Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

If you’re gonna do a little work over the holidays, here’s what you ought to do

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Maybe you're wise enough to take some downtime between Christmas and New Year's. But it's hard, not doing any work on a staycation. For one thing, work is your only easy escape from your family. Yet, you don't want to cheat yourself by spending your down time toiling for the man.

So do what you ought to do: Spend some quiet time sifting the work you did this year, and look for the very best stuff you produced. The podcast interview that actually made the CEO sound human. The video that made everybody think differently about what the communication department is capable of. The kick-ass pull-quote that made a strategy story irresisble.

Behold those mini-masterpieces, and pat yourself on the back in a constructive way: Enter the stuff into the Magnum Opus Awards (sponsored by my publisher, McMurry), which "recognizes writers, editors, designers and communication managers who do great work in every area of content-delivery in print, online, in traditional media and social media alike." Mopus_2012

Go ahead, do a little work over the holidays—but make that work work for you.

This is the summer to diss content

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Is it too late to rant loud enough to rid the communication landscape of the term "content"? Yes, it probably is.

In fact, it probably was in 2009, when Garrison Keillor responded to a question about how he creates "content" for A Prairie Home Companion:

I sure wish we could get rid of that word 'content' to refer to writing, photography, drawing, and design online. The very word breathes indifference—why would one bother about the quality of work when it's referred to as 'content'? … I loathe the word. It's like referring to Omaha [Beach] as a development.

Of course, I critizize "content" from my uncomfortable position as a slickster who edits an ezine called ContentWise.

As a writer for a leading "custom content" company, who has no better idea of what to call it. How else do you refer to all manner of print, online and video. Communication stuff?

And as a silly man who is actually looking forward to attending an event in September called Content Marketing World—in Cleveland, where they used to make real stuff, like steel.

Now, in Cleveland, they make content. Or they strategize about making content. Or they convene about strategizing about making content. How can this possibly be a positive development for the country?

The content has left the barn on this one, I know.

But that doesn't mean we have to be content about it.

Survey says: Print is back in a huge way—but for marketing, not internal communication

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A recent "Publishing Characteristics Survey," done jointly by the Custom Content Council and McMurry, the publisher I work with, came out at least one finding that really struck me.

Companies are doing lots of four-color magazines these days—but 79 percent of those mags go to external audiences, vs. only 21 percent to internal ones.

In my survey report, in ContentWise (download it for free here), I wrote, "Employee communication is increasingly achieved by electronic communications."

Maybe I should have said, "halfheartedly attempted," instead.

These companies have decided that, to earn the attention and admiration of customers and potential customers, only gorgeous magazines, and all the editorial tools they offer, will do.

But employees, otherwise known as Our Greatest Assets? Ah, we'll post some slop on the intranet, and the pigs can come and get it.

Communicators, is that about the size of it?