Reasons to Write Every Day

Everything we write has an audience. Even a private journal has the author to read it. The more we write, the more we get experience with words, learning what they mean in varied contexts. As we look back over what we have written, we listen, consider, and question its power and impact.

Blogging has an audience that responds and reacts. The comments let us know whether the message we send is received fully and intact. By blogging often we develop a voice that is consistent and more natural. As we learn our personal writing habits, we gain confidence that powers our message forward. As we listen to our readers, we more finely tune our message to communicate with them.

Blogging gets us closer to a clearer voice that people understand.

Liz Strauss
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Today Michael Stelzner announced the Top Ten Blogs for Writers.

I’m pleased and honored to say he included this blog and comment at position 4.

Liz Strauss’s Successful-Blog: This blog has some amazing insights into the craft of writing.

But, I must say Mr. Stelzner list is incomplete in that it could not include his own blog.

Keep this in mind when you check out the entire list.

Michael A. Stelzner’s Writing White Papers Blog THE blog by the man who wrote THE white paper on white papers and then wrote Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged. There’s a reason his newsletter has 20,000 subscribers.

Always deal with the best.

Thank you, Michael.

Liz Strauss

In this world of technology, we need to read and write. Police officers write reports, Chefs and restaurant owners write reviews, business letters, and now are blogging too. Managers often ask teams to write the status of what they are working on. Performance appraisals often ask employees to write a self-evaluation, complete with performance goals. Every business person I have worked with since the last century has communicated via email.

It’s my experience that most folks don’t have training or confidence in how to put what needs to be said into writing. This not only causes miscommunication, it also reflects on job performance, projecting a lower image of competency than is reality. The gap in training and confidence also steals time and causes stress as people work and worry over how to express their ideas and issues in writing.

Even teachers have this problem.

Though enthusiasm and job commitment help to overcome hurdles in other situations, at the juncture of writing without confidence, experience, or complete training, enthusiasm, and commitment can often cause additional stress and be debilitating. Writers begin to self-edit before they have even started writing, and they get what folks call writer’s block. What they really have is a major case of stress cause by a fear of failing. It’s dangerous to miscommunicate in writing.

How to Lower Stress When Writing

I offer this checklist to help writers refocus, to bring their thinking back to the writing, it’s purpose, and the audience it will be serving.

1. Make the work area visually clean.
2. Think about the person that is the audience. If the audience is a group, imagine a prototypical individual from that group to write for. Let’s call that person your reader.
3. Consider your reader’s traits and characteristics — know that your reader is intelligent, but doesn’t have the information you are about to share.
4. Decide what you want your reader to remember. Write that out in words your reader might actually use to say it.
5. Prepare notes — bullet points — to organize your thoughts around what you want your reader to remember. Most informal communication should convey less than three bullet points. One idea or bullet point is perfectly fine in an email.
6. Use the right tool to communicate. Know the heirarchies of business communication. Understand which is most appropriate and effective for the information you have to share.
   Instant Message > Email > Business Letter > Formal Proposal
   Instant Message > VoIP/Telephone > Meeting
7. Write up your message, using your notes and a clear mental image of your reader and the venue as you write.

Follow this checklist and you’ll find that stress will fall away. Writer’s block won’t be a worry, because you’ll know what you want to say, who you want to say it to, and how you want to say it. You’ll know the type of communication and the venue. You’ll be able to imagine your audience and get to what they need to hear from you to understand your message.

Almost always writer’s block is caused by the fact that we don’t know what we want to say or who we’re talking to.

Behind every Successful business is an Outstanding manager. –Perfect Virtual Manager

Liz Strauss

A brand new blog means a brand new audience. You may hope that you will draw your customers as your readers, but who knows who will come to read your prose? You may draw a new potential customer, someone who has just discovered you and your organization, someone who could be an influencer, a customer evangelist, taking what you to say to many more potential customers leading your enterprise to exponential growth.

Just the idea of not knowing who is reading can be an overwhelming state for some writers. How to decide on simple things such as writing voice and style can become looming questions. I suggest that as the blogger, you make a choice that your reader will be an intelligent person who doesn’t knowthe information, a single most important reader, who is very much like yourself.

To make the audience take form as a person, which will make the writing easier and stronger, ask yourself these questions;

• Who am I writing for?
• How is this reader like me and how is this reader not?
• Why does this reader read blogs like mine?

One helpful thing to do is to sketch a written profile of the person who might be the average reader, that single most important reader that you will be writing for. Then with that reader in mind, you can write with confidence and care, in a conversational tone of voice, choosing words and phrasing that is appropriate for that reader to understand the content as well as to get a sense of who you, the blogger, really are.

Liz Strauss

I was just answering two comments on the post Pay Attention. No, I Mean Really. Doing that left me thinking of something blogging has taught me a lot about — not just the beauty of paying attention to one thing at a time — but the fulfillment of offering readers a chance to talk.

When I first started blogging, I often tried to do too much. I’d write a post that carried the load of too many thoughts at one time. Those blogging posts went both deep and wide. They were so complete, I left no room for readers to add their thoughts.

It’s not a conversation when all a reader can say is I agree with you, Great post. or You covered that subject really well. There’s just nowhere for a conversation to go, if I don’t leave room for a reader’s thoughts to squeeze in between my own. Now I know to think about the conversation when I write.

Here are a few things that I do differently now.

• I ask more questions without answering them.
• I don’t try to think through every possibility as I once used to do.
• I’ve backed off on holding myself accountable as an expert on the what I write about and instead, think of myself as one of the audience talking to another reader about an idea, waiting to hear his or her point of view.

Right now I’m wondering what you’re thinking about most blog posts. What is the thing that pulls you out? What changes you into a person who writes a comment, who wants to add to the discussion, who feels your thoughts are important, will be valued, and will be heard?

Those are questions I think about when I blog . . . only readers can answer them.

Liz Strauss

I do well at ghost writing and at acting because I have room for many points of view. I can stretch my head around a variety of scenarios and motivations. That same trait, skill set — choose the label, it doesn’t matter — makes me unable to invest heavily in political causes. I’m the consummate centrist. Could be the archetype.

I have a tendency to balance folks who have a cause, by seeing the other side of their argument. I don’t argue with them. I want to understand their points, but as they talk I also hear the falacies in what they’re saying–whether I choose to give voice to them or not.

Knowing this about myself, I rarely share less than the most important of my own ideas. I find few things worth debating or arguing over. I like to meet in the center, where we agree. Most things in life don’t really matter nearly as much as people act like they do.

That being said . . . I took that approach to the Internet. I sure didn’t want to listen to folks promising tales of doom. Hey, folks have been promising tales of doom for as long as there have been folks. Then Brian Clark, a friend and a man I respect, asked me to read something written by Doc Searls. I did. I wrote about it in a piece called Saving the Net–Doc Searls & Walter Cronkite.

I began that piece talking about the media hype around y2K and ended that piece saying

I think that I might have found the person I can believe.
Doc Searls is my Walter Cronkite.

I still feel that way.

Yesterday on his personal weblog, Doc again pointed out that people are running ads and making rules that will affect all of us. They are people who own media, telephone, and cable companies–people who own the pipes over which the bits and bytes that you’re reading right now are traveling.

Doc says it all in so few words.

. . . ads are influencing Congress and governments around the World as they write the rules that will shape the future of the Internet and communications. . . .

where is the voice and message of the Internet community — the Internet innovators, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts — in this world-changing discussion? . . .

If we do not participate in the debate, if we do not transform the messaging, the rules will not be written with our best interests at heart.

He’s announcing Jeff Pulver’s Viral Marketing Contest and now so am I. Here are the contest rules.

If you read the piece I wrote called Doc Searls and Walter Cronkite, you’ll know why this is important. If you don’t have time, I understand. For the longest time, neither did I.

But would you have time to pass this on?

Liz Strauss

In my own blogging experience, I’ve found three cornerstones to building a strong and thriving blog that contributes positive value and relevance to the Internet. I’ve written about them in an article at Successful-Blog, Content that Keeps Readers. The three cornerstones are

• Original, quality content that contributes something new and worthwhile to the global conversation.
• Presentation that supports the content and makes accessing that content easier.
• An authentic and informed blogger who is passionate, writes well, and cares about readers..

Without all three of these, in my opinion, what you have is something other than a blog to work with.

Late in February, Matthew Boyle of Fortune Mazazine did an article, Do’s and don’ts of corporate blogging, that took a similar approach to corporate blogging. As part of the article he queried, Technorati founder and CEO, David Sifry about why corporations are being slow to try their hand at blogging. This was the reply that Mr. Boyle reported.

It’s not hard to fathom why. “It’s scary,” says Technorati founder and CEO David Sifry. “The lesson everyone learns in Marketing 101 is, ‘Control the message.’ Blogging puts that on its head, and that’s very frightening.”

It seems Matthew Boyle knows a bit about blogging himself, however, because he goes on to offer advice well worth following. Here are his ideas and mine blended together.

1. Know where your company should be blogging. Cultures that do well are those that have faith in their employees. Choose someone who can write well, with a warm, authentic, voice of authority. Make sure that someone likes people and likes blogging.

2. Know that your blogger is passionate about your company and about knowing your audience. A bond between readers and blogger are the magic formula that makes blogging work. Readers come back to a blog to visit the blogger.The blogger needs to share in the experiences and feeling of his or her readers. The same holds true if you’re using a team blog, everyone needs to be working together and passionately involved with the subject.

3. If those two things are happening, then your blogger will engage your readers. Blogs are interactive. That’s why I read them. I could probably find most of the same information elsewhere, but I can’t find the interaction with the same people. I can’t find the place where folks know my name elsewhere.

4. Keep up and share link love. Folks who read blogs spend 11% more time online reading, and they like to know that you do a little of the same thing. Most of them will be bloggers too. Sharing links with them makes them feel a part of your blog. That’s important, especially if you believe in word-of-mouth marketing.

5. Mr. Boyle says, “Cover your rear.” I think I would say, “Learn from a pro and keep learning.” Set up some rules to start with, but know that if you choose your blogger well chances are you won’t have a big problem. So much depends on your company culture and whether you should be blogging to start with. (See point 1.)

Blogging is a great way to offer your customers a human face that represents your company. Someone that they can ask when they have questions or point to and say, “Hey, I know Liz and say she said that isn’t so. . .” when they hear something that isn’t true.

Your company blog won’t save you from bad business decisions, but it might help you find some customers you never would have found.

Liz Strauss

Writing is what I do for work each day. I’ve been making my living finding words that make sense together since before my son was born–he’s now in his twenties.

I’ve written

• magazine and blog articles
• newspaper columns
• children’s books
• textbooks for students and teachers
• personal and business correspondence
• business plans
• process models
• strategic documents
• business blogs
• creative writing
• sales and marketing copy, including direct mail

The scope of my work covers all ages and education levels. My writing voice can adapt to meet the needs of the work. I invite you to visit my other blogs to peek around at what interests you.

My writing voice is known for making relationships with readers. My business voice has an upbeat intelligence that makes reading easy and concepts accessible. My personal writing voice is known for it’s warmth and how it draws readers in.

Somewhere you’ve read something I’ve written. I often write words that don’t carry my name.

I can do the same for you, or I can show you how.

Liz Strauss

Do visit my other blogs:
Letting me be
There you might look through the titles in the sidebar marked Popular Posts. My favorite is one called “Walking on Water.”

Successful-Blog
There you might go to the Page in the sidebar called Popular Posts. My Favorites are the Thinking Posts, Writing Posts, and the Business Posts.

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Liz’s consulting work is billed on a sliding scale, depending on the task and a client’s ability to pay. Writing consultation, and Blog consultation for individuals and noncommercial blogs is $30-70/hour. Writing, Ghostwriting, Career Coaching and Business strategy for inidivuals is $30-$100/hour. Corporate fees begin at $90/hour.

Should you find these a burden, but need help, please talk to me.

Robert Scoble works for Microsoft. He doesn’t have a big title. His office isn’t a suite. In fact, there’s not a window. He’s called a “Software Evangelist,” and his job is to work with outside engineers.

I guess the only unusual thing about Robert Scoble is that he has a blog, Scobleizer, and that blog is 25th of the 33,000,000 blogs indexed by Technorati, the seach and blog measurement firm. What Scoble has done for Microsoft is more than any ad campaign, website, or PR work has been able to achieve previously. He has given Microsoft humanity–a face that folks aren’t mad at.

On his blog, Scoble talks about his life, comments on tech gadgets and products throughout the tech world, including, but not exclusive to, his own company. He talks about his wife and about other blogs he reads. He also talks about little things that happen at Microsoft.

His value as a customer ambassador shows when problems occur. At times like that, he’s a human face, a regular guy that people already know. For example, in 2005 when Boing, Boing the number 1 blog began criticizing Microsoft for a security bug in it’s MSN Spaces service, Scoble just agreed. He took the message back to Microsoft and kept a running conversation going on his blog about it.

‘MSN Spaces isn’t the blogging service for me,” he wrote. Nobody at Microsoft asked Scoble to comment; he just did it on his own, adding that he would make sure that the team working on Spaces was aware of the complaints. And he kept revisiting the issue on his blog. As the anti-Microsoft crowd cried censorship, the nearly 4,000 blogs linking to Scoble were able to see his running commentary on how Microsoft was reacting. “I get comments on my blog saying, ‘I didn’t like Microsoft before, but at least they’re listening to us,’” says Scoble. “The blog is the best relationship generator you’ve ever seen.” His famous boss agrees. “It’s all about openness,” says chairman Bill Gates of Microsoft’s public blogs like Scobleizer. “People see them as a reflection of an open, communicative culture that isn’t afraid to be self-critical.”–David KirkPatrick, Why There’s No Escaping the Blog, Fortune Magazine

Scoble was authentic–the real deal. He gave Microsoft humanity and gave customers honest communication. He’s approachable. He’s credible, He’s there to complain to for thousands of fans and customers each day. Scoble let his audience know that Microsoft was listening. In the hands of another, the result might not have been the same.

Choose carefully who writes your blog. Make certain that the person understands his or her role as ambassador and conduit is as important as that of writer, community builder, and conversationalist.

This person should be able to live the brand, be your company’s brand in the eyes of your customers. That’s what your customers will see and believe.

The person you’re looking for has an energetic and curious passion for finding out about your products down to the smallest detail, a knowledge of the industry, a respect for customers and for competitors, and a writing voice that shines through with warmth and personality.

Hey that sounds just like me.

Liz Strauss

As with any writing, writing for the Internet is meant to communicate a message. Some folks lose sight of that in the mix of keywords and attempting to gain search engine rankings.

Ironically, search engines seem to understand that simple necessity better than some human writers do. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and the multitude of others know that quality content is what their searchers value. As a result, the algorithms that drive search engine spiders are constantly being updated to further refine the ability to judge content for its quality and relevancy.

On the Internet, quality content is considered relevant when the information

• is factual and accurate–not contributing misinformation.
• is original and interpretive–adding value to the Internet conversation.
• is well-expressed and well-structured–good writing that is worth reading.
• is valuable and linkable–other sources find the information worth linking to and citing.

Content is high quality and relevant when the presentation

• is simple and elegant in design–form follows function.
• follows the rules of effective written communication.
• is inviting, offering white space, and visuals to support the text.

Content is high quality and relevant when the writer

• has a presence and a voice that readers respond to.
• shows respect for readers through word and topic choice.
• interacts with readers using the comments section to form relationships and links.
• credits every source and links to other sources liberally.

The connectedness of the internet means that a writer is always writing for people, readers, not search engines. People read the ads that pay for search engine spiders. The spiders don’t mind that I always choose people’s needs ahead of spider’s needs. Really.

I’ve got a few pages that will show you what I mean.

Liz Strauss