Wasting time with time wasters

A long time ago, in a version of Thomas far far away, there existed an internet forum that he moderated/administered. This was quiet a bit of work because not only did he have to monitor and dispose of spammers, tend to the many personality conflicts and arguments, but he also had to develop interesting articles for people to read.

These articles took a long time to create. Each one based on hours of research as the audience was very well read and any mistakes or inaccuracies would be pounced upon in an instant.

Yet all this work netted Thomas one thing: Frustration.

Why? because he was interacting with people uninterested in the message, uninterested in the content and solely focused on flame wars and aggravating an already aggravated forum administer due to personality conflicts. Not all the audience was like this, but a few select band of individuals got great pleasure from it. On stage during live performance; they're known as hecklers.

So eventually he did the only thing he could do, he left.

The work was hard with long hours, it was unpaid and most importantly, unappreciated. So after a long rumination process that had been building up for months, Thomas did the only thing that would benefit him. He left and never looked back at forums ever again.

All that work had to be left behind, as well as the online friends that had supported him and rallied to his cause. All the stress and conflicts were also left in the past.

It was four years of work wasted.

But he did learn a two priceless points out of the whole endeavour.

1. Never argue with idiots
This world is filled with them, they come at you from all angles. Never engage them, or if you accidentally do, stop as soon as you realise you're dealing with one. There is an old saying: You can lead a horse to water, but you can never make him drink, and it applies to the morons on the internet. You can't make them think or even see your way of thinking because they are too wrapped up in their own sense of over-bloated self important opinions.
Don't waste time or energy on time wasters. You'll only have yourself to blame!

2. Don't ever take it personally
I've written more words than I care to admit. Writing comes easily to me. Yet with the most carefully constructed pieces of personal reflection, I get people who disagree and volley in personal attacks merely because they have no other way of engaging the material. You can't ever let this get to you. Never return the insults, simply delete the comments outright or ignore them and have a laugh. Once you've invested so much into your words that any criticism hurts you personally, it's time to take a step back from the writing.

Over time, I've learnt to engage with people on different levels and subtly redirect conversations when they get out of hand. But my days of hanging around internet forums are forever over and I am honestly happy about that because there are much better places on the internet to interact with people.

I'm not saying that forums don't have their advantages, but they are fast becoming more and more selective with their users as most users turn towards Social Networks, which offer a greater level of control over your experience.


-Thomas
Adventures in Advertising
Pensive Video Gamer
Short Stories and other Curiosities

Being yourself, only don't; it depends

I'm going to let you in on a secret about myself: I'm a social chameleon. I don't just change my behaviour in different circumstances, I also shift my personality as well. This has freaked out past girlfriends who've gotten close to me because they see me as this vibrant enthusiastic upbeat kid and then see that's not me at all once alone.

I'm not saying I'm an flesh eating snarling ogre, just a quiet and withdrawn troll.

This comes in handy when copywriting because you have to take on the ideals, the lexicon and even the mannerisms of the person you're writing for. You have to be them, sometimes literally, which is what ghost-writing is all about.

But when it comes to my own writing, it's really hard for me to find a middle ground. My writing for this blog isn't me, but it is.

It's Thomas at a job interview.

You won't see me being dirty or dropping f-bombs like they're going out of fashion. You won't see me pushing boundaries, which is something I love doing in my writing. You won't see me being ultra sarcastic or using hyperbole to the extreme.

It's true, I'm a self indulgent childish writer!

This is something you have to keep in mind when writing your blog, copy or any piece of writing that someone will look at. This is a record of you as a person. Your personal brand. One of my favourite bloggers covered this better than I could.

One of the hardest skills I've learnt (or have I?!) is the one about self censorship. I write this blog as though a potential employer, university professor or researcher might come across.

I'm still me, but not.

For every hour you spend writing..

Over the past few weeks I've been monitoring my copywriting output against certain factors. Also from what other writers have written I've found a rule of thumb when deploying content and it breaks down like this:

For every one hour you spend writing copy...

Spend double that interacting with people on blogs with similar content and networking your name. This is also know as promoting your brand.

Spend double the time you spent interacting and promoting your blog by reading more blogs, information, books and making sure that you know the subject matter your talking about. This is considered research and will reduce the amount of times you end up looking like an ass.

Following that wont guarantee you success, but it will reduce the time you spend removing your foot out of your mouth, especially if you're as much of an over-opinionated wind-bag as I am!

If only I could follow my own advice sometimes!

But, I did find some interesting advice along these lines through another blog called thecopyblogger. Interesting insights into things to keep in mind when writing.

So, this post took me 10 minutes to write, 20 to post and advertise and an hour to research other material. To be fair, I actually spent around 2 hours because I follow links and get distracted by other things like candy and TV!

The SEO noise can only get worse

Everything I do is centred around Search Engine Optimised words. This means that anything I write needs to be loaded with the correct keywords that people search for on Google which will in turn raise our clients importance in Google search results.

One of the key balancing acts of my role is to keep the copy I do interesting and readable while stuffing it full of those SEO words. This is tedious at the best of times, but some people don't even bother doing this. Do a Google search for "small business marketing", go on. I'll wait.

Did you notice how the first page was filled with nonsensical results like: "Small Business Marketing: Small Businesses" or "Business Marketing- Small Business Marketing"?

The first thing that strikes me is how awful that search string now is. It is cluttered with SEO loaded pages that read like a 14 year olds myspace page (Amateur Capitalisation Of Every Word Makes Me Look So Professional And Cool, Don't You Think?).

Secondly, the search page is almost useless now because it is almost impossible to get any informational differentiation between the results. All they are focused on is cramming it full of keywords.

Over time with everyone doing this do you think Google will get better or more cluttered with indecipherable search results?

No, you say? You're positive the staff will change Google around to work again when the complaints start rolling in!

Sure, they may tweak the overall design, but people will keep up with these changes and adjust their SEO to match. In fact, a whole industry is blossoming with the singular purpose of messing with search results to yield better results for their clients.

So what happens to Google when the primary function of its existence is no longer effective and people cant tell one result from another. Random clicking? How long before they give up and turn elsewhere?

Personally, I don't even use Google for certain search strings any more due to all the SEO clutter. I go to outside third party sites who vet and evaluate websites on a much more strict and tightly controlled basis. Technorati.com is an example of this.

Perhaps whoever solves this dilemma will become the new Google visionary of the next decade?

Target and engage

The singular focus of being a writer (which is my ultimate goal) is simply to write. With blogging that can also be the primary focus as content does matter, especially worthwhile content. However, that isn’t the full picture and if that is all you focus on, you'll most likely fail. I’ve written plenty of funny blogs which stagnated after a while due to lack of interest. Despite a few odd hits, I never really advertised, figuring word would get around naturally about how awesome I was.

The trick to making any blog successful lies not only with clever writing that captures peoples attention, but also engaging your target demographic and putting yourself out there as someone with an opinion. I’ve been experimenting with this blog, keeping the simplistic layout but also using Google analytics to keep track of my daily traffic and other statistics.

Whenever I’ve responded to certain blog posts about stuff I have an opinion on, I’ve linked my blog and watched how many people came visiting from that post. I should start to link back the posts to the blog, but relevance of the target traffic hasn’t matched my niche subject matter for this blog yet.

What that means is that this blog is very specific, dealing with subject matter in a non-topical way and therefore is very hard to find a niche or audience for. However, by linking posts back to this blog and directing the right kind of traffic back here, I’m slowly gaining headway with site visits that don’t just include my friends and family. This blog is now my most successful with regards to raw page hits in the shortest amount of time.

So there are the two things I’ve learnt and found that works within the blog marketing sphere:

1. Engage other bloggers
2. Know your niche

Incidentally, a big thank-you to my mother for being the only subscriber so far. Thanks mum, I hope you’re enjoying reading it and get some sort of entertainment value out of it!

The non-existent fine line

There is a misconception about the thin line between being funny and being offensive. Being funny (or attempting to be) will inevitably offend someone, somewhere, somehow. This is something that cannot be helped or changed. You can avoid it by churning out emaciated dry copy which reads like an encyclopaedia, but then you run the risk of being boring and losing readers.

You may take a page out of the shock bloggers out there and just not give a damn. Maddox is the best example of this genius and he’s been around for over a decade. He talks pure tripe, but does it in such a hilarious way that I can’t help but love him for it. However, as he constantly complains: his inbox is inundated with idiots complaining about how he’s offended them.

This is despite the big caveats plastered all over his website: “If you disagree with anything you find on this page, you are wrong.”

I’ve always had a penchant for hyperbole and find the offensive and crazy stances quite funny. But the aspect that I can never handle well is how it tends to attract the unwanted attention of the over opinionated mouth breathers who pontificate without any contemplation whatsoever. Tact is definitely an underdeveloped trait in me.

Yet this presents the contradiction I discussed in my first post. Getting loads of attention is exactly what I’m after in advertising, but without generating the interest of the imbeciles while still being punchy and entertaining.

The simple truth is that it cannot be done.

You’ve got to pick a side.

So somewhere around the world, someone will read this post and indignantly soil their underwear.

I look forward to reading your emails.

Word Press: the crap generator

Word Press is the premiere writing tool used for blogs. I've never gotten to play around with it much, but after a few weeks I find myself quite proficient with it. This is because it's very easy to use; with simple a interface and loads of support for both platform and delivery.

This is good because it allows more people access in delivering their copy to their audience. This is bad because it allows more people access in delivering their copy to their audiences. Have you read some of the stupidity out there? I've just come from a horrendous article from a news site (Sydney Morning Herald online) which has a recognisable and reputable name. Yet the site design is atrocious and riddled with auto-loading spam.

Despite this, I still follow a few blogs they deliver when I was referred to this rambling diatribe by a friend. My immediate response was to question the editorial process in which a reputable news service can publish such confused dribble. The whole article screams of inconsistency and unfocused rambling.

I'm picking up all these new analytical skills towards evaluating any piece of writing however absolutely none of those skills were necessary in identifying raw ineptitude of writing. Which sadly is the majority of blog content out there on the net.

Trying to not think about how my writing shapes up, instead I wonder how long it will be before search engines become intelligent enough to evaluate blog posts and automatically discard those that are too stupid or badly written from search result. I'm sure Google is already working on algorithms that do exactly this.

Which then begs the question, can everything we write be evaluated for skill based on a mathematical process?

Revisions of Revisions of Revisions

Have you ever revised something so many times that any changes you were told to make were changes that you didn’t even change in the first place? One of the most difficult things to do is thinking along another person wavelength, to know what phrases and what inflection they prefer to use.

This is even harder when the person you’re attempting to imitate keeps changing their mind about the words they want to use. This is frustrating because it’s a necessary part of the process. After each revision I honestly think I have it right, only to discover it is anything but.

The most disheartening aspect is that with each new blog I work on, I figure I’ve learnt the tricks and now know what to look out for. I bring my fresh piece to the table with a smile of satisfaction, only to discover that once again I’m the heel.

Maybe next week I’ll be better.

I wonder if it's possible

My natural writing voice in very sarcastic and antagonistic. I do this on purpose because I've noticed that any piece of writing I do will receive more attention if I'm antagonistic towards the audience.

If I craft a thoughtful essay tightened and neatly constructed, very few people will argue with it or bother even replying because there isn't any wiggle room in my piece for them to refute me.

So part of my new role in copywriting is to deliver interesting pieces with hidden agendas. I wonder if I can write in that manner and somehow keep my off beat perspective about life and my adventures within.

This blog is my attempt to keep an interesting record of my experience, without being offensive or antagonistic in any way.