Sometimes clients tell me that they want to write more of their own content but have trouble coming up with the ideas and the time.

One solution to this problem might be to “talk while you walk”.

I’ve been experimenting with this for about 18 months, using a smartphone app (iRecorder, at present) to record my thoughts on the go.

In my experience, it seems that a 30 to 60 minutes walk allows time for both mental chatter and conscious embarrassment to subside, and for useful material to start coming through.

Perhaps some creative advantage arises from these simultaneous right and left brain hemisphere activities?

If nothing else, I’m getting some gentle exercise and time away from a desk and a keyboard.

Initial preparation in the form of an outline, synopsis or mind map helps with the flow of material, particularly ghostwritten b2b blog posts. This conscious pre-planning, supported by the logical, goal-driven brain functions, helps me to better mimic the ‘voice’ and writing style of business clients I’ve not yet met in person.

A safe and familiar walking route is important because too much concentration on surroundings, traffic and other people tends to kill the quality of work produced. Early morning, before 7:30, is proving to be productive for me. (At some point I also want to experiment with night time walks and short story fiction…).

Does this walk/talk process always give useful results?

To be honest, I haven’t used it consistently for long enough to be sure. Also, my mind’s conscious, logical editor is a jealous muse and wary of rivals. Still, I see the creative potential that this activity might unleash and will persevere with it, using my own fiction and non-fiction output as the testbed.

- Mark McClure

A freelancing friend who writes case studies told an interesting tale of conversations gone awry.

She was hired to write a series of b2b customer success stories for an up-and-coming technology company. Everything seemed fine and she was all set to begin when, like the rumble of an approaching summer thunderstorm, something happened that made her uneasy.

The hiring marketing manager insisted that their end customer was too busy and too important to do an interview call with my friend, the writer.

This caught my attention because I know how important an interview is in discovering the voice of the customer.

My friend was not happy about this but she wanted the account and was prepared to work hard at keeping her new client happy.

Instead of a private call with the client’s customer she reluctantly agreed to attend a briefing call with the client’s pre-sales technical support manager for the account.

You can probably guess what happened next.

The call last nearly 90 minutes and covered a wealth of technical detail. But missing was any sense of the customer’s involvement in the project. Customer quotes? Well, just a few existing ones gleaned from earlier press releases.

My friend did her best at creating a story other prospects could relate to, and not just another sales puff piece. When I last heard from her she was on the fourth revision of this story and the client was unhappy at how long the process was taking.

To me, the message is clear: If clients want interesting and readable customer success stories they must be prepared to have the writer talk to their target customer. Of course, a preparatory call with the client’s sales account representative is also a good idea but the very best stories come from those anecdotes that bubble up during a conversation between customer and writer.

Just something to be thinking about when time is money.

(Note: I received a free, pre-release digital copy of this book from the author.)

I’ll say upfront that this review is probably biased. That’s because I read Marcia Riefer Johnson’s ’Word Up!’ on a smartphone while zipping around on the trains of Tokyo. Part of an ongoing experiment into my preferred digital and analogue reading habits.

It must have been good because I consumed almost every page using a device that’s much easier and safer to hold on busy trains than a tablet. And now, a few weeks later, I’m typing up this post on that very same smartphone while flicking through the ebook on a laptop. (By the way, Marcia also covers the perils and pitfalls of writing for readers with small screens.)

That said, Marcia has written a very entertaining and educational resource for any of us who wince when reading their own work… but then want to know how to improve it.

In other words, as its byline reminds her readers, this book’s all about “How to Write Powerful Sentences and Paragraphs (And Everything you build from Them).”

The thing is, ‘Word Up!” has value to me as both an author of science fiction and as a b2b commercial writer. My blogging schedule decided where this review would be posted but I want to point out that the book’s relevance to fiction and to non-fiction is a credit to Marcia’s own skill as a writer.

’Word Up!’ isn’t a ‘style guide’ although discussion abounds, sometimes humorous (‘sorry’, but my style on this blog slips between US and UK English…), on how “skilled writers make writing work.”
Marcia outlines this requirement for competency in a writer as a “command of the language”; noting that, “there’s no app for that.” Of course, such a creative tableaux includes the bundled vocabulary of grammar - something Marcia addresses in a pragmatic way throughout the book . (Read the ‘Up with (Thoughtful) Prescriptivism’ section to get an idea of how she rolls.)

The book’s three-part structure consists of a series of short discourses about words, moves on to sentences and paragraphs, and concludes with advice on the business of writing. Meaning that these delightful essays can be read in any order (although I went through them sequentially.)

My favorite section was titled ‘Decisions, Decisions’, in which Marcia applies many of the book’s lessons to one of her writings. Behind-the-scenes peeks into the working mind of an experienced writer are invaluable and I’ve read this section twice and will no doubt refer to it again.

Will ‘Word Up!’ make better business writers out of marketers, executives and engineers? Perhaps - especially if they continue to critique their own work after the initial draft’s been soaking in the subconscious for a day or two. At the very least, readers will have a better idea of what to avoid and what to do about it.

For professional wordsmiths I think this book is an invaluable reminder of the magic and power that words, sentences and paragraphs can be imbued with. Reading ‘Word Up!’ will help you choose more of them with care. Highly recommended.

You can find book excerpts, exercises, glossary, a blog and much more at Marcia’s ‘Word Up!’ website:
http://howtowriteeverything.com/

2023-05-25 Update:
I bought a paper version and look forward to comparing my reading experience with that of the tiny smartphone. First impressions? Turning pages is more thrilling than the scrolling screen.

I was recently asked to write a proposal for a freelance b2b blogging project. The prospect is an I.T. networking corporation, and they already have a blog with some excellent marketing content.

So, Why the Need For a Freelancer?

Well, they’re growing very quickly and their marketing department is probably overworked (sounds familar?)

Add in the hassles of managing the content-creation efforts of employee-bloggers who are also executives, and I think this is what’s driving the requirement for a freelancer.

Many readers will be aware that regular, quality blogging takes both time and energy - attributes that senior staff often have little to spare for ‘secondary’ projects such as blogging.

True, it’s possible to have a ‘cheap’ freelancer cobble together several hundred words of corporate ‘gobbledegook’ and pass that off as a ‘blog post.’

Ghostwritten B2B Blogs - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

The problem with this approach is that few online readers, even your most ardent fans, will come back for repetitive helpings of dullness. (Bland is the new boring in the blogosphere.)

Effective ‘ghost blogging’ in an executive’s voice requires research into how that person communicates in both professional and personal capacities. (Here’s where a recorded chat with the executive can be very helpful.)

Even so, it can still take a number of posts before the freelancer’s content is worthy of being called a ‘ghostwritten post’ - and this is why I usually turn down most requests to write individual posts. The ROI isn’t there to justify the background research required.

Think ‘Win-Win’ Freelance Content Marketing

The exceptions are where the project scope widens to include case studies, white papers and eventually a longer term arrangement (think, ‘retainer’). The payoffs for the client can be substantial in that they have a freelance resource already ‘trained’ in their products, services and marketing messages.

I welcome enquiries from IT networking companies worldwide who are interested in the benefits and payoffs to be gained from a regular freelance content marketing arrangement.

Well, here we are in 2013 - the ‘Year of the Snake’, in these parts - and I’d like to begin by drawing your attention to a new white paper resource on LinkedIn.

It’s a private group started by Gordon Graham, a very experienced white paper writer.

Gordon’s site is thatwhitepaperguy.com and he’s also just finished authoring a new book called, “White Papers for Dummies”.

His LinkedIn group, ‘Get More From Your White Papers’, only launched around Xmas 2012 time and has 35 members when I checked today.

Some of LinkedIn’s large b2b marketing groups have not been my cup of tea because the ratio of useful discussion to self-promotion was too low.

And I’m just too busy to wade through pseudo-spam these days.

However, this one looks like it will be a useful place to discuss how to get more from white papers. I’ll be dropping in only a handful of LinkedIn groups this year, and Gordon’s is on that list. If you become a member there, please feel free to say ‘hello’.