A business lesson from Helen Thomas

Last week when Helen Thomas made her now-famous remark that the Jewish people should ‘get the hell out of Palestine,’ there was an instant backlash as only our modern media can deliver. Thomas very quickly learned what many business owners should understand – in this world of social media, you are a very public figure.

Your personal views should stay that way

I’ve seen and heard a lot of very respectable professionals weigh in on the news about Thomas, the upcoming Congressional elections, the president, and on just about any other polarizing issue they feel like. Usually, I hear it out loud in a business setting, but occasionally I read such things on personal Facebook pages, and even some smaller company blogs. This can be a terrible move for your business.

Recently I was on an airplane heading home and the guy behind me started in on politics. He was loud, angry and beyond rude. Near the end, he was handing out business cards to a few folks. I wonder how many thought he’d be just as cautious in his handling of their business needs.

Not just you, your employees

Wanna have some fun? Do a Google search for your company and see how many employees pages come up. Dig in and read some of their political views. This is how many companies get portrayed without even knowing it. We highly recommend to our clients that they monitor their employees’ online activities and distribute corporate guidelines for use of client names, political views, etc.

Subtle hints can be damaging

I’ve seen many advertising firms proudly helping out with political campaigns. They even go so far as to place this work on their websites. In this polarized society this can be a dangerous move. I know clients who have very clear political agendas. These color who they chose to work with. As a result, we keep a very large distance between our work and our personal ideas. Even subtle hints on your corporate website can be damaging. Before you do a group photo of executives, look carefully at their neckties, and lapel pins. Before you do a photo of the exterior of your company headquarters, look at the bumper stickers on the cars in the parking lot. Paying attention to these small communications can protect you from sending out the wrong message.

Google SSL, & Tigers & Bears. Oh My!

I stumbled upon this today. I literally left the “S” in there from a previous secure website visit.

https://www.google.com/

It’s a secure way to search Google. Now, granted, I’m not always early picking up the latest goings on from web companies (I’m a little busy), but from the look of it, this is quite new.

“Available as a beta service, the new ‘https’ Google search site sets up an encrypted tunnel between the user’s browser and Google as a way of making it impossible for search results to be intercepted by third parties such as ISPs.” An article at Network World – Click here >>

This is good stuff. Or is it?

“If you click on a link to some non-SSL page…then when you arrive at that page you will arrive with your referrer stripped,” Scroogle founder Daniel Brandt said. “The webmaster on that site won’t know that you came from Google, and won’t know what search terms you used to get there. He won’t even know if you used a search engine (you could have just keyed in the URL in your address bar, which would also cause no referrer).”

As head of a company that makes money getting Google to like your website, I may be a bit concerned. Some say this will create problems for companies who want to use content to rank higher on organic results pages. As a company that tracks which web terms your prospects use to search, Ion Leap uses Google data to determine which search terms are getting the most demand. So with SSL encryption of your search, are we in trouble?

Nah

I don’t believe honest marketers will ever be in serious trouble on the Internet. There will always have to be ways to find good information. Way back, in pre-history, I said that if content writing is no longer a way to help companies get noticed on the Internet, then Ion Leap will morph into the kind of company that still helps businesses get attention. We’re Internet marketers. We will adapt.

At the Clicky blog, they posted this apocalyptic rant announcing the death of analytics – “Say goodbye to search analytics…Google just announced their new secure search beta…the search term is not passed through the referrer, and hence no analytics tool (not even a good old log analyzer) will have any idea of what a visitor searched for to reach your site.” Clicky also hinted that this may be a reaction to Google’s recent difficulties with restrictive governments like China.

Maybe I’m not so negative about this new development because Ion Leap does more than just content for search optimization. Or maybe it’s because I have never-ending admiration for Google’s ability to understand what the Internet, and the public who use it, needs.

If it sucks, it won’t stick

Google isn’t out to make our lives difficult. After all, who do they receive their revenue from? Folks who care about their website traffic, that’s who. If they make that person’s job difficult or impossible (as this may do) then they’ll be hurting themselves beyond belief.

Why?

Is this the sign of a company that’s finally getting too big and distant from it’s customers?

Maybe.

I sure hope not.

Freelance workers. A permanent change?

There’s a great article in The Economist this week. (May 15, 2010) “A Clouded Future” talks about how the economy is driving more freelance project work, and how ‘ruthless cuts in full-time jobs’ are forcing workers towards online “e-lance” work sites to take on project assignments.

A temporary change or something bigger?

I don’t think too many pundits will say that today’s freelancers will love it so much that they continue even when the economy inevitably works its way back. However, I know a group who will – the content writers of Ion Leap. We purposefully keep our business lean, using freelance subject matter experts paired with our in-house search optimization experts. The question is, when the economy does turn around, will our pool of writers dry up? Will they all rush back to write for newspapers, trade pubs and TV sitcoms?

The new certainty of freelance.

I came up in the advertising agency business. To us, permanent freelancers were folks who lost their jobs in bad times or were simply un-hirable in good times. I believe this economy has changed that notion. With more people now getting a taste of freelance and plenty of employers still skittish about hiring permanent workers, the acceptance of a freelance lifestyle may be upon us.

On the workers’ side, the advent of sites like LiveOps, Elance and oDesk means e-lancers have a steady stream of projects. These days, such project work might seem more of a certainty than a full time job. Of course, a turn in the economy will have a large percentage of those who currently freelance rushing back to the “security” of the corporate world. But, will there be a common characteristic of those who rush back? Will they be the ones who couldn’t contribute enough to make it as freelancers? Will they be the ones who will also make weak full time employees? Given the scope of the economic sea change driving all this, it’s possible we’ll see macro trends like this at work.

From the employers’ perspective, the savings in healthcare, pensions, etc. means monies that can be spent on growing the company, and weathering the continued economy. Will they rush to hire when the economy turns around? Probably. After all, many employers like to keep workers securely beneath their thumbs. But perhaps this taste of the freelance option will change their approach long term. Once bosses see that the Internet allows them to get a good product without having to brow beat workers, maybe they’ll want to continue in this vein.

Signs of the permanence of freelance.

On my way to the airport today, where I picked up The Economist, I saw a poster in the NY subway about the formation of a Freelancers Union. This is certainly a testament to the number of such workers. There are already options for group healthcare. Could pensions be far behind? Child care? Maybe these are the signs that freelancing is taking hold as a more popular work option in North America.

What these changes could mean for your company.

If, as I predict, there will be a greater number of permanent and very talented freelance help available, your company will enjoy the benefits of outsourcing more work.

Take your corporate communications, for instance. With the shrinking of print media, definitely a long-term issue, there are many more freelance writers out there. But how do you vet them? How do you keep them on strategy? How do you guarantee you’ll get the max SEO value out of their copy? How do you avoid the biggest single difficulty in working with freelancers – their lack of accountability?

Simple, you hire Ion Leap.

Ion Leap takes on content writing for companies who really shouldn’t be handling such duties. We match a freelance content expert for your category with our in-house search optimization master. You get our marketing smarts. You get timely, regularly refreshed content on your website and in your other marketing communications. You get, as one client aptly phrased it, one throat to choke – our throat.

If you’d like our kind of accountability, if being the written voice of your company is not your core competence, contact us at the link above. We’ll quickly convince you that outsourcing your content writing to Ion Leap should be a permanent option.

Let go of your content writing

Many people who start businesses have a very difficult time letting go of certain aspects of their baby; and for some of us letting go of the voice of our company can be a very scary thought. A truly great content writing company can make this easier and free you up to focus on running your company.

The need to let it go.

Most of your career, you’ve probably heard you should be letting go of more and focusing on what you do best. Perhaps what you’re best at is being the voice of your brand. If that’s the case, read no further. But if you have even a small doubt that you’re using your time wisely by being the company’s official blog writer, copy writer, press release writer, Twitter-er, and Facebook-er then you have found the right website.

The truth is, as your company grows, you simply must delegate more and more so as to narrow your focus. To do so means you will lose some of what the company was when it was all you. But any company that’s all you is, by its nature, limited in how big it can grow. Outside ideas are a critical part of success.

Your company’s tone and manner.

Ion Leap spends a good deal of time talking and listening to our prospects before we begin any engagement. Most of our clients quickly feel very comfortable that we understand their corporate culture and turn over full authority for us to post content. But that’s not our goal. Our goal is to express your brand in ways that your prospective customers and Google want. We’re very happy to work with your company in any way you want your brand content written. Some clients want to keep more control and we have great procedures to save you time in this.

No matter which way you’re comfortable turning over some or all of the writing for your company; we will have the greatest respect for the unique voice of your brand. We’re confident that even your long-time clients will love the way your brand is being given voice.

Don’t take our word for it. Ask for references.

If our prospective clients are getting near the point of hiring us and haven’t asked for references, I make a point of suggesting it. I’m that proud of the work we’ve done for our clients and that confident that they’ll sing our praises. If you’d like to speak to us, or some of our clients, don’t hesitate to contact us at the “contact” link above. I’m confident that they’ll say they wouldn’t trust their content writing to anyone else.

Content writing. The lifestyle

It really is a lifestyle. If it’s not, you won’t be able to handle the rigors of it – every day, finding new ways to be relevant to your audience, to add value, to make Google love your words. Over the last 5 or 10 years, content writing for the web has made my life far more interesting.

Exposing yourself

While we almost always write on behalf of other people/companies, good content writing requires that we pour ourselves into every sentence. The best writing exposes the personality behind it. It takes some people a while to develop the ability to let go and be this public with their opinions, their feelings. We have one blog writer who won’t tell her friends she’s doing this for fear they won’t like what she writes. I tell absolutely everyone to come in and read my stuff. I guess I’m a content exhibitionist.

Meet great people

People who are actively participating in social media, blogs, articles, etc. are just naturally interesting. They see more of the world; they have to in order to stay plugged in. All this Internet technology makes it so much easier to be in touch with them and share parts of your life. I’ve found the relationships I’ve formed over the web are very real, in some cases more close than the people who I see every day.

Don’t believe it. I have yet to write in a hammock. Airplanes, yes. Hammocks, no.

Learn a little about a lot of things

While content writers won’t likely be complete experts at many things, the act of writing on behalf of clients means you’ll be smart about a wide variety of subjects. If you’re the curious type, this is the job for you.

As an advertising person, I’ve learned enough to be dangerous about banking, skiwear, Worcestershire sauce, tomatoes, pizza, chicken, forklifts, mountain climbing shoes, stationary bikes, and a lot more. No two days are the same and that makes sitting down to work fun every day.

It also requires me to continuously keep my mind sharp. Making your content writing interesting means you need to bring something to every new subject you tackle. As a result, I read an awful lot, even if I feel like I know a subject. Every business out there is undergoing continuous transformation and we have to keep up.

Living the lifestyle

I get a kick out of wearing jeans most days. In the summer, there’s every chance I’ll be in shorts. Being a night owl, I sometimes stay up until about 2 am. Often I’m up working on social networking for a client or reading the latest to stay sharp a subject. Being up that late sometimes means getting to work at 9:15 or 9:30, and my life works really well that way. I have time to help get the kids out to school. I drive a short commute to the office (with a stop at Starbucks on the way) and I’m writing again by 9:30.

Some people think that the pressure of having to write something brilliant under a deadline is grueling. I actually love it. I’ve been doing this now for over 20 years – first in advertising, then on the web – and I’ve never come up empty.

Loving content writing makes Ion Leap better

We look for a particular kind of person to be one of our blog writers. You can read more about our demanding requirements here. The main requirement is an ability to use active listening; to hear what a client really stands for, to understand the issues of their target market.

Ion Leap writers are also good marketing people. We look for opportunities that only entrepreneurs would be trained to see. We actively engage with our clients in much more than content writing – we’re business partners.

Resurrect Your Content Writing

In the airport today, I picked up the New York Times, that’s right, the non-digital, dead-tree version. In the Business section was an article about companies who posted song lyrics on their websites, some of which are now making a lot of money. This is a great example of two things – (1) how older content writing can ride the wave of convergence, and (2) plain dumb luck.

Right place, right time

When I hear a song on the radio I like these days, I scribble down one of the lines of the lyrics. When I get to a wifi connection, I Google the phrase, plus the word “lyrics.” Up pops the title of the song. I can then go to iTunes and buy it. Why, you might ask, are these steps necessary? Simply that radio stations realized that the time they spend announcing song titles and artists could be spent running commercials to pay for their dying business (radio ain’t doing so well these days). So they leave it up to the listener to figure out what the song is.

This lack of song titles, plus the existence of lyrics websites, plus the wonder of Google means that these websites could attract a healthy audience, and advertisers willing to buy their eyeballs. Now the more entrepreneurial of these lyrics websites are running ads. One of these sites, MetroLyrics.com, reported $10 million in revenue in 2009.

Lyrics as content writing

If lyrics are drawing eyeballs then, in my book, they’re content. And suddenly, with the above mentioned convergence of events, they’re able to create a new source of revenue for all involved. There’s a little problem with that in this case. The original creators of the content writing aren’t in on the money. The song writers are being left out of the revenue stream of this new income.

Do you have an untapped revenue stream?

Think about all the content writing your company has likely created through the years, especially if you’ve been around a while. You’ve got old brochures that you don’t use at all – did you know PDF format brochures and sales sheets are searchable? – and you need merely to place them out on your website and link a page to them to get the search value out of their content. Are they out of date? Consider marking them as “out of date” and putting them in a “history of the company” link and posting them anyway. Find a way to monetize your written assets.

One of my first jobs was for Davidson’s Mens Stores in Roanoke, Virginia. The company has been around since the very early 1900s. They have tons of old newspaper ads that would make a wonderful historical section on their website. They have old TV interviews, radio commercials, and magazine articles. Much of this would add to their search success, their credibility and their website readers’ enjoyment.

• That’s not just an old ad. Why, if you’re turn that into one of those newfangled PDFs, you’d have yourself a searchable asset there, fella!

On a personal note, where’s that great unfinished novel you were threatening to publish? My dad has one and I bet he’s not alone. Post it with a low cost fee to access it. You’ll be amazed when a few people, or more, find it and buy it online. Those genealogy notes your mom kept? Publish them on a small website and get on a web banner program. You won’t generate enough money to travel to the mother country, but you’ll make a few bucks. Content writing has real value and there’s tons of it lying around dormant.

Don’t view your content writing as disposable

Your company likely paid a good deal of money to get that brochure written. I’m always amazed how few companies have a process in place to automatically put such assets onto their websites in PDF format. The same is true of print advertisements. They could add to your search success, but only if you fully value the content writing they contain.

Not even remotely about content writing

This is just very cool –

kolelinio from kolelinia.com on Vimeo.

Social Media Revolution – Video 2

The first video these guys put out a couple years ago was great. This one is simply amazing. It speaks for itself –

Robots for content writing

Oh boy! A new company, Narrative Science, from Evanston, Illinois, is offering machine-generated content writing. Companies who don’t really want to bother having a meaningful online conversation with their prospective customers must be jumping for joy. (I’d post Narrative’s website, but there’s no content on it!! Seriously, none!)

For now, the company offers solutions for businesses who work in data-rich areas, like sports. They take in the data from the day’s game and can spit out copy in short order that, apparently, doesn’t sound half bad. The company claims they need no human author and no human editing. One of those involved in the company calls it the “Stats Monkey,” a telling nickname. Fox is using the service this spring for its website coverage of baseball and softball, and there are others. Again, all those mentioned thus far are very data driven.

Stuart Frankel says the product is perfect for stories about crime statistics, medical studies, surveys, financial announcements and more.

Will it really replace writers?

For now, having read several stories about the software, it’s clear that this solution will replace some of the grunt writing in the publishing industry. What will be lacking is meaningful interpretation and critical thinking. Will software be able to analyze a baseball player’s upcoming season based on a recent injury? No way.

This story is getting a good deal of interest in part because it signals a change in the value of the writer’s craft. I’ve written before about the possibility of content writing getting too thin, but my argument is that when something reaches the volume level that writing has on the Internet, it will invariably be valued less. The solution for writers is to find more channels, and to write more content of a shorter length.

Will content writing always have value?

Also in my reading today I learned of the little camera on the front of Apple’s yet-to-be-released iPhone, the one stolen in a bar. The buzz is that this signals video phone calling. It certainly signals a lessening of SMS, and could possibly hurt Twitter in the long run. But I don’t yet see the end of written content. In fact, no way! The Internet didn’t kill books as predicted. Facebook didn’t kill email as predicted.

I believe content writing will have value as long as ideas matter, and that will always be the case.

The Google Pile-On

Let’s all jump on Google and predict their imminent demise. After all, they’re the most successful Internet companies EVER !

The latest to jump on board is…shocker…Yahoo. Who would have thunk that Yahoo would be attacking Google ??!!??

BBC News has an article on their Technology site in which they give Yahoo the podium to besmirch their arch enemy Google. Meanwhile, Google cares not a whit about Yahoo. Read it if you must, but keep in mind that this is the latest in a long list of such articles.

Read the BBC article. Learn all the ways Yahoo is diversifying, how they focus like a laser beam on their target market. Then go look at Yahoo.com and see if you can make any sense of what the hell they are about. I certainly can’t, so when I see yet another article aiming at Google and predicting their imminent failure, I begin to get really pissed off.

Google is diversifying at a staggering rate. Click here to read just a few of their recent innovations:

Integrating virtual keyboards in Google search -

Lessons learned developing a practical large scale machine learning system -

Building scalable, robuts cluster applications -

How Google Places can help you attract and be discovered by prospects for free –

Am I a Google worshiper? You bet I am. I totally admire the way they focus on the end user and aim all their products at their ideal target. They never seem to get distracted. Yahoo could learn a great deal from Google. Stop predicting their demise and start innovating yourself.

FTC After You? You know you’re doing something right.

When was the last time the FTC was after Yahoo? I certainly can’t remember it. But they’re sure watching Google. Why? Because Google is UP TO THINGS !! They make things happen. They shake things up. The Google AdMob deal is another example.

I don’t blame Yahoo for sniping at the heels of Google. After all, they’re getting crushed by Google. They have every right to be upset. I’m more upset by media outlets who seem to siding with the losers and lifting them up, despite years of failure. Yahoo is a failed model, especially in search. The “press” like the BBC need to report the facts, not agendas.