PR 101

So, you are sitting down, watching the cursor blink, thinking, “damn, I hate writing. I am not any good at it anyway. Who would want to read a blog I write anyway?”

First, take a deep breath and relax. Every writer – and I mean every writer, no matter how good they are – thinks the same thing every time they sit down at the keyboard. I have been writing since I was five-years-old. I have been writing professionally for approximately 35 years. I still wonder if I am any good. If you don’t have doubts, you are not human.

Don’t let those doubts take over. I find the best cure for writer’s block is to just start writing. It’s the same thing – at least mentally – as diving into a pool of cold water. It is better to confront the obstacle and attack it. Once you do that, you will find it is a lot easier to write your blog.

Okay, I need to back up a minute. Once you have made the decision to become a blogger, you need to decide your blog’s overall topic. You can go two ways on this:

• You can write a general interest blog under a broad topic, such as business and marketing. You will have a lot of leeway to cover the many topics related to that choice. In that case, you are aiming at general audience.

• Or you can write a specialized blog on a specific topic, such as automotive repair. Here, you are aiming for people who share similar interests.

As I said last week, write what you know. That’s key. Your blog will be authoritative if it is clear you know what you are talking about.

No matter how well you think you know a subject, do some research. If you can back up your statements with facts and figures from a respected source, it makes your blog that much more believable. I always include a hyperlink to the source for anything I am citing. It is just common courtesy.

Now, for the actual writing. You don’t have to be a Mark Twain, Margaret Atwood or James Baldwin to be a good blogger. However, you do have to write clearly and concisely. You need to use the language you are writing in correctly. For those of writing in English, I recommend you buy two books: The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White; and Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. The former will teach you everything you need to know about writing. The later will teach what you need to know about punctuation.

I recommend a third book also – a decent dictionary. Do not ever rely on the dictionaries provided by Microsoft Word or any other online writing program. Engineers wrote them. That’s not a compliment. Those dictionaries are wrong more than they are right – especially when it comes to syntax and punctuation.

Okay, you have your tools. How you write is up to you. I know many writers who do an outline before they start. It helps them focus and stay on track. I don’t do that. But, I spent 26 years in newsrooms writing on deadline. I rarely had time to do outlines. You learn very quickly when an editor is breathing down your back to organize your thoughts and get going. However you choose to do it, do it.

Use Hemingway's technique of short, declarative sentences

As you write, remember what Mark Twain said: “I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

Mark Twain - Perhaps the greatest American writer.

In other words, keep it simple. When I work with students, I tell them to read two Ernest Hemingway short stories: Big Two-Hearted River, and The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Hemingway was one of the finest short stories writers who ever touched a keyboard. He usually wrote in short, declarative sentences (follow the link for a definition). That’s the way to write a blog.

Now you’re done, right? Wrong. Writing is only the first step. Rewriting is the key. I usually rewrite a blog three times before I post it. On my novel, each chapter is rewritten at least seven times. Remember, the best writing is rewritten and rewritten again. It gets better that way. A rule to remember when in doubt whether something should stay or go, take it out. If you have to think about it, it doesn’t belong there.

One thing I learned from one my teachers is once you have completed your final draft, let it sit for a day. I refer to it as marinating. Then come back to it, print it out and retype it. You will be amazed how many changes for the better you make.

The last thing to do is proofread. If you can, have somebody else do that. Another rule is never edit yourself. It is human nature to skip over your own mistakes. It helps to have someone else point areas that are hard to understand. When that’s done, publish it.

Next week, I am going to move onto the first of the social media applications – LinkedIn. It is my favorite and one of the most effective.

Blogging should almost always be the foundation of effective social media campaign. It is where smart companies establish that they are industry leaders. They do that by providing information that is both interesting and useful to readers – who the company should want to convert to customers. It is also place to interact with current customers. A blog is where people can post comments, debate points of information and make complaints. This is one of the best ways companies can find what the marketplace is thinking.

What blogging is not is another way to continue using the same tired marketing and sales strategies. It not a place to virtually pound your chest. You should not be bragging about what good job your company is doing. You should not be demanding that potential customers buy your products because it will make them younger, cut their bills, or help them lose weight. If I want to hear that kind of nonsense, I’ll turn on the television.

Sadly, I read a lot of blogs that contain that kind of content. I only read them once, though. The writers don’t understand that blogs are not a vehicle to continue to do what no longer works. That last point always mystifies me. The old methods are dying, but there are some marketers and public relations people still use them. I think they want to be able to tell clients they use social media. What they are doing is the metaphorical equivalent of using a hammer on a screw.

The reason social media has become so effective so quickly is because it has inserted honesty into the mix. People respond a lot better to the truth than they do to hype. It wasn’t marketers who did that – it was customers. I think customers have always wanted honesty from people they bought from. It existed in the days of smaller stores when customers dealt with same people everyday. It largely went away with the rise of mega-stores and mass advertising.

Blogs are major reason that honesty is being returned to marketing. Today, when a company is caught doing something dishonest, it usually shows up in the blogosphere pretty quickly. Remember the most important lesson of public relations – it most definitely applies to blogging – DON’T LIE. YOU WILL GET CAUGHT.

Besides building a brand platform, blogs are valuable for another reason – search engine optimization or SEO. As I have said before, the idea is to make sure your company comes up on the first two pages of Google. The more different mentions of your company on the web, the higher your Google ranking. A blog is a good way to increase company mentions.

What a good blog can also do is move people from customers to evangelists. If you consistently provide good, honest content, positive buzz will circulate. Your blog will be recommended by your readers. If they use your service, and you back up what you say, these people will tell others about how good your are. They will evangelize for you. That’s what you want to happen – third party endorsements. That kind of endorsement carries a lot of weight with consumers.

Okay, so if I haven’t scared you off of the idea of doing a blog – either a personal or corporate one, here’s what you do.

Incidentally, I am going to more than one post on blogging. It is too big of topic to do justice to in one post. This week, I will cover the mechanics. Next we will talk about the actual writing.

The first thing to do is choose and design a platform. Most web design companies can incorporate a blog format into your website – that includes do-it-yourself site design programs. If you decide to keep the blog separate from your corporate website – or you are doing a personal one – there are many free blog platforms available. Two of the most popular are Google’s Blogger and WordPress.

If you are interested, my blog is WordPress. My web designer – Joao Moraes of Sao Paulo, Brazil – likes the platform. I own the PR101.biz site. I did that for branding purposes. If you are a corporate blogger, you absolutely should own the domain. It is part of your brand identity. For the personal blogging, it depends on your goal. If you are going to blog out something personal, I do not think there’s any reason to purchase a domain name. But, if you are trying to build a personal brand, by all means, buy the domain name. Same reason as companies – it will become part of your brand identity.

I would also suggest you have a link to Twitter, so people can tweet about your blog. Include an RSS feed so people subscribe directly. Also, add Google Friend Connect. People who will really like what you will friend you. These are evangelists.

As for choosing a URL, I recommend using something that describes what you are doing. There are two reasons this blog is called PR 101: one – because who gives a damn who Jeff Cole is; and two – PR 101 describes my purpose in writing this blog. It is a primer on public relations, marketing and social media. It seems to work – I have built a large readership.

The tricky area – and I admit I stumbled on this one – is emailing a link to your blog. I would suggest you ask people to opt in before you send it out. I sent my blog link to a large list of people and gave them the option to opt out. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have had them opt in first. A few people viewed what I was doing as spam. I got reported as a spammer and got in a fight with my ISP. It is not worth the hassle, so don’t do it.

Okay, you have the whole thing set up. What next? Here’s what I suggest – map out 10 or 15 topics. I had 26 topics scheduled when I started. In that way, you have a road map. You won’t have to scrounge each week for a topic. It saves a lot of headaches. Once you get into to it, topics will suggest themselves.

As for choosing the topics, the rule is all of writing is to “write what you know.” If you are an auto mechanic, write about cars. You are building a brand platform through your blog, so you want to demonstrate your expertise. Now, here’s a key – don’t hype yourself. As I said, people don’t like that. Talk about properly maintaining a car, or when to change your oil, or when to replace a car’s tires. Show you know your subject well. I would much rather go to a mechanic who has a blog and shows he knows the subject.

Now, another key – publish on a regular schedule. I post once a week – always on Monday. It is important to do this. You want your readers to know that each Monday or Tuesday or whenever, that your blog is going to be there for them. We humans are creatures of habits. We like schedules. It bothers me when I get interested in a blog and then it disappears for a month or two. Not cool. If for whatever reason you cannot post on your regular day, tell your readers in the preceding blog, or in a very short post.

There’s a lot more to cover. Next week I will talk about the actual writing and blogging etiquette.