Virtual Assistance and You

We editors are a cranky bunch, always hacking away at misspellings and grammatical errors. Our rules, I’m sure, seem arcane to many.

As I’ve often pointed out, excellent written English is so far from the norm online that proper use of the language would seem to have lost all value amongst us.

There’s a core problem with ignoring good language, though: when ‘anything goes’ in language, communication is compromised. We could go so far as to say, the more tightly disciplined the language, the more powerful the communication. So when you start accepting any number of variations on the rules, you must also accept that you will not communicate as well.

Imagine saying something to another person and you really really care that the other person hears and understands. Do you speak differently than when you are not so intent on communicating something?

When representing your business in public, for marketing or any other reason, how much do you care that your audience (those who ‘audit,’ who hear) really gets your message the exact way you intend it? If you care much at all, then use of language is your central concern.

Communicating well is far different from merely spelling correctly or using complete sentences. It’s so much more than your spell-or-grammar-checker can catch that it belongs in another world entirely. The nitty gritty rules of writing are foundational, to be sure. But communicating well is where the pedal hits the metal.

Please consider these samples. Though well-meaning, each of these misses the mark the writer intended, and ends up instead conveying only a lack of careful proofreading or, it must be admitted, a lack of intelligence.

“With a Methodist mother and a Southern Baptist father, Clinton’s fiancé, who is Jewish, will invite another religious perspective into the family.”
What’s wrong: Clinton’s fiancé (subject of the sentence) is Jewish; it is Clinton who has the Methodist mother and Southern Baptist father.
Said properly: Clinton has a Methodist mother and a Southern Baptist father.  Her fiancé, who is Jewish, will invite another religious perspective into the family.

” … looking to ameliorate my skills and further my experience in the financial domain.”
What’s wrong: it would be very bad for you if you ameliorated your skills. Best to be sure you can state the definition of a big word before you use it – especially in any branding statement!
Better way to say it: “… looking to build my skills and experience in the financial domain.”

“I love Chocolate and it was just like , no better than most!”
What’s wrong: Was it really no better than most?
Better way to say it: “I love chocolate and it was like – no, better than most!”

” … he attributes Kurlan & Associates as a large part of his success.”
What’s wrong: ‘Attributes … as’ doesn’t make sense.
Better way to say it: ” … he attributes a large part of his success to Kurlan & Associates.”

“I’m in the business of helping independent professionals maximize their billable hours by handling their administrative support needs.”
What’s wrong: I hope you can see that though we might infer the meaning here, the language tries hard to obscure it.
A better way to say it: “I handle administrative support needs for independent professionals so they can maximize their billable hours.”

Note that in each of these cases, the best use is that which serves the reader’s understanding with most power and precision – and often the most simplicity.

Writing should be used to communicate, if you’re going to publish it. Do it with your reader firmly in mind. Serve his/her interests and nothing else. Create and polish your messages like love letters, because if you are selling anything, that’s what they have to be.

Look out, here comes one of those writing posts. I didn’t plan this, but today I ran into such an obvious example of mindless writing online that I have to go there with you for a minute.

Because communicating clearly is what writing is all about. It’s not a bunch of rules to frustrate you. Good writing respects the reader to the extent that it strives to communicate as easily, as seamlessly as possible.

You would not prepare a soup and serve it without giving it a taste, would you?

If nothing else, good writing requires, demands, and mandates proofreading, absolutely every time without fail. Please take that statement as verbatim, irrefutable law.  Part of my living is made by writing, and it’s still necessary for me to proof at least once, every email, update, and other iota that’s published online or elsewhere.

Because if you want to communicate and not just waste your time and everyone else’s, you must take the time to proofread.

Consider this sentence, culled from a news article I browsed today:

They also predicted using genetics alone many of those among study participants would be a centenarian.

Go ahead, read it again. See if you can make certain sense of it.

This was an article on CNN.com. Official sort of piece. Completely lacking proofreading, and therefore incomprehensible. What a shame. The news is confounding enough in its own right. Must its communication to me be equally garbled?

Okay, here’s what I think the author meant.

They also predicted, using genetics alone, many of those among study participants would be a centenarian.

Knowing that the article was about how scientists are now claiming to be able to predict which people will reach 100 years old in their lifetime, I can hazard a guess that the sentence and its sense might have been far better served stated thusly:

Using genetics alone, they also predicted that many of those among study participants would become centenarian.

And we sigh with relief. Here is language we can understand, language that cares enough about us to make sure it communicates cleanly, language that discretely disappears behind meaning.

Nobody really cares about grammar and proper usage, but we sure do care about understanding. It’s a fundamental need that can be satisfied by dedication to proofreading.

Like slow food, taking the time to proofread is a lifestyle choice that can boost returns in every area of your endeavor.

While I mainly emphasize my work in inbound marketing these days, I also offer writing services; and in that light, this post focuses on business writing. Copy writing. The choice and configuration of words on the page that convey your business’ meaning.

Like a bus driver on holiday, I’m hyper-aware of the writing I wade through every day online. I can’t help but notice the rarity of decent business writing, and  the still more rare existence of excellent business writing.

I read a post yesterday that emphasized improving your writing skills. The best part of the post was its title (as is often the case, have you noticed?).  ”Copywriting with a Bite to Hold Your Reader’s Attention.” Just the use of that word, Bite, made the whole thing worthwhile.

So of course, I thrilled to read Jason Fried’s take on the subject in a post published more than a month ago; a post that’s still collecting comments. Fried says,

“In nearly all cases, a company makes its first impression on would-be customers or partners with words — whether they’re on a website, in sales materials, or in e-mails or letters. A snappy design might catch their attention, but it’s the words that make the real connection. Your company’s story, product descriptions, history, personality — these are the things that go to battle for you every day. Your words are your frontline. Are they strong enough?”

Fried, founder of 37signals, nails it brilliantly when he later adds, “Remember: It’s not about telling a story. It’s about telling a true story well.”

Telling a true story. Not necessarily a factual story; just one that pierces the heart of your meaning. That is as close as possible to the truth you want your market to receive.

And telling it well, because a true story is a terrible thing to waste by telling it badly.

So to do your business copy writing really well, you have to chew and swallow two big chunks. The first is soul food: the intimate vision and understanding of your meaning in mundane as well as mythic proportions. The second is epicurean: the application of science and precision that will best convey that deep soul meaning, considering all the variables.

Nike’s tough-it-out, persist to the goal, indomitable athlete videos paired with “Just Do It” is a concise example. More complex is Fried’s exhibit from Saddleback Leather:

“All of our products are fully warranted against all defects in materials and workmanship for 100 years. If you or one of your descendants should have a problem, send it back to me or one of my descendants and we’ll repair or replace it for free or we’ll give you a credit on the website (be sure to mention the warranty in your will).”

- which I find hilarious. It’s hyperbole, of course, but that very exaggeration makes the company’s dedication to their warranty somehow more believable than the norm. The meaning they want to convey comes through with aplomb, and this is all that’s important.

What is the really true story that you want to tell in your business? And how can you improve your telling of it?

Today, I’m going to return to my foundation in copywriting as the focus of this post. For the most part these days, I work on and talk about inbound marketing. But despite my infatuation with how the internet works, old fashioned written communication remains my most true love.

There are two reasons I’m choosing this theme today. For one, I worked a long while yesterday on some editing and rewriting and was again reminded how much I love doing it. Some may consider it torture, but I love seeking the perfect word and rhetoric. For me, this is work that is fun.

The second and much more important reason to re-visit copywriting is the sad state of so many blogs and websites I visit, so many emails I receive. These are major vehicles for communicating the offerings of their respective enterprises, and yet the lack of decent written communication serves to obliterate the messages. Note, I’m looking for decent writing; not necessarily expert or brilliant writing. Just communication that accomplishes – however humbly – what it sets out to do.

Copywriting commands marginal respect, as is clear from any sampling of websites. Seems businesses consider it to be a luxury, something they can do without.

I’m not going to cite specific examples, because I’m not out to embarrass anyone. But if your readers have to go over your sentences multiple times to figure out what you mean, you’ve lost them before they even get a whiff of your offer. A misplaced or missing comma can totally confuse your reasoning. A there when it should be their, or a your when you really mean you’re can require careful dissection before the reader gets your point.

And we have neither time nor patience for such painstaking reading. There are enough choices: we simply move on.

Good writing is an invisible thing: we skip right over it and plunge into the soul of the message. Isn’t that what you want your readers to do?

Since the English language is so pervasive, those whose native tongue is something else are especially challenged in these internet times. So many wish to communicate with and sell to English-speakers; and though they may evidence great intelligence and creativity, if we have a hard time reading their thoughts, we’re off somewhere else at one click. And thus it is that potentially great resources, exchanges, and collaborations can be eclipsed, summarily pre-empted by poor communications. It’s a shame!

In the end, valuing good copywriting and other forms of written communication is a matter of respect for your reader. Especially in online marketing strategies, in which providing useful content is paramount, a key part of making content useful is ensuring that it’s easily consumable.

Communication is an exchange between people. You probably want your exchanges with others to be fair, clear, profitable on both sides. When your web presence is characterized by poor writing, you are not fully respecting the people who visit you there.

It seems a little thing, and it is! Especially when you take care to attend to it. When you neglect good copywriting, your business and brand eventually suffer. Eventually, that ‘little thing’ becomes an insurmountable barrier. But if you tend to the excellence of your copy, if you learn how to make the writing invisible, you’ll immediately find yourself at a new, higher level of opportunity and profits.

And if you think you might benefit from the services of an editor or ghost writer, please contact me right away.

“(A) weird thing about human psychology that you just need to accept for what it is and not complain that you wish it were different, is that people are motivated more by avoiding loss than by gaining benefit.”

I heard Brian Clark of Copyblogger say that.  It seems such a simple, stupid truth; something all grownup people have to swallow. No sense pretending we’re essentially noble as a species. Our reflexes are defensive, not compassionate, not productive.

So. Get over it. If you are in the business of persuasion of any sort, your tactics must center on your target’s fears, not on their hopes.

This is why social services are usually non-profits; they don’t sell protection, the way for-profit businesses do. Good Samaritan kinds of concerns are the opposite of protection. They expose you to risks and dangers.

Any enterprise that seeks to earn a profit must minister to some commonly-held fear.  As VAs, for instance, we must say we ensure that you won’t drown in a sea of overwork. Or we help present your brand so you will be seen in the best light, avoiding embarrassment and mistakes. Or we make your travel plans so you won’t agonize over the confusing schedules for hours.

We help to keep your fear at bay.

It would be more pleasant if we could say that as VAs we help make you successful; or we give you extra time in your day; or we make social media marketing a breeze. I have a whole string of such hopeful messages revolving on one page of this very site.

But that is going to change now. Time to stop wishing things were different. Time to get real and start selling to the gut. The pretty pictures I’ve been painting may satisfy some aesthetic; but it’s actually stark, repugnant need that’s called for, the dark mementos of terror.

Maybe I don’t have to feel slimy about it. Assuaging fear is a good thing to do. And business can be a building block for future altruisms. So, as they correctly claim, it’s all good.

A friend of mine says, “Communication, at best, sucks.”  Not a heartening statement. My friend is lovable, among other reasons, because he’s brutally honest. He’s right; communication – if we mean by that recordable interchange between people – is pathetically hit or miss 99% of the time.

But that’s the negative way to look at the phenomenon. More positively, we can say that human communications are complex, nuanced, loaded with meaning.

This has been true since the dawn of civilization, since the first spark of humanity glimmered. Yet now, in our own little lifetime, the suckiness complexity of communications has taken on even greater  sophistication. However else you might classify 21st century experience so far, there’s no denying that the leap from telephones and tv to the individual’s current ability to share anything and everything with the world at large on the web has been lightning fast and and inconceivably enormous.

All of a sudden, the potential for communications to mess us up increased exponentially. Out of nowhere, our risk of drowning in mis-understandings, mis-nomers, mis-spellings, mis-uses, and mis-communications of every stripe mushroomed out of control.

Before the internet, we were going along fine, increasingly independent of the written word. We had the phone, no need to write letters. Not much need to write at all, and with the 20th century love of science came a distaste for letters in favor of images (television) and the cold hard facts. (Indeed, the computer makes raw data accuracy almost infallible while the social web hugely increases the fallibility of inter-personal communications.)

But the millennium rolled over and this new challenge, this electronic miracle of the web is bringing us back to the dangers inherent in communications, whether written or delivered via another medium. How often have you keyed in to a webinar or teleseminar in which the speaker’s lack of organization belies her brilliance? Or ones in which the speaker’s so involved in the technicalities of the call that you get about 30 seconds of take-away out of an hour-long call?

It’s ironic that we now have mechanisms for communicating with unprecedented ease, but we lack the subtle skill with communications that would give these exchanges their full weight. Speech and writing (at least in America) are both degenerate shadows of their former selves. Compare the eloquence – both spoken and written – of 1910 to that of 2010, and you will blush.

It’s not much discussed, this plethora of bad writing, bad speaking, bad selling on the internet. We don’t point out one another’s mistakes, for fear of causing hurt. If anyone can suggest ways I can gently tell fellow bloggers that they need an editor, I’ll be eternally grateful. But nobody wants to wait for an edit; the web is just casual enough to make such things seem unnecessary.

But what is our alternative? We create the miracle of  the internet, and then we’re stuck using old tools in the new environment. Like when you move to a new house and your old furniture feels shabby in it.

Bad writing, unorganized teaching, offensive selling: these failures in communications are rampant on the web, which is to be expected from a medium that is all-inclusive and global. Still, I yearn for more attention to this elephant in our collective room. Can’t we set higher standards, celebrate more loudly the best examples of great communications (there are a few of these), broadcast the efficacy of proofreading and planning?

By the way, the descriptive, ‘sucks,’ is one I almost never use. Except today, in this post. It’s way too suggestive for everyday application, IMO. I sure hope we can evolve to a better understanding of communications: what it is to express and what it is to listen. I hope my grandson and friends will be able to say, “Communication, at best, syncs.”

Image by ahisgett via Flickr.

Image by Foxtongue via Flickr

All rightee then. Here we are, Epiphany already, and I’m just now managing to write this post because a wild impulse at the New Year had me completely re-doing my online real estate, creating a new sister site with accompanying journal.

See, I was considering my business plan for 2010 when the clouds parted, the heavens opened, and the perfectly obvious smacked me right upside the head. I need to have two sites if I’m selling two different services (copy writer/editor and social media marketing assistance). Is this not what I myself have been saying over and over? Niche clarity /communicability is the key to the kingdom.

I would link you to those earlier writings discussing said niche theory, but in the process of moving over the past week, I managed to lose almost all previous posts on the blog. I did make an effort to retrieve them, and the nice folks at my new hosting company tried hard to help, but it was hopeless. No matter. Never mind.

I do have the few most recent entries, however, and will upload them after this one goes up, just for the record. How fragile a record can be, especially in cyber space! You can either obsess about protecting your stuff, or you can get over it and move on.

Oh, and here’s the coolest thing. First off, I mulled over domain name possibilities for the new site, and right away came up with InboundMarketingAssistant.com – a bullseye description of my social media marketing services! Figured that had to be a sign.

Anyway, I’m pleased to have made this communications improvement for my company. Now, you can get help with writing the English language in one place, and explore your possibilities for social media marketing in another. This blog will continue in my accustomed groove, talking about virtual assistance and how it works both for the professionals in my field and for the clients who use their services. My other journal will focus on social media and inbound marketing. I’m thinking about limiting the posts there to 200 words. I’m so weary of long essays, aren’t you? If content is king, brevity is queen.

So that’s my nutshell. A new year, a new website, a renewed optimism. Hoping you share my faith that we’ll all make good choices and reap reassuring benefits in ’10.