All’s fair in love and entrepreneurship. Marketing wisdom and observations from the world of outsourced marketing communications.

There are great writers everywhere these days. I won’t try to imitate any of them.

Some are more eloquent than I, and some are more brief. Yet the things I write about seem to strike a chord with people. . .big or small, old or young. I like to think it’s because I write like I speak. . .loosely. . .and hopefully, with a bit of a story to rouse one’s curiosity. Sometimes I use a few too many commas despite my status as a professional freelance writer and editor. But who cares. I like ‘em, and again they work with the way I pace things. . .kinda’ like those few dots right there. Yup. I like ellipses too. My grammar teachers would no doubt string me up if they knew where to find me.

But you know what? The entire reason we as humans write is to share ideas with other people via the written word. Only so much can be said and understood in one conversation, and only so much read in one sitting. Putting our ideas to paper allows our intended audience to re-visit and re-learn what has already been stated, and if you want that corporate magazine, company newsletter, white paper, or simple note to a loved one to actually be read, you’d better make it read well. The way to accomplish this simple feat is to write simply.

Last week I volunteered at the Chicago World Usability Day event held at the downtown office of Blue Cross Blue Shield here in the city. It was an event that, quite frankly, I somewhat stumbled upon while on-line searching for concepts and ideas related to my career as a technical writer. I write and edit all sorts of material, actually, but one of my greater joys has always been editing the work of others so as to help them make their message more clear. It is technical writing nirvana for me, really.

World Usability Day was an enlightening event for me because until a few weeks prior to it taking place, I never even knew such a field existed! My first discovery of this “new” creature was through the US government’s usability website where I learned that usability is, quite succinctly, the means by which designers aim to make the things we use and interact with on a daily basis more useful, usable and to quote Don Norman who was the keynoter of the event, more “friendly”. The folks at Motorola, Whirlpool, GE and a host of other companies are working feverishly to ensure the stuff we use in our lives is indeed useful. As writers, we should always aim for the same.

When I was first learning to write critically as a history major in college, I was always instructed to assume nothing when writing. No matter how educated my professors were on the subject matter I was investigating, I was to write my papers as if they knew nothing at all about the topic at hand. It makes sense, of course, and this single lesson is critical to having your work understood. A lack of attention to this principle is often the reason why technical communication in the form of manuals, reports and proposals typically fail to educate their intended audience. As a result, if your firm is spending money on material no one reads or understands, it is spending away its profits on filing cabinet and trash can fodder. There is a reason why our parents never learned how to program the VCR and now their cell phones, and a lot of it can be attributed to those joyful how-to manuals which accompanied those shiny new electronic devices. So if we’re not writing well and using language we can all understand, then fundamentally, we’re not communicating.

So take a step forward and be a change leader. Work on those corporate and technical communications pieces and grab your audience by the short-hairs. Use great ledes, great graphic artists and great writers. After all, you’re competing for your readers eyeballs as much as your own marketing department is, so let’s make it count!

Wouldn’t it be great if after all the hard work you put into your corporate magazine or corporate history piece, your firm’s employees actually read it?

Cool link: The folks at Ragan Communications are the thought leaders in this arena. Check out their work!

Cheers,
Doc Kane, Roscommon
Chicago, November 2006

Doc Kane is the president of Roscommon, a Chicago-based marketing communications firm that helps clients outsource their writing needs. Essentially, if it’s got words, Roscommon can help.   His firm has the privilege of writing for some of the world’s most recognizable brands, including Abbott Labs and Aon Corporation, as well as a good number of small businesses and experts making a lot of noise in their own backyards.  Doc has also been heavily involved in Internet marketing since 1994, and continues to help small businesses market themselves online via web content and SEO.  You can visit Roscommon online at: www.roscommon.com

When I was a kid, my mother always made it a point to remind me to say ‘please’ when asking a favor of someone, and to offer thanks when the favor was granted. Sometimes I will happen past a young parent telling their child the same thing; eager to instill a bit of politeness in their children despite their misfortune to grow up in an ever-grumpier world. And yet despite the barrage of messages from our parents, we have seemingly, en-masse, forgotten three of the most useful words in the English language.

To be sure, I am not a psychologist, anthropologist, morphologist, or any other sort of “-ist”, so frankly, I haven’t the foggiest idea as to why people don’t use these words as much as they should, but I do find it puzzling. What’s more interesting, though is that it seems we have forgotten to write them as well! It’s uncanny! It’s diabolical! It’s, well. . .it’s, just plain silly.

Writing a thank you note, is perhaps the easiest thing you can do to double your sales, double your profits, and double your referrals. It is consistently more effective than having the perfect product, the perfect sales pitch, or the perfect brand. To understand the power of a five minute hand-written note, just think back to when you were younger and your parents stuck that over-sized pen in your reluctant hand and put you to the task of thanking your Grandparents for the money they gave you for your birthday. Do you remember how pleased they were to receive your note? Well, magnify that by a thousand for someone who doesn’t already love you and you’ll understand the significance a thank you note carries. Letter writing, if it is not dead already, certainly has the bell attached to its foot and six feet of dirt on top. Let’s bring it back to life.

My background in sales has afforded me the opportunity to write many thank you notes, and I admit, I’ve become quite obsessive about it over the years. As such, I’ve worked out a bit of a system that has allowed me to stay on top of my thank you writing needs, so if you follow the very simple steps below you too can become a thank you letter writing King or Queen! And please keep in mind that this system is really for the every-day stuff. . .for more eventful occasions, you’ll need to throw your heart into it. After all, that’s really what it’s all about, right?

Here you go. The easiest way to get in the thank you note habit in 10 simple steps.

1. Buy a box of 100 thank you cards and a roll of 100 stamps.
2. Create a list of the 10 most frequent occasions for which you need to write thank you notes in your life.
3. Using your computer, write a thank you message for each of the occasions you listed above.
4. Write a sincere note, but keep it fairly generic because we’re going to need to use it again and again.
5. Save it on your computer so you don’t have to think up a message each time you run into Aunt Betty.
6. Now, this is the hard part! In groups of ten, take your thank you notes and hand-write the messages on them now. Don’t wait till you need them, just do it now and leave off only the person’s name. Be sure to use the same pen, because otherwise the ink will look to different when you send them off, and that’s well, ugly, and a dead give-away that you wrote them ahead of time.
7. Put your return address on each of the 100 envelopes you have and stamp each one as well.
8. Once you’ve written all your letters, put them away someplace safe and organized so you can access them later.
9. Create a habit! Use a page from your planner to note down people you need to write thank you letters to, and the occasion for which they deserve one.
10. At least once a week refer to your planner, pull out a pre-written, pre-stamped card, plop a name on there and stick it in the mail. Your clients, colleagues, family and friends will love you for it and you’ll never miss a thank you note opportunity again!

Cheers,
Doc Kane, Roscommon
Chicago, July 2006

Doc Kane is the president of Roscommon, a Chicago-based marketing communications firm that helps clients outsource their writing needs. Essentially, if it’s got words, Roscommon can help.   His firm has the privilege of writing for some of the world’s most recognizable brands, including Abbott Labs and Aon Corporation, as well as a good number of small businesses and experts making a lot of noise in their own backyards.  Doc has also been heavily involved in Internet marketing since 1994, and continues to help small businesses market themselves online via web content and SEO.  You can visit Roscommon online at: www.roscommon.com