Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
Ann Handley
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 1118905555
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Finally a go-to guide to creating and publishing the kind of content that will make your business thrive.
Everybody Writes is a go-to guide to attracting and retaining customers through stellar online communication, because in our content-driven world, every one of us is, in fact, a writer.
If you have a web site, you are a publisher. If you are on social media, you are in marketing. And that means that we are all relying on our words to carry our marketing messages. We are all writers.
Yeah, but who cares about writing anymore? In a time-challenged world dominated by short and snappy, by click-bait headlines and Twitter streams and Instagram feeds and gifs and video and Snapchat and YOLO and LOL and #tbt. . . does the idea of focusing on writing seem pedantic and ordinary?
Actually, writing matters more now, not less. Our online words are our currency; they tell our customers who we are.
Our writing can make us look smart or it can make us look stupid. It can make us seem fun, or warm, or competent, or trustworthy. But it can also make us seem humdrum or discombobulated or flat-out boring.
That means you've got to choose words well, and write with economy and the style and honest empathy for your customers. And it means you put a new value on an often-overlooked skill in content marketing: How to write, and how to tell a true story really, really well. That's true whether you're writing a listicle or the words on a Slideshare deck or the words you're reading right here, right now...
And so being able to communicate well in writing isn't just nice; it's necessity. And it's also the oft-overlooked cornerstone of nearly all our content marketing.
In Everybody Writes, top marketing veteran Ann Handley gives expert guidance and insight into the process and strategy of content creation, production and publishing, with actionable how-to advice designed to get results.
These lessons and rules apply across all of your online assets — like web pages, home page, landing pages, blogs, email, marketing offers, and on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media. Ann deconstructs the strategy and delivers a practical approach to create ridiculously compelling and competent content. It's designed to be the go-to guide for anyone creating or publishing any kind of online content — whether you're a big brand or you're small and solo.
Sections include:
- How to write better. (Or, for "adult-onset writers": How to hate writing less.)
- Easy grammar and usage rules tailored for business in a fun, memorable way. (Enough to keep you looking sharp, but not too much to overwhelm you.)
- Giving your audience the gift of your true story, told well. Empathy and humanity and inspiration are key here, so the book covers that, too.
- Best practices for creating credible, trustworthy content steeped in some time-honored rules of solid journalism. Because publishing content and talking directly to your customers is, at its heart, a privilege.
- "Things Marketers Write": The fundamentals of 17 specific kinds of content that marketers are often tasked with crafting.
- Content Tools: The sharpest tools you need to get the job done.
Traditional marketing techniques are no longer enough. Everybody Writes is a field guide for the smartest businesses who know that great content is the key to thriving in this digital world.
Be a Writing God,” YouTube video, posted by HubSpot, 8 January 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Q3vnPM6kk. 5. Jeff Goins, “Why You Need to Write Every Day,” Goins, Writer (blog), www.goinswriter.com/write-every-day. 3 Shed High School Rules This past spring, College Board officials announced sweeping revisions to the SAT college entrance exam. Key among the changes was that the dreaded five-paragraph essay portion of the test will become entirely optional in 2016. MIT professor Les Perelman
www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/pdf/simply_put.pdf 6 Follow a Writing GPS At times, writing can feel like birthing a Volkswagen to me (I've even used that metaphor on occasion to describe writing this book). The writer Andre Dubus (House of Sand and Fog) has described writing as inching your way along a very dark, very long tunnel: you can make out the next few feet in front of you, but you're not quite certain where you'll end up or when you'll get there. What helps with the uncertainty and
the right order? Does one point flow into the next? Think of the sentences in a paragraph as a conversation between an elderly, companionable couple. They don't talk over each other; they expand or elucidate what the other before them said. Editing with surgical tools. Next, turn off the chainsaw and turn back to the words. Trim the bloat and fat. Are you potentially using far too many words to say things that might be said more concisely? Shed the obvious. There's no need to include in this
you are thinking about buying a new Ford Fusion and you suddenly see it all over the place). I saw this headline the other day: “Woman Goes Missing; Disinterested Police ‘Guess’ She Eloped, Shut Case.”1 That same day, I noticed this: “Eight in Ten SMEs [small and midsize enterprises] Disinterested in Seeking Finance.”2 Both the police and the small business owners were actually uninterested—not disinterested. Accept: agree to receive, as in “Joakim Noah Reluctant to Accept Praise.”3 Except: not
Hashtag, Boursin, Amino, and especially Quinoa's BFF Chevron. She called the Pinterest board My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler Daughter (MIWDTD) (www.pinterest.com/tiffanywbwg/my-imaginary-well-dressed-toddler-daughter). It pairs over-the-top photos of trendy models (wearing haute couture and aloof expressions) with hilarious captions. The board has blown up on the interwebs—growing its follower base from its initial follower count of around 100 to more than 90,000 as of the spring of