Dead literary critics: not your audience

Four tips to produce riveting copy online:

1 – Economy. If you can communicate in fewer words, do so. You needn’t always write a lengthy manifesto to explain your perspective. If you want to keep your audience, keep it short and snappy. Save the manifesto opining for your unshaven weekends in the woods. (Or that blog no one reads.)

If you must go long: give your readers frequent paragraph breaks, highlighted main thoughts, and make! it! great!

2 – Personality. Try not to be boring. Think in terms of stories. Ignore the temptation to be formal. Do not attempt to please dead literary critics.

Even boring, “necessary” content has the opportunity to engage. Check out the unsubscribe page at Groupon. But wait! Isn’t that video, not copy? Yes, but copy sets the scene. Copy instructs you to engage. Copy makes you to push the button and “Punish Derrick”.

(Caution: personality injection in legal notices isn’t recommended by my lawyer. Or yours.)

3 – Clarity. Hey, that reminds me of 36 other things I’d like to mention…. No! No! No! Veering outside the lane is fine, but too much weaving and wandering will distract and/or annoy your readers. Buckle up, and buckle down. Narrow your focus so each piece serves a clearly-defined purpose.

Editors pay writers for how they think. Your audience pays you with their time and attention. Can’t clearly convey your thoughts? Find the task too time consuming? Hire a commercial web writer.

(Things to look for: a web writer who understands content marketing, strategy, social media, and seo best practices. Yes: that’s a clarity-rich sales pitch to hire yours truly. It’s also a helpful reminder to be explicit in your copy if you want to direct your reader to a specific action.)

4 – Review. Take the time to review and revise. Then do it again. Your audience will thank you. They’ll also be willing to engage again.

While your version of “compelling copy” may differ based on audience, objectives, or goals, there’s one last secret, a magic bullet: make it genuine.

For more discussion on the topic, check out Junta42.  (P.S. Here’s my approach.)

Embrace conflict in your content

Conflict is beneficial. It engages your customer and firmly establishes your point of view.

As the saying goes, “you can’t please everyone, so why try?”

Inserting conflict into your content isn’t a free pass to be nasty. Rather, adding conflict is an opportunity to rise above the slush of the quickly forgotten, and painfully predictable, content found practically everywhere online.

One of the best examples I’ve found on the topic of using conflict in business writing is by David Meerman Scott. He tells the (humorous) story of working as a male model in Japan in the 1980s. Read it yourself here.

Choose a side. If you have the stamina, and the nerve, avoid being boring — it’s a life lesson as well as content strategy.

This scares a lot of people because choosing a side means you’ll inevitably find those that disagree.

Here’s a perfect example: an excerpt of a love letter Jerri (jerrieee@aol.com) sent me for Valentine’s Day regarding an article I wrote for AOL. It left me tickled pink:

“KATIE MC CASKEY, author of this crap, seriously needs a ARROGANCE EXTRACTION. This is the most effin’ snobby article I’ve ever read. [...] Her comments [...] are outrageous, and I’d suggest her bosses give her some time off for the attitude check. [...] Perhaps her focus is usually “hauteur,” but she doesn’t belong in a publication that the “unwashed masses” will read. I’m going to remember this author’s name and deliberately NEVER read anything by her again. [...] Was she born to royalty? I’m not a big Hoff fan, but right now, I like him much better than Katie McCaskey. Send her to Snob Rehab. [...] P.S. I wonder if McCaskey’s store, George Bowers Grocery , which she’s evidently a co-owner of, sells only “hauteur groceries?”

Clearly, Jerri — in all seriousness — was mighty p-o’d that I dared to criticize the interior design choices of actor David Hasselhoff.

I’d like to thank Jerri for such a colorful description and coveted search engine optimization for both my businesses. What a doll.

I don’t have an ax to grind with David Hasselhoff. He is about as relevant to my life as I am to his — with one exception.

I would be genuinely surprised if he were anything less than happy about the debate my article stirred. Had I written something bland and boring who would have cared? Why would anyone have wanted to look at his home for themselves and state their opinion on it, unless there was conflict from the get go? (David: You’re welcome. Hope the house sells quickly.)

Embrace this kind of reaction to any of your content, too. It means they’re paying attention.

Content strategy required for independent food retail, too

Solution:
Develop content strategy and related copy for a social media presence and new, CMS-driven website.

Client:
T&E Meats, Harrisonburg, Virginia
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Excerpt:

Why T&E Meats
In 2007 Joe Cloud joined forces with farmer, author, and activist Joel Salatin to save one of the few remaining independent, USDA-inspected abbatoirs in the Mid-Atlantic.

The existing butcher shop had been named “T&E Meat Market” after Tommy and Erma May, the previous owners. Cloud and Salatin renamed it “T&E: True and Essential” to highlight the crucial role meat processing plays in the local food ecosystem and to mark the difference between sustainabily-produced local meats and the industrial system.

T&E enables farmers in Virginia to raise and direct market quality livestock by providing excellent processing services under USDA inspection.

A small-scale facility like T&E Meats skillfully and respectfully butchers its livestock compared to the mechanised and inhumane systems common to most large commercial meat processing plants.

We are the only remaining full-service butcher shop and abbatoir in the Shenandoah Valley.

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See: T&E Meats website and T&E Meats Facebook page

Related articles

• The ‘lunatic’ singlehandedly taking on the US agricultural system (telegraph.co.uk)
• Joel Salatin on Big Organic and the Future of Food (thekitchn.com)