falling off the fence
I’ve written a couple of blogs for different organisations this month. They all had one thing in common; they wanted to give their opinion on something relevant to their industry or area of expertise without offending or alienating customers and service users. Which isn’t that easy, because it’s very easy to offend when you critique. Not because you’re being aggressive, but because others may be defensive.
To really withdraw from this risk, you need to sit on the fence. In this position, you can balance the view from both fields. Which is fine when you want to produce bland copy that helps people explore both sides of a coin. But, when you’re looking for something attention-grabbing, sitting on the fence – as the saying goes – gives you splinters. Personally, I don’t get on with opinion ‘from the fence’. Not just because I don’t want to spend my evening removing splinters, but because I don’t trust it.
I managed to talk my clients round to taking a clear position. Here are the benefits:
Radio 4 Mash-Up
Sometime last year, I was on the phone to a writer friend of mine. I’d caught her parked up at some anonymous soul-sapping service station, munching her lunch and listening to a CD. Mid-chat, my friend changed her CD. Now, at this point, you could be thinking one of two things:
1. Either I am so interminably dull, that I wouldn’t notice when I’ve bored someone so much that they’ve listened to an entire CD while I’ve been rambling on or,
2. I’ve just proved (as if proof were needed) that age-old adage that women can eat, talk, listen, write, apply make-up, prove the existence of the Higgs boson and change CDs, all at the same time.
Where have I been?
Life has been very interesting recently, don’t you think? It’s been easy to get distracted online in the past few weeks; following protests, government shenanigans and world events. I could cite these distractions as reasons for:
a. My untidy house
b. My untidy* children
c. My untidy er, car
Squawk
Whenever there’s a significant break in blogging, you can assume:
1. I’m really busy producing wonderful stuff for lovely clients. So busy, that to blog would be like hurling metaphorical blancmange in their faces. So instead, my silence sends out a message of productiveness: “I am so focused on your project, I have no time to blog. Not a single second. I don’t want to blog in fact. I am loving this project.”
Tinker, tailor: Writing to your niche
Generally speaking, I try to avoid re-blogging anything to do with blogging – especially when the post is blatant corporate selling. So, it’s with a not-insignificant amount of knuckle-chewing that I pass this on. This is a post from Hubspot about how blogs are using more complicated language than traditional media. This shouldn’t be a surprise: old media = well-trained journalists who can write; blogs = anyone. Plus a few good copywriters. *Cough*
Feedback
I was asked yesterday what the theme of my blog is. I thought I’d share my answer: I don’t have a theme. I write about things that interest me in the hope that you might:
a. Find it interesting
b. Discover how I write
c. Discover something new
d. Laugh
That’s it really. I’ll write about copywriting only if I think I’ve got something useful to share with you. Otherwise, you’ll see all sorts of comment from design and photography to innovation and (cough) dancing.
I’ll be making the comment function a little easier soon, but in the mean time, keep emailing me.
What’s the (second) Big Idea?
I’ve been reading a few blogs by fairly well-lit individuals in the business and marketing world. Some appear to conjure up new concepts on a regular basis. Quite aside from how exhausting this must be, it made me think about whether it’s actually possible to come up with more than one Big Idea.
One or two of my subscriptions include the blogs of successful business gurus, considered experts who are watched by a certain sector of Corporate plc for the next big thing – this on the basis that they’ve already delivered one widely adopted Big Idea. But are subsequent pearls of wisdom original new ideas of value and reason for contact, or just the same story set in a different scene?