Ann Handley, MarketingProfs, Me, and You

If you don’t know Ann Handley, you haven’t done any research on marketing for a while now. She is the chief content officer of MarketingProfs.com, author of the best-seller “Everybody Writes,” and a personal hero of mine.

Note: I took this photo with Ann before her presentation for this post. She joked, “What if your review isn’t very good?” But I knew it would be, and published this immediately after she finished.

Ann Handley asks us, “How can you be a better writer?”

Charlotte is the marketer and never the hero of the story. And Zuckerman, the farm owner, thought everything Charlotte wrote was about him, the audience. But he was really being sold the message, don’t slaughter Wilbur, the product.

If you’re just creating content for content’s sake, you’re like a bloated Templeton, the rat.

85% of the most-successful prioritize quality over quantity. So how to get there?

Ann recommends:

• Write every day, even if you don’t publish. Have a point of view and express it to yourself, at least. Prioritize it at the beginning of the day. Start with Tiny Goals. Ann commits to writing for TEN minutes a day.
• Turn your marketing Sent Folder into marketing content! Answers to questions from clients, prospects, friends. HARO responses (help a reporter out). Email interviews or round-up posts.
• “Become a hoarder.” A research assistant. “The most important part of writing isn’t the writing. It’s the pre-work and the editing.”
• Create a system for: To Do, Doing (partially-written posts), Done (a folder for polishing).
• Research: Don’t do it for hours and hours. And don’t feel as though, “well, it’s already been said, what can I possibly add??”
• Ann is the third person this conference to mention AnswerThePublic and BuzzSumo – so I guess you and I are going to get to learn about them together.
• “Observe like Fern.” Fern observes what she sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches.

Ann Handley’s Five Fastest Ways to Level-Up Writing

1. Use nouns that hurt if they are dropped on your foot. Don’t use words like ‘solution.’ Lighten up. Use “talk” not “converse.” Rewrite in the second person. Return button: hard returns every 2-3 sentences.
2. Favorite tools: HemingwayApp : PowerThesaurus : Word Hippo : Merriam-Webster. Try http://bit.ly/concisewriting or have a writing buddy.
3. “Write to Zuckerman.” Write to one person, not a persona, not anything else.
4. Find the challenge: You can’t have a story without a problem.
5. Do less.

See Ann? I told you it would be good!