Writing Wrongs: Five Things Writers Need To Teach Themselves

According to the Harvard Business Review, nearly one-third of all professionals write poorly. And if these numbers are consistent with high school proficiency studies from two years ago, the majority aren't much better. Most get by with rudimentary skills.

After all, proficiency is a cut above basic. And right now, only about one in five high school graduates is a proficient writer. I suspect that number could be cut in half (and half again) if we set the bar closer to professional standards. There are only a few who could be considered good to great.

Most studies suggest that the problem begins before high school, with students not being required to write enough to become proficient. This year, I believe it. My son has been struggling with writing lately, which prompted me to ask: When did someone ever teach him to write in the first place? I can't recall.

I'm not worried yet, but only because writing is something I can teach him. Or, more accurately, I know that I can teach him how to teach himself how to write. Writing, like art, is a largely self-taught skill.

Writing is one of the most difficult and rewarding skills to teach. 

As an instructor, I've taught writing classes for eleven years. One of them is a simple half-day editing and proofreading refresher. It doesn't provide me with any sense of how much or how little students might know, before or even after the class.

My next session for Editing And Proofreading Your Work will be held this Nov. 4. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, likes to run the class two or three times a year. My other class is very different. It's a 10-week truncated course with eight assignments and one in-class assignment. It's held in the spring.

I have a general sense of the writing proficiency in the class after the very first assignment. And in general, the writing proficiency at the onset of the class is in decline. Even students who are working in the field (as writers) are struggling. But the struggle isn't always about writing. It's everything else.

The assignment is to write their own obituary, set some 20 or 30 years into the future. It's a great first exercise because it gives me an indication of their skill sets beyond writing skills, which are often even more critical than remembering grammar rules and style tips. It's also what most professors can't teach.

Five things professors cannot teach people to help them become better writers. 

1. Listening. Especially in communication (advertising, public relations, etc.), listening skills are critical because so much of the work is translating an organizational vision into motivational or educational or instructional content. If you don't listen to the client, it's impossible to deliver acceptable work.

The first assignment is a giveaway. Even though I will ask for an obituary as if a journalist wrote it, I will often receive a eulogy. It doesn't matter if I explain the difference in class or not. Likewise, it doesn't matter that the mandatories (like double spacing) are included in the course outline for some.

2. Understanding. While understanding is just an extension of listening (turning listening into active listening), it still counts. If you don't understand an assignment, it pays dividends to ask questions.

The first assignment is a giveaway because I do not pass out obituary examples. I ask them to look a few up on their own. Most clients do not provide samples. And the few who do are generally stuck in "I like" thinking that usually has nothing to do with their audience. I do, however, tell students that they can ask questions any time by email. Few ever do, and never on the first assignment.

3. Thinking. There is no way around it. Good writing requires good thinking. Not only do writers have to think up an organizational structure, but they also have to make it flow and remain interesting or compelling.

The first assignment is always revealing in how much time I will have to invest in organizational structure. It's not uncommon to see different ideas jumbled up in the same paragraph or any transitional bridges that will help their readers move from one point to the next.

I do teach how to think, but sometimes it's a challenge. More and more students want templates.

4. Passion. Probably the biggest decline in writing proficiency from my perspective is passion. I suspect the decline has been accelerated because of the breakneck speeds at which people attempt to write, but the real culprit is that some students struggle to connect any passion with their subject.

The first assignment is telling because if the students struggle with writing about their own dreams and aspirations, it's a fair indication that they will be passionless when they have to write a news release about the opening of a hotel. Unfortunately, you can't teach people passion beyond quick tip lists.

5. Motivation. In addition to a lack of passion, more students are struggling with self-motivation. Not only do they cheat themselves on the amount of time it takes to write a quality piece, but they are also too busy with life to complete every assignment. And even if they do complete every assignment, many resist rewrites so they have the opportunity to practice applying all those notes they receive on graded papers.

The first assignment provides a great benchmark for both areas. It's easy to tell which students are serious and which students need prodding — even though most took the course to become better writers. As hard as it is to imagine, they won't make time to help themselves.

Anyone can teach you grammar rules and style tips. The rest is up to you. 


The statistic on writing proficiency came from a bundled collection of articles that Harvard has put together. They do a fine job covering the basics, from pushing past writer's block to avoiding grammar gaffes. But mostly, they only scratch the surface on the most critical skill sets that I've included above.

If you really want to be a better writer, much like I will be teaching my son, then you have to master those five areas first. I'm not always convinced students are being taught these skill sets anymore.

To be a better writer, you really need to listen to what your client (or instructor, or audience) needs, understand the subject matter almost as good as the experts, organize the best approach to communicate those ideas, find the hook that provides enough passion to drive the story forward, and have the motivation to make every piece leave an impact.

If you don't have these down, then everything is trivia. If you do, then the rest is all style and polish.

Creating Communities: More Choices, Weaker Loyalists

The saying may be cliche, but the science is real: Birds of a feather do flock together.

According to research published in Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, people prefer to make friends with others who share similar beliefs, values, and interests. But even more interesting, in the age of diversified and limitless choices online, people are even more apt to choose friends who are like them.

In fact, although the study was not conducted on Internet relationships, it found that when people have more choices, they are even more likely to seek out relationships with people like themselves. The logic point is sound: Similarity makes for smoother and more pleasant interactions.

What happens when the choices are limited?

This was one of the questions that Angela Bahns of Wellesley College and Chris Crandall and Kate Pickett of the University of Kansas sought out on college campuses. The researchers approached and surveyed pairs of students on two campuses, asking them questions about various beliefs and values.

By comparing the answers between college students at a campus with 25,000 students to another with only 5,000 enrolled, they found that students interacting on a larger campus with more choices were even more likely to be similar to their friends than a smaller campus with fewer choices.

However, that wasn't the extent of the study. It also found that the students at the smaller campus rated their friendships as closer. And researchers speculated that friendships on the larger campus may not be as tight because students felt they could more easily make new friends.

What community managers and marketing pros might learn from the study.

Social ecologies shape the way people initiate and maintain relationships. This isn't the first study to suggest it. The paper includes references to previous studies, including Kon & Losenkov (1978) that found similar differences between rural and urban schools.

The earlier study found that rural schools had fewer friendships and less "network elasticity" but more stable relationships. What makes this important for companies attempting to develop online communities, or even those developing social networks, is that as their communities grow, they change the social ecology.

And, in fact, rapid growth and diversification of a social network or a community on a social network could undermine the strength of the community as people feel less connected to the larger population. In other words, pressing for popularity — capturing more members in a shorter timeframe (the measure of success for most companies) — could lead to a more fragmented, less engaged, and more transient population. It's the difference between a trend and a fad.

It may even allude to a flaw in the tribes concept by Seth Godin. While Godin is right that community managers a.k.a. leaders ought to seek out similarly minded individuals to create a tribe (or more likely, the tribe will come together on their own within a social ecology), the tribes concept is less scalable than anyone imagined and the faster it grows, the more likely it begins to fragment.

As the group or network becomes larger and larger, it is even more likely that the "leader" or "leaders" of what seems like a strong community will alienate segments of their growing population — either because the growth was propelled by the temporary alliance of another "leader" or because "new leaders" of smaller groups begin to emerge within the larger ecology. This leads to less influence, not more, as current algorithms and marketing quotients dictate.

The importance of organic development and adaptability.

While there is certainly something to be said for rapid growth and viral attention, long-term success relies on the adaptability of any online community — there may be a need for community managers to slow down. Slowing down allows community managers to segment emerging tribes within the networks (creating many small towns within a larger network), elevate members within their network (to manage different segments) or, at minimum, revisit their content strategy to ensure topical strength over individual allure (making the connection based on interest as opposed to personality).

Failing to do so frequently leads to so-called leaders or brands abandoning large segments of their network base as similarities begin to erode and/or segments of a larger population begin to push back. There are several individuals and companies and social networks facing this now.

Once they reach a critical mass, they begin to change the ecology they create, alienating the initial attraction. And in the greater context of the Internet, their once seemingly "loyal" base quickly discovers that network elasticity means that they can replace them. It also means something else. Unlike a prospect who has no pretext of expectation, those who are disenfranchised never forget.

Shifting To Social: How To Transition Into Social Media

How do you transition into social media as a profession? 

That was one of the questions a friend of mine asked me on Twitter a few weeks ago. But I couldn't answer on Twitter and have my answer make any sense in a 140 characters. It wouldn't work, not even with anecdotes, because the short answer isn't one most people would want to hear: You don't.

Keep in mind that I didn't say: You can't. You can. People do it all the time, and they come from a variety of backgrounds that range from accountant to zookeeper. Even in communication, a field that sometimes likes to claim ownership of the space, pros don't generally pursue social media as a career.

Even if they think they do, they don't. Not really. Most of them write about something other than social media. Relatively few set their sights on social media, and most of those that do are snake oil salespeople who peddle tips, tricks, and gimmicks. (There are very, very few exceptions.)


There is no path to social media; there are only paths to other places. 

Seth Godin writes about guerrilla marketing. Lee Odden writes about SEO. Brian Clark writes about copywriting, mostly from a direct mail viewpoint. Valeria Maltoni really writes about strategic communication. Any one of them could be called a social media pro, of sorts.

Even those that made up last year's list of social media blogs tend to have a bigger arch that far exceeds the social media sphere. One of the best examples of a bigger arch on that list is Danny Brown, who writes more about human business than social media. In fact, of all those listed, Jason Falls is probably the most hardcore about social media. (And he also happens to be one kind of exception, as I noted.)

They know, as do many people, a few things about social media. In fact, some of the best social media pros are so far removed from communication, you would never even think of them as social pros.

Jennifer Lawson is a great example. She writes about parenting, anecdotes, and sex, but usually not together. Serious Eats focuses on food. Perez Hilton centers on celebrity gossip (if you like that sort of thing). And even the people at Orabrush, covered earlier this week, prove that they have the mettle to get the job done.

They all understand social, even though AdAge wouldn't put them on a best marketing blogs list. Maybe they should. Almost all of them have better best practices than some of the people on the list. And the reason isn't always because they know social media as much as they have a passion for something.

The real challenge for public relations and social media pros. 

The hardest thing for many public relations and social media pros to grasp is that if the communicator doesn't have a passion for the subject, the program will fail or, at least, not be nearly as successful as it could be.

Managing a social media program, beyond the short term, requires a passion that is deeper than advertising, communication, or public relations. I even suspect this is the reason that most companies are not convinced social media deserves a significant portion of the marketing budget.

Most companies try to hire people who know how social media works, but never match those skill sets against a real passion for the company or product or topic. (Other companies, of course, hire interns.) But regardless of who they hire, they forget to put the emphasis on what matters most — passion.

I suspect there is another exception, but these people are increasingly rare. There are some communicators — writers, public relations pros, copywriters, etc. — who can find a passion for anything. Seriously. You could give them a stone off the street and they'll be inspired to write a sonnet.

I used to be one of them, before I started screening clients (especially those looking for social media help). Sure, in some cases, I can oversee a social media program and assign the work to a team member who has more long-term passion for a particular subject. But if no one can do it, then we have to pass.

You can even see it among people who used to write about social media or marketing daily. Many of them have dropped off or dropped back over the last year. There is no mystery. They didn't have the long-term passion for their own field. At least not the kind I'm talking about.

If they did have it, then it wouldn't matter how many people read their content on a daily basis. And ironically, if they didn't care how many people read their content, they might have had a following.

So to sum up this long answer, let's revisit the opening question. How do you transition into social media as a profession? You don't. You find things that you are passionate about and then build your social media experience around that subject, product, or company.

Automating Marketing: Customer Contradictions

According to the recent 2011 Mid-Year Marketing Trends Study by The Kern Organization, an Omnicom Agency, 48 percent of all marketers have implemented marketing automation this year.

The decision to automate likely lies in marketing's increased desire to capture a mega-avalanche of data about all online and offline sales activities. Simply put, more organizations are being held accountable to their budget and to demonstrate beneficial results of marketing initiatives.

"Today's best marketers have truly embraced the trend of marketing being pushed to drive measurable revenue results," Steven Woods, CTO of Eloqua and author of Digital Body Language. "By being tied to the delivery of qualified leads and new revenue, marketing begins to claim its seat at the strategic table."

But Woods might be wrong because there is an irony here, given what most organizations consider their priorities. Let's consider the other side of the coin (and pretend these companies have the right objectives).

According to Kern, organizational priories are: acquiring a large number of new customers, increasing retention rates and revenues among existing customers, and increasing the quality and and quantity of lead generation (which generally fulfills the first priority). And yet, few firms are asking if marketing automation truly delivers a return on investment. Maybe the hard return on investment is an illusion.

Does marketing automation make marketers smarter or dumber?

Some might argue, of course it does. You can tell by the numbers. You can tell by clicks, calls, and purchases. Effective campaigns are measurable because numbers, any numbers, go up and up and up.

But do they really? Maybe not. For example, there is a retailer that sends me periodic sales emails. It's obviously an automated system, and I have no doubt that someone is measuring the success of each e-mail based campaign. They may be making analytic decisions based on my clicks and purchases.

The truth is that they have no idea why I didn't make a purchase (and they would have no idea why I made a purchase if I had). In most cases, it has nothing to do with their campaign or the emails that arrived on 8-31, 9-2, 9-4, 9-12, and two on 9-25.

 Respectively, I didn't make a purchase because the first three ads arrived prior to my credit card statement, which carried incidental charges related to our last vacation. The middle one landed on a Monday, which always means a fuller inbox. And the last two? I was too busy to read the first; and I was thinking about how much paint I need for the family room when the second one arrived.

 Marketing analytics will never tell them this. But I am sure, somewhere, someone is racking their brain to guess why I (and all the other collective people like "me") didn't respond to their sale. I can almost see their guesswork in the later advertisements. They had brighter colors, bigger fonts, bolder messages with more urgency.

Except their message wasn't urgent. Frankly, their sales messages were among the least important things in my life (except for those other marketers whose ads have long since landed in my spam folder).

Anymore, the hardest thing for marketing to grasp is the long term.

The rush to automate marketing isn't the only tell. It's how many organizations view social media. According to the Kern study, only six percent of these companies see social media as very important. Only 32 percent said it was important.

In fact, most organizations (87 percent) said they will be investing 0-25 percent of their marketing budgets in social media. And not surprising, 77 percent were not satisfied or only somewhat satisfied with social media.

Mobile isn't much better. About 34 percent reported no mobile budget for the next twelve months. And even among those who see it as important, they are focusing mostly on mobile web and content delivery.

So why do social media and mobile take a back seat? The same reason so many of these firms have jumped on marketing automation. Numbers do not always favor social media in the short term. Any campaign that lives and dies by a tweet or klout counts tends to move in a reactionary direction.





And there is the irony of what is starting to shape up as modern marketing. There is growing propensity to measure everything to the point that the information obtained measures nothing of importance.

It's no wonder that the same study placed 38 percent of these organizations as only somewhat satisfied with their marketing and only 20 percent very satisfied or better. When your entire satisfaction is based on short-term lead generation, new customers, and repeat sales on the fly, it's hard to find happiness.

Of course, if the retailer that emailed me six times in a 30-day widow really knew me as a customer, they would know that they've already temporarily won the long-term marketing war.

Their jeans fit me better than other brands. So, all it takes for them to sell me jeans is my need to buy a new pair, whether or not they send me a sales email. In fact, if they sell four pairs at 40 percent off next week, I won't need any more for awhile.

In effect, one random sales purchase could make every subsequent campaign (even if they are better campaigns) look dismal in comparison based on nothing more than random chance. And that's the advent of automated marketing. Weird, isn't it? They could cause their own sales decline, thinking it was a success story.

If you are interested in the traditional white paper, you can find it on their Marketing Trend Study page. Requesting the white paper will require typical lead generation information: name, address, email, phone number, etc.

Making It Up: Orabrush Marketing

About a year ago, the Orabrush success story was all about social media and YouTube — the opportunity for a small company and marketing student to reach millions of people, one person at a time. But its latest success has nothing to do with the millions of viral views that resulted in one million sales.

Their latest success, recently profiled by AdAge, was turning a $28 Facebook advertising purchase into one order of 735,000. The $28 ad purchase, reaching only a few targeted Walmart employees who lived near their corporate headquarters, proved more effective than a previous $20,000 or more spent on retail trade print advertisements. Even the message was targeted.

"Walmart employees have bad breath. Walmart needs to carry Orabrush. It will sell better than anything in your store."

According to the article, the vice president of purchasing for Walmart had seen the Facebook ad and believed it was reaching employees nationwide. A buyer called within 48 hours to let them know they had seen the advertisement and they could stop running it.

Afterward, Orabrush sent a customized DVD and sales kits, and placed the 735,000 unit order. The order expands Orabrush's retail space from 20 Walmart stores to 3,500 nationwide. Listen to the story.


With Walmart distribution in place, the company attracted the attention of CVS. Other major retailers will likely follow suit. It had already been accepted by retail outlets in Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

The story remains a remarkable one, especially because the company has never run consumer-targeted advertising trough traditional print and broadcast media. And yet, its success has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and ABC's Nightline, not because of a formal public relations pitch, but because they are making news.

All the followers in the world cannot duplicate the success caused by a few hundred. 

Marketing success, especially online, is not contingent on numbers or influencers. It's contingent on finding the right people to produce a specific outcome. And each marketing effort might even have different outcomes.

For Orabrush, their entertaining YouTube videos have always been about about the truth — that 90 percent of all bad breath is caused by the tongue — that people feel compelled to share. Conversely, their $28 ad buy on Facebook (and sales presentation) was all about being distributed nationwide.

Both methods outproduced commonly clever advertisements that can be funny or viral, but never sell a single product. And why didn't those advertisements sell any product?

In some cases, the advertisements never gave people a reason to buy even if most loved the advertisement. In other cases, people worked hard to reach millions that have no interest in or intention of buying the product. Or worse, marketers pandered to "influencers" all for a sound bite that might have even distorted their message. And that's fine, especially for the marketers who know better.

Saying Sorry: Netflix Actions Still Speak Louder

When the Netflix fiasco started in July, we pointed out that Netflix doesn't want to be in the DVD shopping and shipping business anymore. Back then, the price increases alone were enough to convince anyone. But we pointed out CEO Reed Hastings had said as much, several times over.

We also mentioned that Netflix wasn't done surprising customers. The company's long-term goals include moving streaming subscribers from household accounts to individual accounts, thereby doubling or tripling or quadrupling their rates when it "feels more natural."

But CEO Reed Hastings doesn't want to talk about that. He wants to talk about Qwikster. 

Qwikster is the new business that Netflix is spinning off to handle the DVD shopping and shipping business. The companies will not be integrated. Qwikster will have a new website. Qwikster will have new reviews. Qwikster will be billed separately on your charge card.

The real oddity, however, is how the entire announcement is framed up. Hastings nearly apologizes for not communicating one change, and then goes on to share all the changes they haven't communicated, again. Even the ending he wrote was off the reservation: "Actions speak louder than words. But words help people understand actions."

Sometimes that is true. But there is another line of logic left out of the equation. You can understand the actions, but it doesn't make the actions right. Most people learn that in kindergarten, such as the first time they play a prank on a classmate. Understand or not, a second black eye is hard to forget.

Communicating change is easy. Hastings chooses to makes it hard. 

Given that the first fiasco cost the company about one million of its 25 million subscribers, one would think that Hastings would have rolled the split, perhaps reducing the subscription rate of one of them.

Some customers might have seen him as a hero. It would have also carried a "we heard you" statement,  which would have helped the company sell the split. Ergo, we found a way to reduce rates and that requires us to offer both services under two different companies. The fallout might have been minor. But instead, their communication with customers looks a little bit more like this ...



At minimum, any other approach would not have overshadowed the upcoming Neflix-Facebook integration. And one would assume that it would be the communication Netflix wants people to see. Certainly it would have been better than the nightmare someone dreamed up.

Companies don't have to listen to customers. Sure, that's true. 

Bruce Temkin takes a very even-handed approach on the Netflix affair (hat tip: Geoff Livingston), even if he might be wrong that the move won't cost more customers. At minimum, it will prompt what Hastings wants many of them to do anyway — drop DVD all together and split households into individual accounts (something the new Facebook service can help them do). And then what?

It's hard to say. Streaming services are not like the original Netflix model. It's an increasingly crowded space that promises more competitors than the space that used to be the core service of the company. And without DVD shipping, Netflix doesn't just lose its value proposition. It leaves the doors open.

Still, for now, it is Hastings' call. Much like the recent changes to Facebook, company owners call the shots. Customers do not have to be part of the equation. All they can do is vote with their feet. And sometimes other companies will jump all over the opportunity to help them along, right out the door.

I understand what Hastings wants to do. I really do. He could probably accomplish it too, even if some of it feels a bit sleazy. But as it stands today, delivering excuses and calling them explanations is undermining the company's ability to accomplish anything it wants to do. It might even bury it faster.

Related Articles. 

• The Netflix Apology: Good Idea, Bad Execution  by Patricio Robles

• Parsing Netflix's Apology by David Pogue

• Netflix Says It's Sorry, Then Creates New Uproar by Michael Liedtke