What’s gone by the wayside is my blog. It’s not that I couldn’t have found the time to crank out a couple of paragraphs; it’s more that I just didn’t have the mental energy needed to come up with an interesting topic (or at least an interesting take on a mundane topic). So that leads me to today’s question: is it better to blog intermittently when you have something of interest and value to share, or is it better to simply blog consistently regardless of the depth of your comments?

I don’t know the answer, and I look forward to reading yours.

As it turns out, quite a lot. To get the results you want, all your messages–not just the obvious marketing ones–need to be credible, persuasive, and professionally written. Not convinced? Here are 3 examples where a copywriter can make all the difference:

1. Dealing with an angry customer. A client of mine recently asked for help with a potentially catastrophic situation. A mix up over delivery dates led their best customer to send an angry e-mail threatening to void their contract and possibly sue for damages. When the customer wouldn’t return my client’s calls, he decided to write a letter of apology. If you’ve ever had to write one you know they are incredibly difficult, especially when you feel you’re not entirely in the wrong. Since, unlike my client, I wasn’t emotionally invested in the situation, I was able to write a cordial, clear-headed, and persuasive letter that at least got the customer to answer the phone.
2. Communicating potentially unpopular policy changes to employees. Most of your employees don’t like change, particularly when it comes to policies and procedures that affect them directly. But in this economy, it’s often change or die, whether it involves switching to new software to improve productivity or restructuring employee benefits to reduce costs. The success of such changes depends on how well you communicate both the change itself and the reason for the change. In other words, you have to sell the change to your employees, and who is better equipped to do that than a copywriter?
3. Working with your banker, your board, and anyone else who has an impact on your business. You might be one of the few people I know who has complete confidence in his or her writing ability. It doesn’t take you any longer–or involve any more stress–to dash off an e-mail to your banker or your board than it does to send one to your friend confirming lunch. But most people struggle to write well and end up wasting significant time and energy in the process. At the very least, a copywriter can proofread your draft, ask questions about points that could lead to misunderstandings, and help you communicate your message with efficiency and confidence.

A copywriter is a resource. If you’ve taken the time to develop a relationship with one, it only makes sense to use him or her to benefit your business as much as possible. And, if you haven’t, now would be the ideal time.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

The card was a simple 8 inch x 5 inch rectangle folded in half. On the inside left was a letter signed by the company president and in the letter were 4 typos (to be fair, the typos were actually cases where two words ran together without a space). As a marketer and writer, I was struck by the incongruence of typos in a card designed to recognize excellence, and, as a vacationer, I was taken aback, wondering what else was going on behind the scenes that I had missed.

Now, several weeks later, when I think about that vacation and that company, I still feel generally positive – it’s not like 4 typos would lead me to never cruise with them again. But I still can’t get rid of the nagging feeling that the cruise line wasn’t all I thought it was, and, if someone told me they had been on the same ship and had a terrible experience, I think I could believe it. In other words, for me, 4 typos is the difference between confidence in a company and doubt.

What do you think? Am I making a mountain out of a marketing molehill? Are there times when a marketing mistake matters less — or not at all? I look forward to your comments.

But what if you’re trying to sell something complex or new? What if an anecdote would make your business case better than a few bullet points? What if your prospects are skeptical and you need to refute their potential arguments point-by-point (or risk losing them)? In those cases, is shorter copy still better–or just shorter?

So, how long should your copy be? Exactly long enough to present your idea compellingly and convincingly, whether that takes three bullets or five pages. If you’re a writer, you’ll probably have to convince your client or boss of that; if you’re the client or boss, all we ask is that you keep an open mind. After all, it’s the result–not the word count–that matters.

I welcome your comments.

The same is true of your case studies. Everyone who reads one knows exactly how it starts (with your client’s problem) and how it ends (with your company’s successful solution). If that wasn’t the case, why would you bother to write it? So, it’s up to your case study’s characters to engage your reader at the beginning and hold his or her interest all the way to the end. Here are three tips for doing just that:

1. Chose characters your audience can relate to. Who is the intended reader of your case study? Is it the CEO, the HR manager, or the shop floor worker? Make your main character someone at a similar level. Your readers will more easily identify and engage with your character if they have something in common.
2. Ask the right kinds of questions in the interview. When you interview your character, be sure to ask open-ended questions (the kind that can’t be answered yes or no.) Of course you’ll go into the interview with an agenda, but be willing to let the conversation take an unexpected turn or let the silence linger for just a moment. That’s generally when you’ll get the kind of non-scripted, more “human” answers that readers find interesting and believable.
3. Let your characters speak in their own voices. If your character says, “Employees were dropping like flies and those who stayed did nothing but complain,” write it that way in your case study. When you edit it to read, “Employee turnover increased significantly and the morale of the remaining employees was low,” you’ve just turned your engaging human character into a boring corporate stereotype.

The bottom line is that case studies work because they let your prospects picture what it would be like to work with your company. Prospects put themselves in your characters’ shoes, but only if those characters are compelling enough to hold their interest.

I look forward to your comments.

For example, I have a client who sells a software system to people who are (in general) not particularly computer- or social media-savvy. When they use a computer, they use it to accomplish a specific work-related task (like checking inventory levels). They’re not typically surfing the Web, following anyone on Twitter, or using e-mail when they want to talk to someone. So, it’s not that surprising that my client’s new prospect list included physical addresses for everyone — and e-mail addresses for only a few.

Now, my client could have put someone on the phone to call each prospect to get an e-mail address, but we’re talking about hundreds of names. When you remember that most of these prospects are not using e-mail for anything other than specific work-related tasks, you can see the potential for a lot of wasted time and money. Instead, my client used about as retro a marketing method as there is: direct mail. We created a postcard that invited these prospects to a 10-minute Webinar that introduces the software and demonstrates its effectiveness and ease-of-use. Prospects who accept the Webinar invitation are asked to provide their e-mail address for confirmation. The result is that my client effectively reaches his prospects as the first step in the sales cycle and, at the same time and for no additional cost, builds an e-mail list of interested prospects for future use.

(By the way, inviting non-computer-savvy prospects to a Webinar is not as incongruous as it might sound. My client’s research shows that these prospects are willing to use computer technology for a specific work-related purpose, particularly when the instructions for doing so are clear and the benefit is obvious.)

I think you’d agree with me that one of the keys to effective marketing is reaching prospects where they live. If it’s not (yet) in the world of social media, going old-school is the only way to go.

Now it’s your turn: how have you used retro marketing methods to reach your prospects? Have you found a way to combine them with new forms of communication (like Webinars) or even to use them to nudge your prospects along the way to becoming more social media-savvy?

Blogging is not for the impatient. The main reason I started my blog was to market my business and ultimately get more clients. Whether or not that will actually be the result still remains to be seen. Although it seems obvious now, what it took some time for me to realize is that blogging has much more in common with networking than it does with, say, direct mail. Through the blog, I’ve met interesting people from whom I’ve learned a lot, established my credibility with prospects who see I can actually write, and made it easier for people to refer me to someone else. But I haven’t gotten a new client that I can directly attribute to my blog–yet.

Blogging is not for the easily bored or distracted. Blogging is not easy, period. Before I started, I made a list of more than 70 potential topics on which I could post. I was sure I had a nearly never-ending stream of interesting things to say and that I would always be interested in saying them. Of course, that wasn’t the case. Sometimes client commitments got in the way; other times it was something unexpected, like a school snow day. And, there have been those moments when, after spending hours working on a writing project, cleaning my pencil drawer was infinitely more appealing than starting another post. I’ve learned that blogging takes perseverance and commitment, particularly because the rewards are not immediate.

Blogging is not for the faint of heart. One of the things I like best about blogging is reading the comments on my posts. Most are interesting and many are eye-opening, leading me to new ideas and some remarkable people–even when they disagree with what I’ve written. But every once in a while, there is a comment so rude or dismissive that I question why I bother to blog at all. I’ve re-learned what my middle-schooler could have told me: if you put yourself out there, sometimes you’re not going to like what you get back. But I’ve also learned that like in the real world, the blogging world is full of really great people and meeting them is well worth developing the thick skin it might take to ignore the remaining few.

Now it’s your turn. For all you bloggers out there, what lessons can you share?

When we lose sight of that, our marketing only does half its job (and probably the least important half). Here’s an example: I have a client who sells maintenance management software. Although people at many levels are typically involved in the purchase decision, let’s focus on the maintenance manager. He (and I use “he” because that’s almost always the case) wants a software system that will help his company be more productive, save money, reduce accidents, etc. That’s the business person side of the equation. But that’s not all he wants. He wants to keep employee grumbling to a minimum so he can get his own work done and avoid hassle. He wants to look good to his boss so he’s in line for a raise or promotion. He wants his peers to respect his expertise and decision-making ability. He wants to leave work at a reasonable time to enjoy dinner with his family or see his kid’s game. He wants to enjoy a relaxing vacation without thinking about work every 10 minutes. He wants to sleep well at night and not have to dread what the next day will bring. That’s the people person side of the equation.

I think most of us are people-people first and business people second, and that smart, effective marketing acknowledges, addresses, and appreciates that. I’d like to know what you think, too.

So, what to do? I need a “something” that creates an ongoing revenue stream while requiring little to no investment of my time beyond the initial creating of that something. In short, I need a product.

This is a mind shift for me that I’m still working through (I can’t help but think of some of the more outrageous infomercial “products” — of course, they’re most likely earning a lot more than I am). But, I have some preliminary ideas:

• Creating a content-filled “resource room” on my Web site available to clients for free and to others either at a monthly subscription rate or by the piece. (The items in the resource room could also be sold as stand-alone pieces before I have enough to actually fill the “room.”)
• Developing a subscription Webinar or teleconference series.
• Writing a step-by-step workbook for businesses that want to create their own marketing content.
• Publishing a subscription based e-newsletter (that could possibly also accept advertising).

Has your business tried any of these ideas — or do you have other ideas for escaping the time-for-money trap? Please post a comment so we can all benefit, and I’ll keep you posted on my progress throughout the year.

Best wishes to you all for a peaceful, prosperous 2010.

Now, if you’ve never been, all these places might sound pretty much the same, and in some ways, that’s true. They all have the sun, the beach, and the luxury resorts — in much the same way that you basically have the same product or service as your competitors.

But when you dig a little deeper, the differences are clear. In Costa Rica, like nowhere else, we were struck by the pride expressed by everyone we met, both within and outside the tourist industry. They all wanted us to know about Costa Rica’s high literacy rate, national health care system, and fledgling computer industry. They encouraged us to go into the various towns and meet ordinary Costa Rican citizens. They said they were grateful for our tourist dollars and they genuinely showed their gratitude — something (I would guess) not always easy to do when you’re carrying drinks that cost more than you make in an hour up and down two flights of stairs in the midday sun.

In contrast, there was our experience in a Caribbean country that shall remain nameless. Sure, the sun was hot and the resort was beautiful, but our experience left us feeling a bit like Ugly Americans. There was none of the friendliness and warmth of Costa Rica, and we felt like what we were — a number in a sales column, an inconvenience, a means to an end.

So, in a world where, on the surface, many products and services seem the same, where does your business fall? Are your employees proud to be part of your company? Are your customers or clients delighted to work with you? Does your reputation extend positively into the community? Those are the intangibles that separate your business from that of your competitors, and it’s your job to get them right, keep them right, and then let the whole world know.