Help! I’m on the run from children’s Christmas ideas!
Let me note right away that I do not have children. What I do have, however, is a search engine optimization business, and not long ago I did a rather thorough evaluation of a website for a company that features children’s clothing, accessories, and furniture. We did not end up working together, but my computer … remembers.
The reason my computer remembers is because of Google. During the time I was doing this research, my ISP, for reasons unknown to anyone but itself, decided to stop sending my emails. I therefore relied on my Gmail account to correspond with the prospect and work on the website evaluation.
And Google, as we all know, Never Forgets.
So now as I meander around the web, pay-per-click advertising for this company is never far away. I check out the TV schedule and it reminds me about kids’ pajamas. I consider purchasing a book online and it’s right there telling me about a special on children’s dressers. I look into a writing contest and it wants me to pay attention to Christmas décor ideas for the kids’ rooms.
Inanely grinning child models are stalking me as I move through the net, haunting my every click. I want to run screaming from them, but they’re actually intruding into the real world, too. When someone mentioned the company name at a recent party I attended, I started looking around for the hidden microphones.
I could draw some political parallels, of course; but this column isn’t about politics, it’s about words. And today’s cautionary word-related tale? Be careful where and how you use your words, because Google Never Forgets. I’m lucky: I only have child-merchandise pursuing me. But the words you leave out there are there forever. It’s a great reason to think before you type.
Do that, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in About Writing, website stuff, Technology, search engine optimization, SEO, copywriting on November 26th, 2007
I have to admit that when it comes to Thanksgiving, I’m a bit of a bah-humbug sort of person. I don’t celebrate the holiday and it makes me vaguely uncomfortable, as you’ll see in a moment.
But I do want to say that taking time off to acknowledge everything for which we are thankful is an excellent idea, and one we should implement all year, not just on one day. I’m grateful for so many things and many people: the growth of my company, Customline Wordware, and for all my wonderful clients who make it possible; for my sales team, headed up by Julia Blackburn, and mostly, my business partner, friend, and husband, Paul Cézanne. I’m grateful to my publishers for continuing to put my words out there, and for my literary agent, Philip G. Spitzer for enabling that to happen. I’m grateful to my readers (”if a writer falls in the forest…”) who mean the world to me: I don’t know who all of you are, but I thank you!
As for the rest … well, I explain my attitude best in this op-ed I wrote that appeared in last week’s Provincetown Banner:
Thanksgiving, Provincetown-Style
Having decided not to travel for the holiday (the sanest course of action when one considers how difficult flying anywhere has become), I found myself recently wondering how to spend it. While I’m totally onboard with the general sentiment of the time – it’s an incontestably Good Thing to stop and feel gratitude for all we have and all we are, and an even Better Thing to thank people who have been good to us this year – I’ve never been able to feel right about celebrating a holiday that has its historical roots in a genocide.
So how does one mark the day?
At one time the Wampanoag did a sort of anti-Thanksgiving at Plimoth Plantation, but I’ve not been able to find anything out about it in recent years. And while one could of course go to one of the local restaurants and gorge oneself, it seems a little pointless. So I was delighted when the solution was suggested to me: perhaps I should celebrate Thanksgiving exactly like the first Europeans did!
You don’t have to go far to research the roots of the holiday: the museum up at the Provincetown Monument tells the story. The Pilgrims, we learn via a diorama there, were close to starvation and despair when they suddenly found some corn! It was carefully stacked and well preserved, apparently just waiting for them. They rejoiced over that discovery, took the corn back to their ships, and thus famously survived the winter.
So here’s my plan: on Thanksgiving morning, I’m going to break into the Grand Union grocery store over on Shankpainter Road. I’m going to proceed to the canned vegetables aisle (it is, after all, past the season for fresh vegetables) and take the corn I find stacked there. Surely the store owners and the local police will understand, just as no doubt the rightful owners of that original harvest did, right? Stealing is, apparently, a holiday tradition.
Okay, so I’m not going to really do it, but it’s a tempting thought. After all, as long as you get to write the history books, you can – apparently – do whatever you want. Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving indeed, on this and on every day! Being grateful puts us all … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Process Matters, Doing the Right Thing, Etc., Words on November 22nd, 2007
Imagine searching the web, the way you do every day … but with a twist: what if your search included donations to your charity or nonprofit of choice?
I probably shouldn’t say this, since as an SEO goddess (a title I most humbly claim as my own) I make my living from people worrying about Google, Yahoo! and MSN; but now there’s a kinder, better way to search: GoodSearch.
Powered by Yahoo!, GoodSearch donates a penny per search to the nonprofit organization you designate. If you’re like me, this can amount to a couple of dollars on almost any day! You can use GoodSearch the same way you’d use any other search engine, and your charity or nonprofit of choice will reap the benefits of your research or curiosity.
To get started, just navigate over here: GoodSearch. Enter your favorite charity or nonprofit name into the space that reads “enter your charity here.” And voila!
Stuck on Google? Forget to do the right thing? Make GoodSearch your home page or add it to your web browser toolbar. Either way, you’ll be helping someone … and will find yourself far, far beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Doing the Right Thing, website stuff on November 19th, 2007
I have to admit it: I have a new favorite blog out there. The marketing world — in which I spend a fair amount of my time — loves loves loves scare quotes. Almost as much as it loves to choose certain random nouns and give them initial caps. Almost as much as it loves choosing words it thinks will drive customers to action and capitalize them completely. And then there are the exclamation marks …
You end up having sentences like these: All of “our” Fine Sports Wear is ON SALE!!!!!!!
Okay, so that’s a slight exaggeration, but honestly –– only slight. Good copywriting isn’t about tossing eye-catching punctuation like errant confetti over your content: good copywriting is supplying good content. Period. And for you SEO mavens out there, all this extraneous stuff is horrible at attracting spiders. Do so at your risk and peril.
But I digress. There are, thankfully, two or three other people in the world who feel as I do, and one of them has a blog! Youpie!
When you’re ready for a slightly different take on the use of scare quotes as we all unhappily see them every day, do go visit The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation marks..
You’ll have a lot of fun: I guarantee it! And you’ll also be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Doing the Right Thing, About Writing, Words, website stuff, SEO, copywriting on November 18th, 2007
So today we’re going to talk about writing; writing fiction, specifically. And there’s a common critique of beginning novelists: “too much maid-butler dialogue!”
We’ve all seen it, whether or not we use that expression to articulate it. It refers to the choice of some authors to include backstory in dialogue:
“Well, Jim, as you know, we’ve been harvesting oysters around these parts for thirty years, and nothing like this ever happened before.”
“Oh? and what about two years ago, the incident around Christmastime?”
“You’re right. It’s very unusual for the harvest to dry up like it did then … and now.”
“Remind me, what was the reason for it then?”
Aie, aie, aie. Getting the backstory into a novel unobtrusively is one of the more difficult tasks facing the novelist or — even worse — short story writer. And maid-butler dialogue isn’t the worst of it.
But this article isn’t about backstory (though I’d be happy to do one someday). It’s on the picturesque names that we find to define these literary devices.
Being neither a science-fiction author nor a science-fiction reader, I probably come very late to this wonderful page: the Turkey City Lexicon. Here we have far more wonderful names (for far more wonderful literary devices) than I’d ever dreamed of. To name just a few:
- Card Tricks in the Dark
- Eyeball Kick
- Mrs. Brown
- AM/FM
- Brenda Starr Dialogue
Want to know what they mean? Go check them out at Turkey City. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in About Writing, Fiction on November 15th, 2007
Well, the word is out … and it’s not just those of us involved in “causes” that are paying attention. According the the new BBMG Conscious Consumer report, nearly nine in ten Americans say that the words “conscious consumer” describe them, and that they’re more likely to buy from companies that manufacture energy-efficient products (90%), promote health and safety benefits (88%), support fair labor and trade practices (87%), and commit to environmentally friendly practices (87%).
Wal*Mart doesn’t have to get worried, yet: the report noted that the above considerations will only cause a consumer to purchase if products are of equal quality and price. There’s that price-point issue again. We’re good at holding fast to values … until they begin to cost us.
The good news? While “convenience” used to be a major consideration for American consumers, it has been edged out by more socially relevant attributes.
Those of us who use words for a living need to be aware of this trend. Even advertising copywriters, possibly the lowest on the rung of writers (and I say this even when I’m wearing my copywriting hat!), need to know that social responsibility ins’t just the right thing to do … it sells, too.
There may be hope for us, after all. And then we’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Process Matters, Doing the Right Thing, copywriting on November 12th, 2007
I often talk about content being king. I even have a monthly newsletter titled Limitless Content (sign up for it at http://www.customline.com), and for good reason: content is the point of the web. People go online to do a great many things – make purchases, meet friends, look up information, learn a language, sell an heirloom – and every one of those actions is predicated on there being some content on the site where they ultimately do whatever it is that they’re doing.
Every time Google dances and other SEO experts go swooning over page ranks and links and so on, I order another latte. I don’t care. Page rank is so 2005, folks, and links can be manipulated more than golf scores. But content – good, solid, reliable, authoritative, changing content – that’s what will bring visitors (and customers!) to a site.
The social media sites, no matter which one you choose to consider (and new ones spring up, literally, daily), are all about content. They’re frequented by people who are generally less educated but far more web-saavy than those who are attracted to pre-web 2.0 sites, and these users know all about links – and aren’t about to play that game. You can’t ask for links in this world, and you can’t buy links, either; you have to earn them.
And you earn them through great content. I’m starting to sense a theme here.
The social media world focuses on experience rather than on destinations. It focuses on connections rather than on sales pitches. And it values creativity above anything else. The best way to get noticed is to do something new, something cool, something insanely great – and tell somebody about it. Tell everybody about it.
Who do you tell? Ah, that’s the other catch. To market to these communities, you have to be part of the community. You cannot communicate to web 2.0 denizens unless you’re one of them, unless you’ve spent the time and taken the effort to be there. You have to grow a bit of a thick skin, for social media sites can feature some very mean individuals (read Digg for a few pages and you’ll see what I’m talking about); as is true everywhere, it is generally the people who know the least who attack the most. So you’re going to get some slingshots. You need to have humor and a sense of balance out here – it’s not for the faint of heart.
Let’s get back to content, though. Because social media has changed the way content is presented: even though it must be even better than ever in terms of quality, the quantity rules have changed:
- First, your content has to be bite-sized. Say what you have to say, say it well, remind people of what you just said, and get out. If you can’t do this well, hire someone who can (maybe even a copywriter like me!): it’s essential.
- Secondly, your bites need to be in a lot of different places. Study the sites. (I’m not going to list them here; those lists are available elsewhere – check out SEOMoz’s fine articles on social media marketing, as an example.) Everyone wants something a little different. Modify your bite-sized bits of content to suit the specific audience.
- Finally, and this is where all your old creaky SEO skills come in: change content. All the time. Follow up your bite-sized nuggets with other ones. Experiment with doing a series of such nuggets on a given site. Keep creating this great content and tossing the articles, lenses, and tidbits out into the social media you select. They won’t all stick; but some will.
Remember that you’re not going to make any sales out here: social media sites aren’t going to buy anything from you. But put out content that is creative, dynamic, and intriguing, and if you’re any kind of decent marketer, you’ll draw people in to where you want them to be … and encourage them to do what you want them to do.
Do that, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in About Writing, The Cutting Edge, Creativity, Words, website stuff, social media marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, SMM on November 8th, 2007
The algorithms are kept so secret as to make Google’s search terms an open book. What I’m talking about, of course, is how bestseller lists are devised and maintained. Who decides? Based on what? Every author wants to know; and anyone who claims to know is deluding him or herself.
Some authors choose to take matters into their own hands. Back when the New York Times bestseller list was based on sales alone, Jacqueline Susann bought enough copies of her new book, The Valley of the Dolls to fill her garage … and launch her to the top of the bestseller list, thus making the continued status into a self-fulfilling loop. Did the book deserve such status? Of course it didn’t; but that’s not the way the lists work.
As long as there are systems, there will be people gaming the systems.
We’re seeing a similar phenomenon now, with all the marketers shilling programs to send one’s book to the top of the Amazon bestseller list. It’s one of the few lists that can still be manipulated, and authors with enough contacts (usually marketing writers themselves) are following the plan of getting a vast number of people to purchase the book at the same time, thus catapaulting it to the top of the list for a precious fifteen seconds of fame, and thereafter claiming the title of bestselling author for themselves. It’s dishonest and manipulative, but it’s — at least as of this writing — still feasible.
Yet the list from the New York Times remains the most impressive and elusive of them all. And, as we learn from the Times’s own Clark Hoyt in this op-ed, it seems that the Times’s assessments are byzantine enough to put the mystery novels that grace its list to shame.
One of the first things I learned is that much of what the publishing world thinks it knows about the list is wrong or out of date. For example: The Book Review editor, Sam Tanenhaus, has nothing to do with compiling it, though it is published weekly in his section; it is handled by the news surveys department. The list isn’t tabulated from paper questionnaires sent to booksellers; it’s entirely computerized, after a recently completed two-year project. The roster of outlets surveyed is not adjusted only once every five years; it changes constantly.
The best route? Write a good book. No; write a great book. Market the hell out of it. Speak at libraries and church fairs and conferences. Seek out reviews from reputable sources and use them as part of your marketing. Leave the rest to the gods.
And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Publicity, Books, Publishing, Getting Published, Publishers, About Writing on November 7th, 2007
Well, if I can’t do it in my own blog, where can I do it?
I’m very *very* excited about my new book, Open Your Heart with Reading. I’m excited because I think that it really is a decent book, possibly even a great book; but also because I think that it might help people get back in touch with the magic of storytelling, the sense of excitement and anticipation that grips one at the beginning of what one just knows is going to be an excellent book.
If you want just a quick glimpse, check out the Open Your Heart with Reading introduction on Squidoo. But essentially what it’s about is that very magic … that, and the fact that 90 million Americans have no access to it because they are functionally illiterate. 90 million! In a developed country like ours, that’s shameful.
What can you do? Well, read the book; there’s a whole section written by literacy expert Sharon Darling. And if you want something simple and immediate, then go over to the the literacy site, where you can give free books to children who need them.
Mixing magic with desperate need isn’t easy, and I hope that the book has accomplished that. Last night I did an interview with the inimitable Lady Di on her Friday night radio show, Leggs Up And Dancin, and we were joined by Karen MacDonald, librarian here in Provincetown, Massachusetts, talking both about the need for reading and the magic that it weaves into people’s lives. Karen pointed out the many “new” authors one can meet when reading a book such as this one, and I hope that’s true; true, also, is my sincere thanks to the Library of America for introducing me to many voices I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to hear and echo.
Buy a copy and let me know what you think!
And then we’ll all be .. beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Publicity, Books, Words, Reading on November 3rd, 2007
Just a quick note today to remind everyone that in the United States, today is National Literacy Day, so it’s a great time to do something simple: give a child a book by visiting the Literacy Site today.
With the holidays coming, you might also want to consider patronizing some of the advertisers on the site, too, and shop for some of your holiday gifts there.
One-third of all Americans, 90 million people, are functionally illiterate. We should be ashamed. On this day of all days, let’s do something about it!
And then we’ll all be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Books, Doing the Right Thing, Reading on November 1st, 2007
